Jonathan C

Amazing Universe Building already a favorite!

Reviewed: 04-21-23

I’m normally fairly hesitant about deciding how much I love a world/universe when I’m not already familiar with the author but this one could probably only truly disappoint me if it were to suffer a fate like Antonio Terzini’s Dante’s Immorality: Beginnings and wind up stillborn and never get any true ending.

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Great story, Threet A+, Boucher s#!ts the bed!

Reviewed: 06-04-22

If you listened to the Valens Legacy and loved it then do yourself a favor and wait in the hopes that this gets rerecorded WITHOUT Christopher Boucher who I will from this day forward, in my head at least, call Christopher the Butcher for his butchering of wonderful stories with his horrible narration!!!

Overall I love the story and I'm extremely glad that I read the book long before I listened to this majority train wreck! Also I expected it to feel shorter than previous audio books from this series given that previously all but 2 were a 'publishers pack' and thus had 2 books in one. First of all I'll say that for the female characters Jessica Threet did a wonderful job and the only thing I found odd about her performance was that the Valens elf sisters all seemed to have at least touches of a Dutch/Swiss accent to things like their pronunciation of things like the letters V and W being inverted to American norm, then again they could have picked that up from their mothers, when they spent time traveling to their homeland with the mothers or both in which case it would be odd that Mihalis doesn't have that trait. That said I'm never buying another book with Christopher Boucher involved at all if I can avoid it!!! His performance outside of words that are an every day part of his lexicon is beyond atrocious! He puts zero effort into proper pronunciation of Germanic or other non American sourced words, every word he says other than the pronunciation of 'djevels' is pronounced as if a kid from the USA just sounded it out and made no effort to know where the heck the word comes from or how it's supposed to be pronounced which to me in the world of audio books is an unforgivable sin. Any narrator preparing to undertake work on an ongoing world of content should either go back and listen to examples of how words were pronounced by those who held that post before them or else be fired summarily for failure to even TRY to prepare. I was hoping it wasn't the case when he did that to the pronunciation of the first kind of djevel introduced which was newly named in this book but then he went and did the same thing to EVERY OTHER WORD that wasn't inherently American in daily usage! Even worse beyond pronunciation is his use of accents to try and differentiate between characters which is perfectly fine when done in general and the author doesn't specify an accent but makes ZERO SENSE when applied to a FAMILY having seemingly random accents for NO REASON!!! Mihalis is obviously just his normal speaking voice and thus a relatively generic American accent then Mihalis elven sisters who would have been raised in the exact same sets of environments as he was for some reason speak with as mentioned previously slightly Dutch/Swiss Germanic lilt and the inversion of the W and V sounds as has been typified in American media for such characters, Then his brother Troy who the only thing he might have been excluded from, but knowing the family probably not, would have been the trips to Denmark/Norway to get to the dark elf/goblin realm to visit their mothers' homeland to know their roots, and yet for absolutely no reason he talks like fracking Antonio Banderas, I mean his mother is a native of Nevada just like his father, NO ONE in any of the earlier books either had or was described as having an accent from Spain and yet this kid does, I mean even if he talked liked freaking Speedy Gonzales that would have made more sense given he's a super fast cheetah lycan but then again why should I expect anything like logic or background knowledge from Boucher at all at the point you meet him which is at least half way through the book. Honestly the ONLY reason I'm not instantly returning this book for being the audio dumpster fire that Christopher Boucher has made it into is the combination of not wanting to hurt Jan Stryvant and the remote hope that Podium will see the light on the fact that they put ZERO thought into their selection for a male narrator for this series!

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2 people found this helpful

A great story with a slight issue

Reviewed: 01-13-22

I love the LitRPG genre and have read many others I will preface saying that I prefer to both read and listen to professional narration at the same time. The story is wonderful the characters interesting and compelling but as I was listening while reading there was an all too frequent issue where it seemed like maybe the author reworked it to shorten some descriptions or maybe gave the narrator a slightly different copy, honestly I thought the audio script version was superior but the disconnect was a jarring ejection from story immersion. One way or another the author needs to fix the file with Amazon or maybe pay a ton of unnecessary money to have it re-recorded. Either way I recommend this version highly and the ebook version less.

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Regrets all around, just DON’T

Reviewed: 05-30-21

I picked up the first 4-5 books of this series intent on giving them a good solid try and ignoring the people calling them half finished or partial novels. Honestly I would have been better off if I’d just heeded their warnings. While the nation is well done and I have no problems with it that is basically all I can say positively about the series. If you don’t mind the idea of paying multiple times the price you generally expect for a “goodish” story then I’d say read them on KU if you can stand to read them without the narrator doing their best to make up for a poor story. Honestly the first 3-5 books should all be ONE book and most likely even beyond that because this author repeats himself endlessly and needs a major editing overhaul there’s so much back and forth that is really pointless and in the second book and afterwards it seems like plot decisions are made on the author’s whim and not necessarily AT ALL in line with the characters own ethos or attitudes! It’s almost like the author say down with a predetermined idea of where he wanted to take the story and then his imagination and characters tried to become more than he was willing to let them be and he just shoved everything back into his little boxes where he thought he wanted them and it all turned into as my mom would say jokingly “One mell of a hess!” My simple opinion having read several of them is easily summed up as ‘don’t bother there are hundreds of other stories by far better authors out there!”

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Quality narrator but that’s it

Reviewed: 05-30-21

I picked up the first 4-5 books of this series intent on giving them a good solid try and ignoring the people calling them half finished or partial novels. Honestly I would have been better off if I’d just heeded their warnings. While the nation is well done and I have no problems with it that is basically all I can say positively about the series. If you don’t mind the idea of paying multiple times the price you generally expect for a “goodish” story then I’d say read them on KU if you can stand to read them without the narrator doing their best to make up for a poor story. Honestly the first 3-5 books should all be ONE book and most likely even beyond that because this author repeats himself endlessly and needs a major editing overhaul there’s so much back and forth that is really pointless and in the second book and afterwards it seems like plot decisions are made on the author’s whim and not necessarily AT ALL in line with the characters own ethos or attitudes! It’s almost like the author say down with a predetermined idea of where he wanted to take the story and then his imagination and characters tried to become more than he was willing to let them be and he just shoved everything back into his little boxes where he thought he wanted them and it all turned into as my mom would say jokingly “One mell of a hess!” My simple opinion having read several of them is easily summed up as ‘don’t bother there are hundreds of other stories by far better authors out there!”

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Well done narration that had little to work with

Reviewed: 05-30-21

I picked up the first 4-5 books of this series intent on giving them a good solid try and ignoring the people calling them half finished or partial novels. Honestly I would have been better off if I’d just heeded their warnings. While the nation is well done and I have no problems with it that is basically all I can say positively about the series. If you don’t mind the idea of paying multiple times the price you generally expect for a “goodish” story then I’d say read them on KU if you can stand to read them without the narrator doing their best to make up for a poor story. Honestly the first 3-5 books should all be ONE book and most likely even beyond that because this author repeats himself endlessly and needs a major editing overhaul there’s so much back and forth that is really pointless and in the second book and afterwards it seems like plot decisions are made on the author’s whim and not necessarily AT ALL in line with the characters own ethos or attitudes! It’s almost like the author say down with a predetermined idea of where he wanted to take the story and then his imagination and characters tried to become more than he was willing to let them be and he just shoved everything back into his little boxes where he thought he wanted them and it all turned into as my mom would say jokingly “One mell of a hess!” My simple opinion having read several of them is easily summed up as ‘don’t bother there are hundreds of other stories by far better authors out there!”

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2 people found this helpful

Quality audio can’t make up for everything

Reviewed: 05-30-21

I picked up the first 4-5 books of this series intent on giving them a good solid try and ignoring the people calling them half finished or partial novels. Honestly I would have been better off if I’d just heeded their warnings. While the nation is well done and I have no problems with it that is basically all I can say positively about the series. If you don’t mind the idea of paying multiple times the price you generally expect for a “goodish” story then I’d say read them on KU if you can stand to read them without the narrator doing their best to make up for a poor story. Honestly the first 3-5 books should all be ONE book and most likely even beyond that because this author repeats himself endlessly and needs a major editing overhaul there’s so much back and forth that is really pointless and in the second book and afterwards it seems like plot decisions are made on the author’s whim and not necessarily AT ALL in line with the characters own ethos or attitudes! It’s almost like the author say down with a predetermined idea of where he wanted to take the story and then his imagination and characters tried to become more than he was willing to let them be and he just shoved everything back into his little boxes where he thought he wanted them and it all turned into as my mom would say jokingly “One mell of a hess!” My simple opinion having read several of them is easily summed up as ‘don’t bother there are hundreds of other stories by far better authors out there!”

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Don't be fooled by the odd title, and bad reviews!

Reviewed: 02-15-21

I first want to start by saying I was initially swayed by the reviews saying they were long time fans but just couldn't stand this book. Until that is, when I saw a post by another author I like saying he loved it. Obviously I then read it and also listed to the Audible narration and while there were a few slow building or oddball parts to get through it was WELL WORTH the read, as a side note I think the audio may have facilitated making the strange parts go by easier. Long story short, if you're a fan of Krout and like his punny style of prose then I recommend VERY strongly that you add this to your "must read" pile! There are very few tales that when I reach the end I find myself feeling somewhat like I imagine a junkie feels when desperate for their next fix, and dang it I need more Murderhobo!!!

(For any who don't have a pen and paper RPG background or otherwise know already a 'Murderhobo ' is when an individual or group of players go through the world in which they exist killing gosh darn every single creature of person they encounter if they can have even the tiniest chance in the abyss to live through the fight. Game masters usually hate them with a firey 🔥 passion.)


Also I love how recent releases have added bloopers at the end!!!

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Not bad but not my cup of tea

Reviewed: 10-24-20

I will simply say that overall the writing and story are decent or good but that to be honest the plot wasn’t quite what I was hoping or looking for when I picked it up. I won’t discourage anyone from buying but I think maybe that I have gotten too attached to the male protagonists I usually choose stories about.

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Abridgement and anyone who thinks it's a good idea "FRACK YOU!"

Reviewed: 05-20-20

Dear Random House,

You have offically taken one of my favorite series of the entire Star Wars Expanded Universe and DESTROYED it through your GENIUS of 'abridgement' I will be issuing for a refund of my precious credit on this 3 hour long TRAVESTY of literary MURDER!!!

Dear Aaron Allston, if you ever get the rights to this AWAY from Random House I pray you will do the decent thing and reissue the series as any gods out there and I'm sure YOU intended it to be, UNABRIDGED!!! I absolutely LOVE every nail biting minute of the plot twists and your descriptions of starfighter and ground combat but your publisher in this case at least has done you a SERIOUS disservice and in a just world you would be able to sue the heck out of them and win and even get massive punative damages. In this digital day and age there is NO valid argument for abridgement EVER, if a book needs abridgement what it really needs ais better editing and advice to the author if they are too verbose at one point in history when paper was scarce and printing slow and expensive abridgement had some place for at least a portion of society, however today those are no longer valid concearn to any extent that would justify this sort of literary butchery. They can make paper out of ELEPHANT DUNG for cripes sake!!!

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1 person found this helpful