a pleasant surprise.

Of the LITRPG books I have read this is quickly my favorite. The rise and fall of the action was just right. Enjoy the story everyone, I am off to the next.

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a little odd but damn am I invested

The apocalypse kind of thing has not really been used recently. but the way the author has gone about it has peaked my interest and just the couple minutes from the sample caused me to pick up the book. while there are a couple of really MC as dumb moments. The writing around the rest of it has held some merit. And the voice actors group doing this audible. 150%. just wow, the extra sounds that they add in the chewing the gunshots the magic sounds everything. I am in it for the long haul.
absolutely amazing job.

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a really solid fantasy book

I've listened to quite a few litrpg books and fantasy books and I have to say this one was great it was solid story with lots of action the narrator was excellent I would recommend this to any fantasy lover my only complaint was it ended too soon.

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Great listen

Enjoyed the book very much. Some good humor mixed with intense fighting. Good character development, will be listening to the next book.

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great story

story line was good, I like the hidden gems and the performance was wonderful, well done. I enjoyed the sound effects it worked well with this. gnomes rule.

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great story but lacking in some things

the story line and progression of characters are great. makes you really want to cheer them on. however with the skills they learn and level up in doesnt say what they get from level up a skill. no ability to do it better or fast or other attributes. just saying that they leveled it up. the other thing was the combat music can be a bit distracting from trying to hear what they are acctuly doing. .

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1 person found this helpful

Good start, endgame needs more content

Just to start, Soundbooth Theater was absolutely fantastic! The intense narration really gives weight and emotion to the frequent life or death situations. Character voices had a good range and variety, with only a couple of female voices difficult for me to tell apart. The music appropriately marks those life or death situations. I haven't listened to a lot of audio books so far, but they far and away deserve the credit for making this book actually interesting!

Now, the story here, on the other hand, had a great start but petered out toward the end. The intense battles against dangerous predators and learning to survive in a suddenly hostile landscape, finding other survivors and working together into a tight-knit family. All great stuff!

But then it eventually gives way to tedious base-building and tower defense. There are no major villains for the heroes to match wits against (actually, none of the humans can seem to put together a plan more complex than tricking people into thinking they're good people when they're not and then standing around at the front door when that doesn't pan out), no giant unstoppable monsters that last more than a chapter after the mid-way point, no dungeon crawls in alien labyrinths, no grand treasures or even MacGuffins to acquire. They just build one base, then another, and another, one more, a token base defense event against non-threatening foes, then done.

The thing that bothered me the most was the realization that the RPG statistics make an appearance and don't really do much else. Attributes, levels, hit points, damage, and skills all seem to just be indicators of what the character is capable of, but adding more doesn't seem to give any new knowledge, endurance, or power after it's first brought up. After putting just a few points in Strength, Allistor already has almost superhuman power that he fritters away on hauling gear and opening doors, but he then raises his Intelligence even higher than his Strength and definitely doesn't get any smarter. The damage enemies deal isn't proportional to their levels but rather to the location they attack just as if there were no RPG system in place at all. Getting healed tops off the HP bar and restores skin, but blood/limb loss, concussions, internal damage, and other effects are all treated as debuffs completely unassociated with HP aside from preventing it from recovering naturally, albeit with vastly reduced recovery times. Skill gains don't impart additional knowledge of how to do something properly. Level 3 characters do just as much damage as Level 10 characters.

And when the book eventually devolves into the aforementioned base-building and tower defense sections, it's guns, guns, and bigger guns, all the way to the end. I won't harp on as much about cars because the setting is only a few weeks after the apocalypse, and there aren't any other viable methods of long-distance travel since it's still Earth. But guns are practically the end-all be-all of combat. Allistor himself continues to use scavenged shotguns and rifles as his primary weapons right to the end, with the occasional spell to lock things down or burn an area to spice things up. Even new armor would have added something, but one group gets a few suits of crafted leather armor and then no one ever gets anything defensive again, except for one of Allistor's spells that barely has any effect on anything as every attack just smashes his puny barrier to pieces and does almost full damage to the target on the other side anyway.

Overall, the first half of the book is 5 stars! The second half drops all the way down to 2 stars as everything that came before just stagnates.

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2 people found this helpful

Good but MC is dumb as a brick

Below is my review as of Book 3 of this series. The review takes into account all 3 books. There are some vague spoilers but nothing terrible.


Just like the title says. This series has pretty good world building, back story and developing characters. That said it sometimes feels like the main character hasn't changed at a lot of points in the story. While other characters are learning and becoming smarter he still seems like a doofus of a college student bumbling along. After a year of fighting monsters, aliens and humans it feels like he has learned nothing.

*Some spoilers below*
For example, bringing more people into his group while standing right in front of them with little to no protection, AFTER he has been shot or almost killed doing the same thing multiple times. Then when they attack he is ALWAYS SURPRISED. He then proceeds to beat himself up and cries like a b**ch blaming himself that they died. This happens multiple times! The amount of time the author spends making the MC be a little baby is WAY too much. Why is it that everyone around him understands the situation and dont care about the consequences, but have to spend time after almost every battle consoling the MC. Seriously, they have to explain to him everytime that he did what he had to while he cries and blames himself like some whiny preteen going through puberty.

Honestly I have debated shelving this series due to the blatant use of making the MC the exact opposite of the plot armor that other MCs get. What is it called when an author makes the MC dumber so he can progress the story?
The MC bouncing from a confident, intelligent leader to a f**king idiot child who doesn't seem like he has killed 30+ people is a HUGE Buzzkill and pulls me out of the immersion of the story.
I cant emphasize that enough. I try to understand that he is supposed to be a young, naive student, but the fact that it has been a year of him fighting, killing people and monsters, and becoming an Fing PLANETARY PRINCE but still being how he was when it all started still actually pisses me off. Seriously.

All that said I enjoy the premise of the story, the plot and the authors writing style.
If only he developed the MC like the rest of the supporting characters

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