Enemy of the World

Main Character Hides His Strength, Book 1

By: Road Warrior, OppaTranslations - Translator

Narrated by: Nick Podehl

Length: 13 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

The gods have set forth in motion five Calamities for the inhabitants of the Other World, and only by enduring them will mankind be allowed to live on.

The leaders of the Other World do not believe in the possibility of triumph against the will of the gods, and instead squander their time indulging in their desires while the world rots away around them. Mankind’s only hope rests on the shoulders of a man they hate the most. A man who has taken every possible measure, both accepted and forbidden, to attain power. Sungchul Kim, the man who reached the pinnacle of strength, now stands alone against the Calamities. Not because he is a hero, but because of a promise.

Reaching the Demon King’s palace, Sungchul soon realizes his shortcomings. He failed to resolve the first Calamity due to his inability to wield Magic. He is forced to journey in secret, hiding his identity and strength to steal the knowledge of Magic from the very people who branded him as the Enemy of the World. However, to do so, he must hide among the weakest group of people in the Other World: the newly arrived humans from his homeworld, Earth.

Translated by OppaTranslations.

©2016 Roadwarrior (P)2021 Podium Audio

Great if you like an OP main character

Great if you like an OP main character. Good fast pacing. Convenient story line and ease of getting through obstacles is entertaining.

Great audiobook that complements source material

Spectacular. Smooth and clear narration, voices done well which suit the characters = amazing audiobook.

Have you bought this yet? Why not? Hurry!

Usually I end a book and think about things that annoyed me. This one? Just fun from start to finish. A great Korean novel, creative, fun, visceral at appropriate moments. In case you missed that the narrator is Nick Podehl then now you know it was perfectly narrated by one of the best narrators out there. Period. So there you go, great story, great narrator, click buy now! And as an added bonus the more of us that add this to our libraries the better the chance we'll get the sequel to get too! Win win!

good find

I was thinking of skipping over this book when I ran into it because it is a translation work. Some books I have ran into that are translations of works from other countries rarely translate well, but the concept of the book made me give it a try and I am so glad I did. I really enjoyed and look forward for more.

great job

I read the book a few years ago so when it came out on audible, I tried the audio version. the narration really brought the story to life.

great job.

Huh?

Normally I enjoy this narrator, I can't tell if it's the books fault, or he took creative liberties but the beast and other sound effects were terrible to listen to knocking the reviews

nice to hear

as a truck driver it made for a wonderful listen on the long Lonely Road

It’s great fun!

I enjoyed the pace and events of the story! Nothing felt like it was dragged out and Nick Podehl does an amazing job as always.

It was alright...

This book was ok. In spite of excellent narration by Nick Podehl I often found my mind wandering. I’m not sure if it’s the translation, the fact that a lot of the cultural references were from a society that I’m not very familiar with, or the chronological setting, but overall the plotting of the story felt clunky and disjointed.

Unfortunately, this is one of those books that starts out in the middle of the main character’s storyline. By which I mean that the MC has already spent 25 years battling his way up to the pinnacle of his power and the book begins as he is facing the ultimate fight at the end of those 25 years. So you spend the rest of the book trying to get enough backstory for the character’s motivations and personality to become apparent.

In my experience this plot device is a pretty big pitfall for most authors and Mr or Mrs Road Warrior definitely spent a fair amount of time digging the story out of that hole. It’s especially problematic because the author doesn’t use flashbacks or dialog with other characters to present what appears to be an entire book series worth of backstory. Instead they just make random declarative statements about what the MC did or what skills he acquired but they certainly don’t relate the information with any drama or storytelling devices.

Moreover this MC is extremely uncomplicated and his personality lacks nuance. Add this to the fact that this is the most OP character that I have ever encountered in this genre. And I mean that literally... in this book it’s stated several times that no living being on the planet has any hopes of challenging him whatsoever.

Normally I have no problem with OP characters, but in this instance all the drama is removed because the MC, in spite of being in the most dangerous situations that one could imagine, is never even slightly challenged nor is he ever confronted with any true peril.

With all this said, the vast majority of gamelit and LitRPG on Audible is so unquestionably unlistenable that this story is still worth checking out. When held up against the poorly written and sometimes tragically poorly performed (see anything narrated by Wayne Mitchell, Jack Voraces, Daniel Wisniewski, etc), this is probably one of the better LitRPGs to come out in the last couple months on Audible, which is a bummer.



In an unrelated note, after listing the three narrators who are at the bottom of the list of really not very good Audible performers I realized something... Somebody should call Ember Lane and tell them that they really need to be more discerning with who they get to perform their audiobooks. Half of their releases are performed by those three over-acting, ear-molesting hacks. Which is a shame because I really dig Ember Lane’s writing, but I’m not willing to put myself through the torture of listening to Wayne Mitchell ruin another audiobook via the literal worst-affected accents in the history of recorded literature. ...Somebody should also call that dude and tell him to just use his normal speaking voice.

Best narrator ever

The monster and demon sound narration was amazing. The story never had a dull moment definitely the best book in its category!