Into the Abyss

Demons of Astlan Series, Book 1

By: J. L. Langland

Narrated by: Stephen Bel Davies

Length: 24 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's summary

It turns out, the "Demon Weed" actually is a gateway drug! Who knew? Tom Perkinje certainly didn't. He had never smoked anything in his life, but as the new kid in town trying to make friends, he foolishly let his new buddy Reggie talk him into trying a joint that he'd picked up from a new dealer.

Before he knew it, Tom was having a seriously bad trip; a total out-of-body experience where the world had dissolved around him. The next thing Tom knew, there were these deranged myopic wizards from some place called Astlan calling on him in some sort of pig Latin mumbo jumbo. They had somehow mistaken Tom for a demon!

He tried to flee, but the wizards were relentless and were determined to conjure him into their world and bind him as their demon slave for all of eternity. And these crazy wizards? Turns out, they were going to war and planned to use their new demon slave as a secret weapon to obliterate the enemy!

©2015 J. L. Langland (P)2017 Tantor

Awesome book!! Awesome recording

I love this book! I loved reading it and loved listening to it even more! Can't wait until they have the rest on Audible!

Entertaining and different

Any additional comments?

This book was solid entertainment, there is world building, multiple characters and a many interesting plot developments.There are some parts of the book that is chock full of exposition explaining demon hierarchies and how the world magic works (which I actually like) and etc. While the protagonist is 16 this book seems more skewed towards older readers and I hope the next books will go in this direction.

Absolutely at top 5 for me

I love the world, the characters, the intricate and complex story line, the narration. You have to actually pay attention to the story and it's many twist or you won't enjoy it as much.

Give it a try!

I already knew the book in written form, as well as the next two. So I jumped at the audiobook as a way to follow the story again while also being able to do other things around the house.
Voice acting:
I give the performance five stars, as I really enjoyed the work of the voice actor, in the way he read the story and the voices he gave the characters. I interpreted Gastrope’s accent as Indian, and it took me a bit by surprise at first, as it was not how I had come to envision the character by reading the books. Still it worked for me in the end and I have no complaints.
Story:
While this is among my favorite stories, I give it only four stars, as it is a bit unedited and a bit overlong in places.
Some people might have issues with the large amount of exposition in the book. I don’t really mind exposition in these books so I didn’t substract any points for that.
If anything,I find that, in this book and the following two, there are a bit too many characters and POV’s. But I always went around this, in re-reading the books and even with the audiobook, by skipping through the parts I wasn’t very interested in to what constitutes for me the meat of the story.
The books are vast enough that there is plenty left to enjoy and overall, the story is very satisfying,so well worth a try. Of course, the first time around it is better to plough through the other bits as well so as not to miss world building stuff. Besides, the parts that I was less interested in might be very interesting to other people.
Lastly, considering the price, it’s a steal. I hope the author is doing OK financially, because producing the audiobooks must have been quite expensive.

Conclusion/TLDR: a flawed but very enjoyable fantasy, generally light hearted but reaching into darker themes upon thought. SO GIVE IT A TRY!

Nice Surprise

Admittedly, I was a little bit unsure at first, but I am so glad I kept listening. The story was engaging with some nice twists. Overall it was a very satisfying listen.

Great Story, Great Performance

This story was wonderful, a rich and detailed fantasy world, filled with humour, action, adventure, and of course the question of humanity. A world where all of fantasy seems too exist, and be set against the main character.
I heartily recommend this story to anyone who likes fantasy manga/anime, litRPG(even though it is not part of that genre, you should still enjoy this), and of course styling aliken to terry Pratchett.
The Narrator brings this story to life and adds to its enjoyment.
I listened to this great story in a marathon over a course of 3 days, taking breaks only for life intrusions. I can not wait to listen too the next book.

Pretty enjoyable

Just finished this.

All in all, pretty enjoyable book.

It would have been 100% better if it had skipped all the stupid and annoying chanting of magic spells and summonings. That was really annoying.

There were quite a few parts that really annoyed me which mostly centered around people not sharing information with one another but that is a common annoyance in many books.

For this book to be so long, the ending was pretty unsatisfying. It wasn't bad but but a few hours of filler could have been replaced to have an actual conclusion to this book rather than the 'To be continued....' feeling it leaves you with.

Loved it!!!

Great book!! Love the Stephen Davies and his voice acting and the story was well written.

100%

It took a little but I fell in love with this book. It sounds kiddish( in the beginning ) but it's actually really good. it has really deep story line. lots of big reveals.

good first book in this series

I really enjoyed this first book in the series, thanks for hours of entertainment. obe