Thresholder: Teaguewater

By: Alexander Wales

Narrated by: Henry Kramer, Jessica Threet, Justin Thomas James, Jeff Hays

A portal opened, and Perry's curiosity got the better of him.

Once.

Twice.

Three times did Perry step through a portal, each to a new and strange world.

He stepped through into a world of advanced technology, power armor and micro reactors.

He stepped through into a world of knights and kings, orcs and goblins, where old wizards handed out magical swords.

He stepped through into a world of hidden vampires and rainy streets, where the clocktower tolled the hour as ships sailed by.

Perry is a Thresholder, one of many exploring the vast multiverse. Able to bring ideas, technology, and magic with them as they travel, each Thresholder has an oversized impact on the world they're in, each one attempting to shape and change it to their will. Some, like Perry, try to uplift the world and improve everyone's circumstances, while others are interested only in gaining advantages for themselves.

Why should Perry leave his mark on one world, when he can leave it on all of them?

©2025 Mango Media LLC (P)2025 Soundbooth Theater

power fantasy thoughtfully done.

Wales is a contender for my favorite author. His sensibilities are very closely aligned with mine, so I will read anything from him.
Thresholder is an excuse to mash different genre fiction elements together, if you ignore the great worldbuilding and well-realized characters the plot is basically 'a guy goes through a portal and fights vampires with a suit of power armor and a magic sword'. Even being the most action forward work of his I've read, the main thing that excited me was thoughtful comparative cultural analysis between the worlds. There’s genuine creativity in the worldbuilding and a constant sense that things are thought through, even the interface between physics and magic that weren't ever supposed to come in contact interact. Perry is an easier character to dislike than Wales' other protagonists -two of his primary traits are loving to argue on the internet and being kinda bloodthirsty- he's still very relatable and constantly thinking about the stuff I would be curious about.
this particular story might struggle to find a place because it spends so much time being introspective about such a jamming-your-action-figures-together premise, and people who prefer either might roll their eyes at the other.
Thresholder does power fantasy well, following Sanderson's rule of magic and having things break down in interesting ways as much as new tools are added. So instead of monotonically increasing numbers go up that eventually means nothing, Perry has a comprehensible and growing arsenal of tools that you can predict and understand how they could be used to get him out of situations often by the skin of his teeth.
I read the original online serialization and I think the format has been changed to add additional flashback chapters that change the flow of the story. I'm curious to see what a first time reader would think of this. I was really happy to see more of the characters and more of the previous worlds and was instantly gripped by the new content. my one complaint with it is that one flashback chapter felt a little too much like it was holding your hand and directly explaining some themes and character stuff I remember being parceled out over longer.

the narration is pretty good, with only a few acting choices that felt weird and a few places where emphasis was put on the wrong word in a sentence. there are even multiple people doing voices. I especially liked the woman who voiced the female characters.

if you're curious, try it out.

Good first book!

Very entertaining book with an interesting concept. Since the concept is built around world-hopping I did think we stayed a bit to long in the third world. I understand that the author wanted to tell that story, but I found it the least interesting of the 3 worlds we visited in this book. It was good though to learn of the "villain" back story that had visited 10 worlds to get a taste of what else was out there.

I did miss a lack of explanation to why the main driving force in the story happened. I couldn't come up with a good logical explanation to why this whole system was set up like that. Hopefully that will come in the next book.

great second half

if I were to give it a positive spin I'd say this book does a masterful job of portraying the confusion and lack of understanding you might experience going through a portal to another world.
real talk, I had very idea of what the heck was going on the first 4 hours or so...
after that however it hit it's stride and became easier to follow and the second half was friggin' awesome.
still, 4 hours is a long time to expect people to hang around


not much to say about SBT, they are the masters of their particular brand of narration, no one does it better

Interesting, just...

Interesting idea, but told in a boring way or distracting way. Very first chapter makes it seem like we are starting the story after his two previous portals, but then we go back to a talk with his sister and start time skipping like crazy.

The MC is kinda boring and pessimistic.

A good start to a new series

it was an interest premise. It spends time setting up for the next books, but has a lot of potential as a series. It would stand as a solo book also. The characters are interesting and have some depth. The narration is great!