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Shadow of the Conqueror
- Chronicles of Everfall, Book 1
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer, Kate Reading
- Length: 18 hrs and 30 mins
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Publisher's Summary
Who better to fight back the darkness of the world than the one responsible for most of it?
Daylen, once known as the Great Bastard, the Scourge of Nations, Dayless the Conqueror, has lived in hiding since his presumed death. Burdened by age and tremendous guilt, he thinks his life is coming to an end. Unbeknownst to him he’s about to embark on a journey towards redemption where his ruthless abilities might save the world. Many battles await with friends to be made and a past filled with countless crimes to confront, all the while trying to keep his true identity a secret.
Indeed, it might be too much if not for the fabled power awaiting him.
Everfall is a world of perpetual day where the continents float in an endless sky. If one jumps from the continent they will fall for many hours before returning to the same place from which they fell. Skyships rule the air powered by shining sunstone and industrial darkstone. A legendary order of knights bears mystical powers which they use to hunt out the dreaded shade, monsters that regular people turn into if trapped in darkness for the length of a fall.
It is a world of enchanted swords, merciless monsters, mystical knights, and hard magic, filled with tales of wonder and adventure.
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What listeners say about Shadow of the Conqueror
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Nicholas
- 2019-07-16
Guilty Pleasure Fantasy
The book's okay. The performance is good, as you'd expect. Specifically, the magic system and world are well explored, even if there are some noticeable parallels between this and other famous works. The characters aren't half bad either.
I'd rate this book better if characters were not used as a mouthpiece to espouse unchallenged highschool-grade criticisms of socialism and authoritarianism, or shallow economic theory.
Perhaps Shad thought it would be okay if he stuck to making non-controversial positions, since the main cast's overton window on policies is very narrow. But that's part of the problem. There is no nuance to the positions they espouse.
As an aside, there is a lot of gratuitous violence for its own sake, rather than for world or character building. I'm pretty sure a lot of this could be cleaned up by a good editor, so scenes were more succinct.
I've seen some comments saying this book wouldn't be published by a major printing house, and I see why they'd say that. Shad has some areas of strength of course, but he needed someone to tell him when certain scenes or details were unnecessary, and when a character needed more depth, and when the politics was too heavy-handed.
I think most professional authors need this, so this isn't a criticism of his writing skills so much as it is simply an observation.
Like I said Shad is good enough where the flaws weren't overpowering for me, and I DID enjoy my time with the book. And I don't get the sense he was lazy. Still he does go overboard a lot of the time.
He'll probably improve immensely if he keeps publishing books.
[ Some Nitpicking & Spoilers ]
I hated how the protagonist says 'life is the worst torture i can think of' every other chapter, and no one calls him out for being a coward - ever. It is fine for him to be biased, I guess, but for god's sake let the narrative repudiate his conviction because it is annoying and frankly absurd that life be the worst torture. I would think torture would be the worst torture. Duh. This guy tortured people for a living so he should have connected the dots.
I also didn't like how rape was overused as a narrative device. It's supposed to evoke emotions from the listener, but after the 7th time it stops evoking any reaction from me. Now, I think Shad uses rape to establish the protagonist as an anti-hero, but he sacks and burns cities for peacefully protesting, murders women and children for the mildest of crimes, and even when he is trying to redeem himself still murders people without hesitation. The rape is gratuitous, and the number is staggering and nigh unbelievable - considering he ought to have been running an empire at war constantly, I fail to understand how he found time to rape 300 women, each women raped for a month before being discarded.
So, he had a woman constantly in his bed for 30 years, and he explains he didn't know he was raping them even though he forced them to walk around his palace naked, and forced them to have sex with him night after night. He thought they were 'willing'.
Like, this does happen in real life, it's how rape happens, but not 300 times and not over such an extended period?
It's like, not to equivocate or be cheeky or anything, I went hunting every day, and every month I'd select a slightly different area of the forest to go to, and after 30 years I hadn't realized the game was disappearing. This, while I ran like, I don't know, Disney, while simultaneously being a writer for new properties, and an actor for my movies.
It's just a little hard to swallow someone was so dedicated to a task, and yet so ignorant of what they were doing.
But anyway.
I think, if you wanted to get the reader to sympathize with a rapist like this, you need a lot more care and nuance, and most importantly a dramatic and charismatic first person pov centered around those events. I guess that's a lot to ask for, but all the more reason why the rape, especially to this degree, should have been cut.
[Moving On]
There are certain arcs in the story which are clearly better than the rest, though. The end conflict, if brief was emotionally powerful (even though I knew what was going to happen).
And I'll end this post with a little more praise. I think ultimately the protagonist is a pretty realistic antihero, aside from the cringe guilttrips and gratuitous amounts of rape. Which is not to say it couldn't have been written with more subtlety but, his back story and personality are minimally believable.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Jared
- 2019-07-20
Brilliantly narration, decent world, okay writing.
The good: Michael Kramer and Kate Reading did an amazing job as always. I feel that the audiobook version is significantly better due to it being narrated by those master storytellers. The world-building was also really interesting. So often in fantasy, it is just assumed that it is set basically on earth but Shadows of the Conqueror really takes you to a whole new world. I really liked how Shad handled the main character who should have been really overpowered.
The bad: There are definitely some parts that could have been edited to make things clearer and more in line with the overall message. In the audiobook, it is mitigated by the awesome narrators but when I read through the ebook I'm sure they'll stand out and bother me. More beta readers might have helped.
The ugly: I was a little surprised by the fascination with sex, and rape. There is nothing explicit but it definitely is a major theme. Based on what I know about the author I was expecting swords, dragons, castles, and MACHICOLATIONS! I just wasn't expecting him to write so much about sex. But I guess you have to make monsters monstrous.
Overall a decent book I will read again. Would recommend to late teens and adults.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 2020-06-01
Repetion broke my immersion.
I liked the originality of the universe and magical engineering. But the same concepts are repeated over and over wether to explain the magic or the reasoning of characters, as if the listener was not remembering anything of the previous experiences. This added unnecessary lenght and broke immersion for me.
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4 people found this helpful
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- T.I.
- 2019-08-06
Excellent listening for fans
I personally greatly enjoyed the story. Shad needs a better editor to reign in his rambling. The greatest issue with the book is when emersion and character voice are broken. It really pulls you or if the fascinating world, and sounds more like the authors YouTube channel than the characters voice. I do look forward to further work, and hopefully more stories in Everfall.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 2020-07-12
Truly A Masterpiece But For A Few Flaws.
The world is absolutely amazing, the mechanics are all amazingly fleshed out and the characters are all relatable and believable. Shad has created an amazing world. But the story is slightly lowered by its main character.
The early chapters definitely could use an editor with a finer toothed comb. For the most part they are great with a few flaws.
For one, the protagonist appears to have invented or revolutionized nearly every science/technology in the universe. From here on out there will be spoilers so I firmly recommend caution and just in case it isn’t clear already, you should check this book out if it peaks your interest in any way.
Shad has done an amazing job world-building Everfall to the point where I want to (and firmly believe I could) play an tabletop RPG based in its world. It’s an absolutely astounding take on the common fantasy idea of floating islands and it’s executed in a truly marvellous manner. Every aspect of the world is connected and influences every other aspect in completely logical ways. As previously stated, the world is absolutely amazing. The cultural changes mirror reality and the societies of the world are quite interesting. Certain situations in the story would have benefitted from a bit more subtly. For instance, the protagonists constant thoughts that life is the only punishment worthy of his wretched crimes and such would have benefitted greatly from a bit of “show, don’t tell” as it were.
Now, addressing the main problem in the earlier chapters. Dayless appears to be quite the Mary Sue.
He knows everything about everything. He constantly corrects those around him and seems to do everything with ease. I believe the reason for the seemingly endless knowledge Dayless has is that Shad really wanted to explain his exhaustive world-building in detail and so Dayless had to have an extensive knowledge of technology. This would be fine, if not for Dayless’ other talents all being as equally prodigal as his engineering skill.
I have a few ways this could have been avoided.
For one, Dayless should not have invented anything which isn’t strictly necessary for the plot. Dayless’ rule could still have led to the introduction of the metric system and the laws he personally created. But have most of his feats of engineering credited to his loyal engineers.
Perhaps even they could be the invention of a new character, he could be a friend of Dayless since they were in schooling, he helping Dayless grasp the complexities of engineering and Dayless protecting him from the vicious shool bullies. It obviously doesn’t have to be that exactly, the point is that Dayless’ can still have his knowledge but have it framed in way where he is remembering his good friend’s theories and explanations. You could even have Dayless kill his friend to stop the secret of Imperius being given to the guilds. Maybe that leads to the guilds rising up and Dayless’ eventual defeat. Dayless can still have his duelling skill and his mastery of tactics.
On that note, here is a change addressing Dayless’ rank of grand high master. It’s actually really quite simple, have him lose his first battle with Aric. Have Dayless fight well but have Aric take his medallion from him seeing it as wrong for Dayless’ to unjustly hold such a rank. You can even have Dayless remark that his skills must have deteriorated more than he’d assumed going so long without a proper duel. This accomplishes a few things, it gives Dayless something to work towards and it makes him seem less unstoppable in the early chapters. It will make his fight with Blackheart tense instead of just cool. It would also grant a lot of tension to his final fight with Aric.
With these changes or changes similar to them I would consider Shadow of The Conqueror truly to be a masterpiece.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 2019-08-13
A promising debut novel with a B. Sanderson vibe
This is a promising debut novel from an amazing YouTube star. Overall the novel feels very much like a Brandon Sanderson novel, the influences are pretty clear from the worldbuilding to the thematic pseudo-swearing to the over explaining of cohesive magic systems. The worldbuilding is creative and imaginative without being overwhelming. Exploring how a few changes in physics and common magics allow for a uniquely industrialized society make it a really refreshing read. Feels incredibly fresh and vivid, and like the world was grounded
Action scenes are well-paced, detailed, plausible, and seem well researched. Just wish there were more conventional skirmishes- it was over saturated with superpower battles and didn't feel as grounded in normal meadevil combat which is clearly the author's strength. Combat scenes, especially those without much superpower usage feel incredibly vivid and realistic.
The narrators are great, especially the accented foreign character done by the female narrator.
Two aspects detracted from the novel's quality considerably:
1) Dialogue quality : A lot of the characters sounded very indistinct from each other, and stilted and melodramatic at times.
2) Mary Sue lead : It's a character with a cool backstory, but overpowered in nearly every way. More competent antagonists would have been welcome.
Overall though, great, and I'm extremely positive this amateur author will improve in future installments as his skill get refined.
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- PJ
- 2019-07-13
Amazing first book Shad!!!
Watching your videos about the book did some to prepare me for how ingenious this story would be but HOLY CROW I did not expect to be this enthralled!!! The magic system is amazing, the descriptions of the swordplay are just awesome and the characters are deep, well written and incredibly funny!! I’m shaking waiting for the next one and hope you have as much fun and enjoyment writing it as all of your fans will have when they read it. Thank you so much!!!!
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- Vincent Girard-David
- 2020-02-29
A Light-Damned Good Book
One of the thing that struck me the most in this book is how believable everything is. The Magic system is sound, makes sense within the world, has clear rules, and is never used in a way that that feels unearned. New abilities are foreshadowed and never come out of nowhere, giving the world a sense of cohesion. In addition, the laws of the world are believable when taking the setting into account, and the way the magic and technology includes actual physics makes it all the more believable. There is a sense that this world was thought out through and through, and that research has been done by the author on the multiple subjects covered to achieve such believability.
The characters are varied and have well defined sets of beliefs that are well established, and the effort to make them into complex three dimensional people is not lost on me, once again making their actions more believable. You can guess how characters will react to the different situation they are placed into, but their current state of mind might have them act "out of character", like a normal person would sometimes act differently under pressure. This creates a dynamic with the reader where you can expect the characters to react a certain way as you learn to understand their character, while still being surprised when they act in unexpected ways, either due a different state of mind or simple a growth in character. This by no means makes the story predictable, but simply, at the risk of repeating myself, believable.
I believe that this book is one of the best works of fiction I have had the pleasure of reading in the last few years, (or "listening to" in this case), and it has charmed me with it's human characters and cohesive setting. With a wonderful hard magic system reminiscent of the works of Brandon Sanderson and a rich world to explore, I recommend this book to all fans of high fantasy stories.
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- Pascal
- 2019-08-10
Potential to be great.
Parts where almost like reading a dnd rulebook. Tone down that part and focus on the actions vs the "bonds".
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- Cassie
- 2019-07-15
AMAZING!
I found this book via the author and his YouTube channel, being that I found it this way I went in thinking 'I probably won't hate it' and 'I'll give it a try'.
I was RIGHT i didn't hate it, in fact I absolutely LOVED it!
The world he built is amazing and so creatively conveyed, that it is in itself a character of the book. The actual characters are so engaging you want to be in the story with them; even if it is to smack one of them (protagonist till about 1/4 of the way in). The worst part of the book was the end, because it ended and I want more. Till the next book by Shad comes out I will have to make due by rereading this one many more times!
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