Bastard

Last Life Series, Book 1

By: Alexey Osadchuk, Andrew Douglas Schmitt - translator

Narrated by: Ryan Burke

In a former life, Jack was gifted, meaning he possessed peculiar abilities. If rich folks found themselves in a jam, Jack could use his talents to get them out of it. Where others were sure to fail, Jack's aristocratic clientele could always count on him to finish jobs cleanly, efficiently, and leave no trace, for which his services commanded a hefty fee.

But one day, Jack picked a fight with the wrong man and his old life came to an end. But, as it turned out, his story was far from over.

A mysterious supernatural being whisked Jack's consciousness away and into the body of a young nobleman living in a different world in the multiverse—a magical one.

In it, he must play the part of Max Renard, illegitimate son of a traitor who was recently executed on orders from the king, which caused Max to lose his home and be forced to dwell in a small town on the western outskirts of the kingdom.

And now this new life-his last life—is the one he must lead . . .

©2022 Alexey Osadchuk; English translation copyright 2022 by Andrew Schmitt (P)2023 Tantor

good book weak ending

I enjoyed the story from start to finish, the book was just too short in the ending didn't feel like an ending at all it felt like the book was just cut in half or to a third it feels like one of those 16-hour books that was just missing the rest of the hours to make it one book like I said it's a great book but it's just a third of a book.

Excellent, with only one complaint.

This was a welcome surprise. I thoroughly enjoyed the Mirror World Series in spite of some of its flaws, but to be honest, I have not been as engaged by his other series.

This book, however, is a much more interesting and well-rounded work. With better pacing and less of the Russian LitRPG clichés, Osadchuk has delivered his best work to date in my opinion.

The only thing that held me back from giving this audiobook five stars was that the the story left me feeling like it was 4 hours too short. The author either needed to do a better job of crafting the climax and resolution, or he needed to continue the story arc until a more appropriate ending presented itself.

Don’t get me wrong, if this was an episodic release of an ongoing serial program, the ending point would have been fine. It was a logical place to stop if one could expect the next episode to come along in a week or a month. However, while the ending point was logical, it was not satisfying and wasn’t well executed enough to make for a real ending to a novel. Though this is obviously the first book in a series, Oasdchuk didn’t give us an ending that will tide a listener over for the months or years that it will take for the next book to come out.

On the plus side I am definitely looking forward to the next volum… I just can’t give a 5 star rating to a book that has such a glaring oversight.

Not your normal Isekai story

Alexey Osadchuk created an interesting twist on the Isekai genre where a person is given a finite number of lives and or MC is on his last one. However, while he is transferred to another world, he is interjected into another person's body. The period of this world is 18th/19th century, and while unclear, it seems to be geographically structured like Earth with the primary language accent is most determinedly French and later in the story Italy is also mentioned.

This book really comes across as a primer in that most of it involved getting to know many character via the many court intrigues occurring around the MC which he becomes wrapped-up in.

Ryan Burke narrating performance was enjoyable and made for an enjoyable listening experience.

Short but very good

I cant wait for the next book and look forward to what the writer has next

omg

new and interesting. For me personally I haven't seen anything like this, new for me and interesting. I am looking forward to yhe next book in the series.