Alfred: The Boy Who Would Be King

Alfred the Boy King, Volume 1

By: Ron Smorynski

Narrated by: Ron Smorynski

Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

First in the Alfred the Boy King series.

Are you a modern day kid who plays video games and loves to learn? What if you were thrown into a fantasy medieval world? And all was desolate and grim? They say you're destined to be king? Yet there is an all-powerful witch!

The land is defeated and in despair. Alfred is magically transported there after saying the name of his father, whom he never knew. He is aided by an amnesiac wizard and a faithless cleric! The peasants are hiding. They have lost the ways of farming, their health is failing, they have no army, no knights, and the goblin raiders will return very soon!

©2017 Ron Smorynski (P)2023 Ron Smorynski

Thanks, Ron!

Ron! It's your friend Elijah Moon! I got your email update the other day and ran over and bought this immediately! GREAT JOB MY FRIEND!

I've already reviewed this book on Amazon, and as I've said there, for me, it's on the level with Chronicles of Narnia and The Hobbit. It's just a more modern twist, and perhaps some might say geared towards a slightly younger audience. But I can say as a very grown 44 year old adult, I thoroughly enjoy the story (and there's not much fantasy that I enjoy outside of what I've already mentioned and to a lesser extent and belonging to a different time in my life the Drizzt books and the Shannara series/Magic Kingdom for Sale) and the themes are timeless. This is a wholesome series. You can trust it to your children. I just love it.

The narrator: Ron! Bro, you BLEW ME AWAY! I didn't realize you had such range.

Narration can really ruin any good book. What I personally appreciate about the narrator here is that he keeps a very level amplitude, even in more active scenes, but still imparts plenty of energy. I think this has got to be really hard to do, and actually quite rare, if you understand what I'm talking about. Each character is very distinct, without being overacted at all. Like going from male to female old to young and from personality to personality can be so jarring with some narrators and that can just absolutely kill an audiobook for me. Not to say that can't be well done, The Hobbit and LOTR redone recently by Andy Serkis for example. Yes he overacts a lot of those voices, yes his amplitude is all over the board, but he's so just freaking good I still very much enjoy that, but that's a very rare bird for me. In general I very much prefer the narration style here. I can sleep to this book, and THOSE are the books I love the most. Not to say this book is boring at all, it's not, it just doesn't have those annoying jarring moments like so many audiobooks do. So it won't put you to sleep, but it will allow you to sleep. Big difference. And believe me, I will have an audiobook playing while I'm sleeping. The narratyors voice here is very soothing with an AMAZING range. I think his background as a DM lends itself very well here.

Finally, a quick funny story. The first night I downloaded this audiobook I fell asleep listening and was dreaming that I was in a house with speakers built into the walls and this book was playing! 🤣🤣🤣 It was cool! You made it into dream land with this one, Ron!

Oh, and as a truck driver, THIS IS HUGE! And I think I recall even putting in a personal request for the audio version several years ago! I don't have much time to actually read anymore, but I ALWAYS listen to audiobooks! Looking forward to getting caught up on books 3-4 and I think you even mentioned 5 coming soon! Let's gooooo!