The Curse of Hurlig Ridge: 1st Dive

World Tree Online, Book 1

By: M. A. Carlson

Narrated by: Anneliese Rennie

Length: 21 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

In the future, androids have taken over most jobs, leaving humans with little to do and even less to motivate them. Enter the World Tree Online, a fully immersive virtual reality experience.

Join Byron in his first 30 days of a non-stop fantasy adventure in the cursed province of Hurlig Ridge, a land filled with monsters, mysteries, murderers, and treasure. The people of the province have been tormented for centuries by a pack of voracious wolves. Now, with the arrival of the adventurers, dark forces have begun to stir, accelerating their dark plans. Can Byron unravel the mystery of this curse before it’s too late?

Adventure and excitement await anyone brave enough to join the World Tree. Will you be one of them?

©2018 MA Carlson (P)2018 Spectrum Audiobooks

Good story

Overall it was a good book, but the constant repeating of entire sections of text because of a completed quest or looking at details from a sub skill got old real quick. The lack of a epilogue in the audiobook was also a little annoying.

The narration was probably the worst part of the audio book, Anneliese Rennie isn't a bad narrator but she really didn't seem to fit with this book. I could barely tell the difference between characters, or when it was a general narration rather than an inner thought of a character. That doesn't even get into the random pauses throughout the book.

A great LITRPG story

*This book was given to me by the author at my request, and I provided this voluntary review.*

4/5

Ive read a ton of LITRPG titles, so the setting and plot wasnt a shock to me. Where this was one different, was the interpersonal connections it had with the people and main character of the story. While there were plenty of stat dumps, it wasnt too much. I was laughing at plenty of points throughout the book and loved the couple of easter eggs that were dropped in - they were a nice touch. The only thing I was a little put off by, was the use of thought-process setups for a piece of dialogue -- which happened quite a bit. "I wonder what this this thing would "X" or do "X"" followed by the literal event, dialogue piece, or interaction occurring. This type of thing was rather tedious to read, but everything else was pleasing, so I kept on going! Glad I did too, because the subplots and the 'to be continued' kept me on edge wanting more. I was also curiou about the narrator - she did a good job with doing impressions and narrating, but I was a little unsure of the "tone" used for some of the dialogue she was reading (such as using flat monotone voice for a time when I would have thought it would be more excitable and higher toned). Anyway, this is a solid 4 star read for any reader who enjoys LitRPG, who will definitely want to come back for more dungeon dives with Byron and Co.!

SORRY!

So much fun as a Gamelit book! My son and I loved the story and the characters. The only problem was both of us wanted to listen when the other wasn't there! It got me to buy the other books for us to read so we could find out what was next. I strongly recommend this audio title.

horrible narration!

I was only barley able to get through this book. the narration is awful.
example:
My friend said that we should all go to get some drinks I like drinks they make me less thirsty I climbed into my car and buckled my seat belt.

played at 2x speed. and yes all natural sentence breaks are gone!

amazing

lots of goofy fun moments and an amazing story, especially if you are into online games

Very fun, relaxed, character-focused LitRPG

Very enjoyable book! While I didn't voraciously devour it in a few sittings like some other books make me, I did enjoy just about every component of this book. And maybe it'll stick with me longer as a result of me listening to it over a 10-day period rather than two. While perspective doesn't shift, it's very much a group-focused and character-focused book. Despite the length, there's minimal growth from the characters, but to be honest I came out seeing this book as the prologue or introduction to a game. We meet the key players, learn the basics of their abilities, personalities, and interface with the world, and then at the end we are released out into the broader game. While this might sound like a lot of book for an intro, it worked well to me and left me looking forward to the next book.

Each of the characters is distinct, the main character is a bit of a Gary Stu but they didn't go completely over-the-top with him. Some interactions are predictable for the genre, but there was still a lot of fun in how the characters bantered and helped each other out. The world expands around the characters, and we get hints about the outside world (likely to be explored more in book 2), and both left me wanting to know more.

The stand-out downside to me was the MASSIVE FLOW OF STATUS UPDATES. Wow. I've never seen or heard anything like the number of system messages in the first quarter of this book. It gets self-mocked but it still drove me cuckoo even skipping through most it. It felt like padding, and totally unnecessary for such a lengthy novel. I didn't penalize because a) skippable, b) tapers off as the book continues, c) should be gone/minimized in future books. Other than that, while I mostly enjoyed the narration it didn't quite hit the level of other work I've heard by Anneliese Rennie. Still above average for the industry, but I wasn't in love, and most of the accents didn't work for me.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Decent story let down by bored sounding narration

The story is decent enough, reads more like game lit than isekai. I hate the characters name it’s stupid and lame and every time I hear it I cringe also “Mayor Homer Simper” really.

The only real issue that made it hard for me to finish the book (aside from the slow pace) was the narrator. Every sentence sounds flat like someone reading a restaurant menu and there’s little to no emotion in the narration of fights so it sounds like someone reading a combat log. Then there’s the interaction between characters which has no continuity. She switches voices sometimes or the voices are weirdly whiny, the accents are terrible. My advice would be to just find a different narrator or at least talk to the narrator about the inflection they use.

I tried, i really did.

This book has potential, but the narrator really didn't do this book justice.
Speed this book up by x1.20 to at least get through as the narrator runs slow. The narrator also has a monologue/robotic voice used as the stat overview for the mc which makes it fairly unpleasing to the ear after a time (sounds like old google translate).
The raised pich of every word/sentence is also unpleasing to the ear and makes everything sound like an exclamation mark.
All and all, I tried to get through this book but can't due to the above comments.

Overall good book

The sing songy female narrator took me out of the book a bit, I kept forgetting the main character was supposed to be male But that did not stop me from enjoying the book and buying the second one.

Excellent voice acting and story, but...

The voice actress was excellent and the story very compelling, but there were several recording issues where the audio skips or is unintelligible.