CivCEO 6

The Accidental Champion, Book 6

By: Andrew Karevik

Narrated by: Neil Hellegers

Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

Since that free-for-all that saw every Champion hurry to claim as much land as they could, many of the weaker rulers have been eliminated. As a result, the whole land of Liora is now under the control of eight single coalitions. Can they be trusted to keep to themselves and play nice, or should they be treated like threats and dealt with accordingly?

That is one of the main questions Charles and his allies intend to answer when they meet up to finalize their own union. But they've barely started on the main discussion points when an emissary from the north appears to give them an ultimatum: Join their alliance or suffer the consequences.

With Tine facing imminent capture, Charles has no choice but to step up his military. Though he already managed to secure the Great Primus Heart that would power the vehicle, Charles still needs to acquire enough Prephius steel to make the train near indestructible.

Follow Charles as he visits an underwater necropolis and ends up having to bargain with the dead. Follow him as he makes new enemies and has to find how to keep his new marriage alive, all the while trying to raise not a city, but an entire union with its own perks, stats, and special units.

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Fun listening, good escape into another world

I'm enjoying the story, appreciate the wisdom, the corrections to relationships and the world building. It's fun and absorbing reading. Fine narration!

Another day. Another enemy. Another scheme.

A great continuation of the series. Now with Liora organized under new coalitions, new problems pop up. We see the continuation of plans brought up in previous books as well as some innovative as always use of loopholes to solve problems. Great book!

Disliked economic plan

Spoilers ahead!
I like that things turned out ok.
However, I really hated his economic plan.
Enough so that I stopped reading for awhile.
In the real world giving huge amounts of gold to your enemy would drive up inflation, however they would then be able to afford it. Surrounding nations would have the same inflation without the funding and they would fall to him. Arum paper money is pegged to gold so you would also have inflation. Spreading word of big payouts to threats would encourage kidnapping. Not telling your wife and partners the plan upfront could be catastrophic. She could be upset at inadvertently hurting peasants and causing hunger. Allies might lose respect after learning you gave away so much gold to their enemy. The plan can derail if they won’t agree to declaring war at the key moment.
I was relieved once he finally told wife and allies what he was doing.

Proverbs 15:22 There is a frustrating of plans where there is no confidential talk, but in the multitude of counselors there is accomplishment.

the narrator

I don't think it should be understated how perfect the narrator is for this series. and these last few books have really allowed him to shine

Better and Better

This series has really hooked me after a slow start with the first two books. I find I'm looking forward to each new book and excited to see where the story goes. The author does a really good job blending city building and deal making with personal relationships and raising stakes. The narration is good, but there's not as many distinct voices delivered that are seen with other top shelf narrators such as R.C. Bray or Andrea Parsneau.

Andrew Karevik Doesn't Understand Economics

At the national level, at least as far as inflation works. This book is very frustrating in as far as it's based on a completely backwards understanding of fiat currency and inflationary banking. The mechanics driving the story as so mind-bogglingly wrong I'm a little worried for Mr. Karevik.

The ludicrous circumstance that sets the stage for this mess is a ridiculously high influx of gold into the world economy. Where this gold is coming from is never really established, but it is an unlimited resource for the purpose of this book. Mr. Karevik correctly describes what happens when there is a rapidly expanding money supply. At one point in the book he actually defines inflation, but it's not an actual definition so much as a description of what happens because of inflation: he states that the price of goods outpace the supply due to the abundance of currency. This does not actually define inflation completely. Inflation, in fact, refers to the increase in amount of money present in an economic system, the rise in price is a consequence of this increased money supply, it has no correlation with supply and demand of the goods that the money is used to purchase. This conflation of what inflation is is so common that from a literary perspective he does define inflation correctly (it's what the dictionary says), but economics doesn't care what the literary world thinks.

The bizarre solution to the inflation caused by this infinite supply of gold is Charles introduces a fiat currency built on the inflationary model of central banking that the United States (and the rest of the world for that matter) uses with the Federal Reserve. To state it explicitly, he introduces an inflationary monetary system to control inflation.

Of course why Mr. Karevik chose to do this is beyond me. The inflationary monetary system is predatory and invariably fails. It is a de facto tax on everyone but hits the poorest people in any economic system the hardest. It is inherently unstable and the truly confusing part is Mr. Karevik accurately describes the fundamental, and fatal, flaw in any fiat currency.

To sum it up, the story in this book (#6) is based on a fantastical circumstance of a very rare substance suddenly becoming infinite to create an economic problem that Charles solves by institutionalizing the problem in the form of fiat currency and a central bank.

This is a mind-bendingly stupid plot in an otherwise excellent and well crafted story. I will definitely continue listening to this series, but geez-o-petes this one failed spectacularly on the economic mechanics and was actually hard to get through as a result.

Still good

I was worried his wife was about to become someone pushy and have the MC on a leash. But thank god that didn’t happen and she actually cares about his and wants him to succeed. This is another good book, I highly recommend it.

Magic train!

Another amazing book by this author. I definitely recommend this book.I have absolutely love this series.

Doesn't understand economics

This read like the author took an econ 101 class in college but misunderstood 1/3 of the information and made incorrect conclusions.

Weak book in a weak series

The writing in this series entry is a bit better than previous books and there is actual character change here. But the author seems to be working way too hard to avoid any combat at all, even when the story would reasonably result in combat.

The character changes, particularly those for the protagonist, seem to violate previously established core tenets of the character, to the detriment of the my experience. And the plot seems set on easy mode, with solutions coming with little effort for the protagonist.

I read the first six books in this series while on a vacation, so I needed something that didn't demand my attention, and I got these books for free. Absent both of those, I would not have read beyond book 2. The series is consistently weak, I will not be reading any more books in it, and I cannot recommend it.