BuyMort: Grand Opening: How I Became the Accidental Warlord of Arizona

Shopocalypse Saga, Book 1

By: Damien Hanson, Joseph Phelps

Narrated by: Wayne Mitchell

Some predicted that the AI singularity would result in robots destroying the world. None of them ever understood that it was the sales algorithms they had to be afraid of.

After the arrival of the multiversal monopoly BuyMort, life got brutal. All systems were through BuyMort. All currency was through BuyMort. All sales were through BuyMort. You could resist, you could compete, but it didn’t really matter because in the end you used BuyMort—or you perished. BuyMort be praised.

But not everyone’s happy with the new system. Some, even, want to see it destroyed.

It’s quick. It’s convenient. And it will help people kill you and your family as readily as it will help them sell you knickknacks for a quick mortie. Because BuyMort doesn’t care about anything except the bottom line.

Enter Tyson Dawes, a no-cares slacker with a traumatic past, two wrinkled bucks in his wallet, and a crap job caretaking a crap campground in the desert sands of Arizona. He had a deal with the world. He didn’t change it, and it didn’t change him. Seemed simple enough. He liked it, anyway.

BuyMort changed all that the moment it let loose a torrent of alien entrepreneurs upon his planet, intent on selling everything that hadn’t been tagged through the system and classified as his private property.

When a man has little, he cherishes it. When that little is lost, he’ll do whatever it takes and change into whatever he needs to be able to get that little bit back.

©2023 Damien Hanson (P)2023 Podium Audio

Fantastic - Fun, gritty new twist on system apoc

I really enjoyed this. Reminiscent of Dungeon Crawler Carl in the real feeling way that civilization would react and an MC who for various reasons is uniquely suited (and a bit lucky) to thrive. Basically another universe's Amazon AI goes rogue and is on a mission to spread to new markets and maximize profits at any cost. Everything is for sale in the universal marketplace.
Not a full on LitRPG in that there are no levels and stat points but characters still evolve if they're "smart shoppers". Satisfying antagonists and an MC who has the usual checkered past but who you can get behind. I binged the first two books and am looking forward to the third. Highly recommended if you like the System Apocalypse genre.

I love it!

This book has a unique twist on the apocalypse! I truly enjoyed it and the performance from Wayne Mitchell is top notch! Highly recommend!

It’s worth a read or a listen, depending on if you like narration, by Wayne Mitchell or not.

As far as the main story goes, not bad I think it’s worth a read or a listen, but main character rambles a little bit too much at times, or is a little bit too repetitive with descriptive words in certain places of the story.
The narrator If you like Wayne Mitchell. You’ll like this narration for those who don’t know Wayne Mitchell. He gets very exuberant with how he reads certain characters and if you listen with ear buds, it can be a little hard to get through the sound spikes. Personally, I don’t mind Wayne Mitchell. I think he has gotten better over time but if you really don’t like him, you probably should give the audio version a skip.
Overall, this book was better than most released in the last year, and I couldn’t imagine a better narrator for the main character. No story or narration is perfect so give it a try or don’t it’s up to you.

So. Much. Yelling.

The story is entertaining and can be thought provoking but the narrator’s near-constant yelling is frankly distracting. To his credit, the story is action packed and does deserve dramatic effect, but there’s a limit to how much drama can be injected by shouting.

Whole series is great!

It's an imaginative and well written story. The characters are fun and I'm always on the seat of my pants. Some wild things happen over the course of these books and I love it. It's like science fiction should be. However, I will take a hard pass on the love story between moles, and Jake.

Would love to have a flashback a few chapters of Lee working for the company back in the day would be a lot of fun to read.