The Queen's Blade

He walked away from war. But war didn’t walk away from him.

Zaren Joha was once a soldier—disciplined, deadly, and disillusioned. Now he keeps peace in a quiet riverside tavern, trading command for calm and blades for ale. It’s not a grand life, but it’s his.

Until Waleith arrives.

Mysterious, calculating, and wielding authority straight from the Queen’s inner circle, Waleith pulls Zaren into a world of vanishing outposts, forbidden magic, and assassins cloaked in royal approval. What begins as a simple job quickly spirals into something far darker.

Old instincts resurface. So do old enemies.

As ancient forces stir and political tides shift, Zaren must face the truth: strength alone won’t save him—or those he’s grown to care for. To survive, he must become more than a soldier.

He must become the Queen’s Blade.

Struggle with narrator

Narrator was a Little flat and lacking inflection but great story! Will be looking for more

How DOES Magic Feel?

A very interesting story about being lost and finding your way in life. i particularly like how the character worked his way through the the losses he had in life, and made good the things he found in life. I think the most exciting thing about the book is the way the author described magic. I believe describing magic would be difficult if you were talking to someone who had never experienced magic before. The concept of how the character interacts with magic and is building his ability to interact with magic and how magic feels is very interesting.

The A I voice was pretty good. I thought it sounded like someone was reading the book to me. Unlike most other audiobooks that I've listen to there was no differentiation between the character's voices which at times made it difficult to distinguish who was speaking. I feel as a whole it was well done and I would not have known that it was an AI If I hadn't been told at the beginning.

I look forward to the release of the sequel.

Fun story but hard to follow because of the Virtual Voice

I listened to the book while driving back and forth to work. The story was easily followed for the most part. I agree with some other reviewers that the character was not very developed and at times the story was a little slow. There was a lot of dialogue that was hard to follow because of the shorter sentences and the lack of differentiation in the virtual voice.

The virtual voice would be good for non-fiction books and books that don’t need a lot of emotion or something to show different characters. While the voice isn’t quite monotone there isn’t enough difference in speech pattern to determine separate characters or changes in paragraphs and ideas. Since I was listening while driving sometimes it was hard for me to follow dialogue in the book due to the virtual voice.

good story

I enjoyed the story and the interesting way magic was portrayed. the virtual voice was better than I expected but still off and detracted from the story

Virtual voice does not make an audiobook

D.K. Holmberg does not seem to care about polishing off his writing so when I compare him to good writers I simply cannot rate the story more than a 4 although it is a decent enough story.

As far as the virtual voice narrator goes the voice is good; however, it is AI speech to text. It does not capture the mood of the story. It is the same monotone throughout the whole book. The voice gets the emphasis wrong. It can't do multiple voices. It has no way of understanding the story so it cannot provide the richness of a voice actor. If I purchase an audiobook I want an enjoyable experience. Because of this I cannot rate the "Performance" higher than a 2.