Finding a Body

Dark Herbalist Series, Book 4

By: Michael Atamanov, Andrew Schmitt - translator

Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer

Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

What is it like for a small flap-eared goblin herbalist to play the role of the Dark Sovereign, the main antagonist for Boundless Realm's hundreds of millions of players? What is it like to find one's self the standard bearer for an army of man-eating giants, cyclops, skeletons, ghosts, and other hellspawn, who don't give a damn about their modest little ruler?

Our hero didn't desire such an unenviable fate, but there is no way back now. He'll just have to tighten the straps and play the ghastly overlord to the innumerable hordes that now threaten all Boundless Realm. But the longer our hero plays, the better he understands that this world is much more complicated than it seems at first glance and he is just a pawn in someone else's game. And lots of things depend on whether he can figure all of it out in the short time he has left, including his own life.

©2018 M. Atamanov; English translation copyright 2018 by Andrew Schmitt (P)2019 Tantor

hard to write without spoilers

some could say the end of the book is a little forced, things could of been fleshed out a little better... I won't disagree but it did the book justice and was well done. if you liked the other books in the series then you won't be disappointed with this one, enjoy it!

Phenominal conclusion to a 5 book series

My favorite author in video game/scifi series has concluded his 5 book series without a satisfactory wrap up in and I hope he continues to write and come up with new works.

A must listen to book!

Don't give up

worth the wait, fixes all this issues that ticked me off in the last book.

Rushed ending

Sometimes amazing, sometimes not so good. Overall great series, but damn that ending was rushed...

Absolutely stunning

This book was put together absolutely remarkable. I would highly recommend this series and will recommend it to anyone who is a fan of this genre

Great series!

I don't normally review but I enjoyed this series so much, I had to review. This story was engaging, action-packed and kept me guessing. I thought I had it figured out at the beginning of the third book only to find I was a bit off. Love surprises like that. I highly recommend. Will be reading/listening to more from this author.

LitRPG with an actual ending, Yay!

Need to start reviewing again so I can keep track of all of these litrpgs.

Summary: This series, while not one of the top ones, certainly is not one of the bottom ones either. It was a nice little listen. All the books are quite short, so not sure I would have purchased them outside of a bundle but I got them in the Plus Catalog and that was a real bargain.

Characters: I like the main characters and did not mind spending time with them. The way the brother and sister talk to each other can be a little odd but I think that is from the story being translated from another language. In the first book the unusual communication style is kind of explained in story, but still conversations between brother and sister and other close friends tend to seem kind of stilted throughout the 4 books. Not horrible though. There is no Harem but MC has a couple of girlfriends/pretty girls hitting on him, but not the blatant grade school stuff you will get with some other short free litrpgs (well ok one of the side characters had a moment of 'why are you this stupid" in relation to a girl but we get past it and forget about it fairly quick)

Narrator: He was fine, He read the book clearly with nothing annoying catching the attention. He doesn't have the range of some other readers I have listened to. For instance, all the women sounded the same and the "French" guy didn't really sound particularly French (and I think in one book he had a different "voice" before reverting back near the end or in the next book, unless I was getting the character mixed up). This is not really an issue as the reader did read the book in a non annoying way.

Story: Overall, the story between the real world and the virtual world was pretty interesting. There are some things that don't make a lot of sense to me but if you roll with it then its fine. For instance, the main premise for the book. I mean I understand that games need testers but the job of just logging in and just playing one forced bad character type is a little odd. It is especially odd as the tester is playing in the released production environment (triple A games always being patched I guess) and doing major events that actual customers could be playing, but whatever, roll with it the story takes some interesting twists. The only "bad part" is how rushed the ending seemed. It was awesome that it did have an ending though. I like a nice complete story as we seem to get so few of them in litprgs. However, I did have to listen to the end twice as they were in the game doing something big and then in the real world doing something big and I was multitasking and thought I missed the ending of the big thing in game. Turns out I only missed what amounted to a handwave. Some books overdo the big fights, this one not so much. The real world ending also had some oddness to it with a similar slight handwave to events and then follow-up explaining what happened. Could the ending all have been written better? Probably, but it still wrapped things up and was fairly satisfying to me.

Overall: I think it was good. Should I have given it 3 stars instead of 4? Probably it is kind of average, but some people see 3 stars as "bad", and I don't want to give that impression. I think people should give this a try and since we are stuck with the star grading system we have I am going to give it 4 stars even though I have given that rating to litrpgs I think are a little better (and maybe to some I thought were a little worse...need to relisten to a couple of the never-ending ones). If you have Plus Catalog pick it up and try it.

One of the most suspenseful series

This book had so many twists and kept me guessing the entire way. I would go from loving a character to hating them because I thought they were behind the drama. The ended seemed a tad rushed but they nicely tied up most characters and didn’t leave me questioning much.

Satisfying

The build to the end was very eye satisfying. My only complaint is I felt that his real world gf should be more developed by now.

political and war bond

The war in boundless realm is pretty good. The performance was entertaining and I hope there is a book 5. I don't think there will be but they most definitely left open to a book 5. it's a good story to hold you over while the next book of the land is released.