Battle for the Wastelands

A Steampunk Military Fantasy

By: Matthew W. Quinn

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

In a desolate world where dirigibles rule the skies and blood soaks the dry earth, a young man joins the fight against a tyrant who has problems of his own.

Andrew Sutter returns home from hunting to find drought-wracked Carroll Town under the thumb of a tax collector from the cannibalistic Flesh-Eating Legion. A riot becomes a battle, leaving Carroll Town in ruins and Andrew alone in the merciless Iron Desert. Saved from certain death by the riders of rebel chieftain Alonzo Merrill, Andrew finds himself fighting for their doomed cause.

Meanwhile, Grendel, first lord of the Northlands and the Flesh-Eaters’ ultimate master, finds his peace of conquest disintegrating as the warlords under his thumb begin battling one another. He plots a new war to reunite them as the starving Merrills launch their last, desperate offensive.

And Andrew may be the one holding the key to victory…

Fans of Stephen King's Dark Tower, George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, L.E. Modesitt Jr.'s Corean Chronicles, S.M. Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers, and AMC's Into the Badlands will thrill to this fast-paced first volume of a saga of war and intrigue on a continental scale.

Gripping action, all the way through!

When I first met Matthew Quinn, I had no idea I was talking to a master storyteller! Wow. I’ve read a hundred classic and critically acclaimed novels that couldn’t hold a candle to this Steampunk Western Fantasy. Can’t wait to start Serpent Sword to see what happens next.

Would definitely make Steven King proud.

Thanks, Matthew

- Forrest

I really liked the clockwork limbs.

I was caught up from the start, and following Andrew was awesome. it was well written and read an AI

Just couldn't get out of the starting gate

I tried to start this title twice. Both times I ended up cringing for a couple of distinct reasons and simply couldn't continue.

First, while the AI reader is proficient it's far from an artistic performance with the wrong emphasis on certain words in a sentence. That ended up causing the flow to stumble a couple of times which was annoying. My recommendation is to stick to accomplished human readers.

Second, the hackneyed antagonist introduced at the beginning of the story was so cliche that I,... well, I simply stopped. Antagonists being cruel simply for the sake of being cruel are overused in my opinion. I couldn't get past this. While the author may have filled in some of the holes in this person's psychology later in the book, I'll never know because I stopped reading. Its use in this instance just felt like a lazy mechanism for setting up the plot. I know that's harsh. Apologies. That's just how it felt to me.

Combined, the performance and story ended up being a solid 2 of 5 stars for me.