Not My First (Space?) Rodeo: A Sci-Fi LitRPG Adventure

Not My First (Space?) Rodeo, Book 1

By: M. Talon

Narrated by: Gary Tiedemann

Transported to an alien world, a young soldier and his family are forced into servitude and must fight for survival, in this action-packed SF adventure.

Shad Williams joined the army to fight for his country, not to fight aliens. But when he's abducted through a portal along with his terminally ill grandfather and kid sister, that's exactly what he finds himself doing.

Now, deep below the surface of the planet Ganymede, they find themselves with other equally confused groups of humans drafted into serving under extraterrestrials battling for control over the Reality Engine, an advanced supercomputer capable of producing miraculous resources and technologies. Forced to undertake quests to survive, Shad's family encounters odd pairings of monstrous creatures and dangerous people ripped from Earthly mythology, history, and pop culture. With every victory, they level up superhuman skills and magical abilities beyond imagination. Classified as a Gunslinger, Shad's quick reflexes and dead-shot accuracy make him a warrior without peer.

But as Shad's family makes their way through voodoo zombies, dinosaurs, and Al Capone's gangsters on one deadly mission after another, their real enemy continues to exploit them. To save his loved ones—and all of humanity—Shad must band with his fellow kidnapped Earthlings to take the fight to their alien captors and seize the Reality Engine for themselves . . .

The first volume of the hit sci-fi LitRPG series—with over 500,000 views on Royal Road—now available on Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and Audible!

©2024 M. Talon (P)2024 Podium Audio

Conflicts of military and civilian shows great potential.

This is one of those things where there are some potentials that are missed, such as the social services lady, and what happened to her? She could have been something really interesting. But at the same time, there was a lot of Business intrigue, some dungeon, crawls and tactics, as well as getting to see the downsides of military an. upsides of it, as well a good foundation. It should get more interesting and it's good that they let us know about certain problems with getting home. And it'll be interesting to see how this We'll begin to given to different factions and how they'll react

Not bad. Though the title seems unintentionally ironic.

This audiobook very much felt like the first novel by an author with some potential (hence the above review title). So the plot was interesting and had well-defined characters and pretty good pacing… but it does have its flaws.

A lot of the MC’s inner monologue was overwrought and cringy. There were a plethora of missed opportunities and missteps with the game mechanics, and the world building was very myopic in its detail. The plot was interesting and engaging but the overall story arch had some holes and could have done with a more deliberate structure.

As for the narration, it was above average, though if you’re like me and don’t like narrators who over-express the dramatic descriptions and MC angst then you will find some of it to be a little annoying. I’m sure plenty of listeners won’t even notice it judging by how many people think Daniel Wisniewski is not a ruiner of every audiobook that he has ever narrated.

On the whole I would recommend this if you’re in the same spot as I am, and you have already listened to every single GameLit audiobook on Audible (that was written by an author who’s level of intellectual and sexual maturity has made it past junior high school anyway). This isn’t the book I would hand to someone who has never read LitRPG/Gamelit before, but it does fine when your only other options are audiobooks with covers that are dominated by cartoon boobies.