Absolutely fantastic

Cannot wait for the next book, I wish it was already out, excellent in all categories. Great narrator.

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I really enjoy the story - the narration is rough in spots

Great story, genuinely interesting cultivation/progression fantasy. While this isn’t Dawn of the Void or HWFWM it is super interesting and propelled by a plot that never lets you get bored.

The female characters are sometimes written as a bit too hard bitten in some cases or too conniving and mean spirited, but they aren’t all like that. The book does (very successfully) introduce the reader to an Asian cultural backdrop, namely Chinese, where honour and ‘face’ take on a far eastern meaning that western audiences aren’t necessarily used to which makes it all the more interesting. With that backdrop as most characters guiding light, it makes understanding character motivations much easier without needing to give everyone a harrowing backstory.

At first I didn’t quite know how to process that because it wasn’t as descriptive of character motivations as I might have expected, but in the end, the backstory is craftily the trauma of a suddenly descending and devastating ‘system’ that displaces people, forcing shellshocked survivors into unfamiliar cultural structures that quickly mould them into a leaderships desired norm. It makes sense as it’s how you would take otherwise soft cultures and societies and quickly normalize them to a primarily marshal society that values strength above all. In this dance for personal survival you end up working with the system, for the system where morality is always secondary to power and the power defines the morality. It could be viewed as a cautionary tale for those wishing cultural revolution where power is inevitably subsumed by the few to control the many.

So we then have a main character who remembers his past that would equate to our current time line and this trauma fuels the MC and eventually leads him on a marshal path that will shake the heavens. The hubris of royals seeking to contain and control this power will certainly make for interesting future books.

This was a great addition to the series. The end is a superb cliff hanger that will only serve to expand the scope of this universe. It’s so different from other progression fantasies, in spite of the similarities, that it makes it extra interesting. Any time a MC is set up to break something and perhaps make it better, well you know there will be hell to pay along that path.

My sincere hope is that this series is very long and very enjoyable.

Narration:

I’m not as big a fan of the narration as some reviewers here. The narrators wrestler voice approach to fights has actually grown on me, when at first it just irritated me. I do think the narrator has made some odd voicing decision that are so overwrought and so over the top that I’m stunned wondering why he made that choice. I’ll give one example, the MC’s mentor is a woman, but she sounds like a mix of the priest from princess bride and a man who has smoked all of the smoke…all of it. Then add throw in a speech impediment (like the priest in the Princess Bride) and you have a very yelly over the top performance that the narrator has decided to use whenever the main character reads the assuras, the carvings and ruins on his glave and the spherical guide to cultivation given to him by his mentor. So every time our MC reads these, the narrator inexplicably switches back to the mentors voice, even though the MC is reading them himself and absolutely chews through the lines in the most uncomfortable way ever. These sections have made me take my earbuds out, calmly put them down on the table and go now my lawn as a pallet cleanser. It’s the most overacted voice in the book, though others come close. I think the narrator needs to find away to do female voice with less overwrought, monotone, tongue chewing enunciation in the future.

The MC’s voice is great, the narrator has a wonderful range but waaay overdoes a particularly strange way of taking, it’s jarring when everyone you are introduced to is unsurprisingly beautiful but all sound like old crones who smoked too much of their life away.

That’s all I have. Hope you enjoy the story as much as I did. This series has a lot of potential.

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ahh discovering a narrator is always great.

these first 2 books were fantastic. the narrator can completely ruin a possible gem, or make ANY work into something greater than its sum. this fella (dont recall name and dont want to go back and delete this..) adds do much with his passionate and gutteral use of volume(not louder on the ears) and intensity during fights etc.

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My new favourite book.

Just checked and I have 659 books in my audible account and this is my favourite, even after it made me stay up all night because I couldn’t put it down.

This one is better than the first and finishes strong and now I can’t wait for the next one.

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All ready bought the next one

This series, the story, the systems, the performance, everything here is is as good as it gets

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Wow

I don’t know if this book is one of the best books, or it’s the narrator. He should narrate every book. It makes it a lot of fun to listen to

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absolutely breathtaking

I loved this book in it's totality, the voice actor, the story, the characters. everything meshed extremely well to bring us this masterpiece! I am very excited for the third book to be released because the story added so many compelling elements that I know book 3 will be a page turner like no other!

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