Narration is the dealbreaker for me on audiobooks. I remember listening to Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves at the start of the year and the book was incredible, but the narrator was just appalling! If it had been a longer book I would probably have given up. Not keen on Michael Kramer personally, but I know a lot of people love his style. Steven Pacey and Michael Page (Joe Abercrombie/Scott Lynch respectively) are still the best I have come across!
@Idlewilder, many congratulations on finishing your degree -must be a great feeling

I couldn't agree more about good narrators being a make or break. I use audible for most of my books, partly for convenience of use, but also now for space considerations. Audible.com are excellent at letting you return books and not liking the narrator is always accepted as a good reason. They will sometimes credit your account with cash automatically or may ask you to exchange for another book. The second option is if you have got the book from one of the cheap deals or special sales. The system for phoning from here never works but the live messaging is brilliant, they are there 24 hours a day and you get quick courteous service. I have returned book several times when the narrator was poor.
Audible have also learned from their listeners wrath if they have series running with a well liked narrator and
suddenly change. Devotees just will not buy. This happened a while back when they
suddenly brought out a Harry Dresden without James Marsters reading and comments went wild. They replaced it with a James Marsters version and I think we all got the new version free, can't quite remember. I also remember that when The
Thief of Time first came on audible they only had it as a dramatized version and some of the witches had American accents.

That is no longer available.
