imPerfect Beginnings

The First imPerfect Cathar Trilogy Omnibus - An Urban Fantasy Collection (The imPerfect Cathar)

By: C.N. Rowan

Narrated by: C.N. Rowan

After hundreds of years of dying, you'd think I would've perfected it by now...

One moment I'm a heretical priest in the twelfth century, hunted, hated...The next, I'm waking up in the nearest corpse. Stuck in a cycle of instant reincarnation, popping back up like a tarnished penny.

Fast forward eight hundred years, and you might think I've learned a thing or two. Nope. All I've learned is how to die far too easily, far too often.

Now my territory in the South of France is under threat and I find myself trapped by impossible angel-made runes. If the angels have gone full red lightsaber evil, it might not only be my territory in danger, but the whole of reality itself...

I need to stop whoever is behind this, and now. After all, you can't come back to life, if there's nothing left to come back to.

This omnibus collects the first three books of the award-winning "imPerfect Cathar series" - "imPerfect Magic", "imPerfect Curse" & "imPerfect Fae" - as well as the never-before published short story "The Dark Of The Water's Edge".

If you can't wisecrack while death is on the line? Well... perhaps you're not dying right.

Winner "Best Supernatural Thriller Series" at the Audiobook Reviewer Awards 2023.

©2023, 2024 Main Rock Publishing (P)2024 C.N. Rowan

Critic reviews

""The best debut novel I've ever read!" - Heather G Harris, Best-Selling Author of the Other Realm Series

Truly Great 1st Person Writing

I'm writing this after finishing the first book and will update it if needed.

If you like the writing of Tolkien, Sanderson, or James S. A. Corey then you'll enjoy this. I will say this is darker than any of those. In fact in some ways it hits like some later Dresden Books, but darker in any ways.

The story is well written, funny, and well thought out. The language is colorful as the author bends certain words to his own meaning which is expertly conveyed.

Rowan must have put in hours doing historical research for this book (or he is just a historian)
This story manages to stand out from other modern fantasy. It juxtposes magic and Christianity and does it well in a way that will make it enjoyable to Christians, pagans, and other faiths.

The voice actor is amazing. his emotions carry on every word to the point where you can feel what's happening.

I only have two critiques of this book: because the main character has existed for hundreds of years. There are flashbacks to everything from the crusades, WW2, and other events. if you get distracted, fall asleep, or take a break and come back to it it's kind of easy to get lost.

The other this is that the voice actor, while doing an amazing job of showing tension, speeds up and gets louder at action scenes. (again he is great) but this does make it a bit more difficult to follow, slightly more so if you aren't used to his accent. However these are relatively minor things, and don't detract from the story, and may not actually be a problem for others.

Great Story, Poor performance

I really like this series, but the author should not have been recorded. Difficult to understand and some of his character voices are truly awful. Needs to be re-recorded with a voice actor.

Story is good could use a narrator

I like the books. They have a lot of good elements and I think the characters are fun to follow. I know the writer is the narrator…. Maybe if I was English I could follow him better but I’m not so I find his pacing and pronunciation hard to follow at times. The story keeps me in it and I’m about 12 hours in so far so I’m sure I’ll keep going. So I would recommend the story for sure but i struggle with the choice to self narrate.

New Narrator Please!

I enjoyed the story for as long as I could. The narrator ruin to book for me. The lack of character voice changes and the speak pattern is very hard to listen to. I powered through until the sixth chapter to see if I can get use to it, but I couldn't. This is a shame, the storyline seems really good, too!

Heads up I did rerurn it and could not finish it.

I will say this. I always give a book enough time and very rarely do I ever return a book. I have over 700 titles in my library and in my 15 plus years of using this service this is maybe one of 10 books I’ve returned. The narrator/actor has a lot to do with why I buy books. I have gotten into stories just because the person reading it made it worthwhile. I have moved from action stories into many more genre’s just because of the narrator. But I honestly don’t think anyone could help this book. The author/narrator doesn’t do that for me at all. The story seemed to be a great idea on the surface,but it didn’t go that way and was just got way too clunky and really hard to follow or even care. I like to be lost in a story and forget the outside world for a bit. This story didn’t do that for me, it actually made me want to stop reading and go back to work. This is my opinion only and I would suggest that you might want to give it a chance for me that lasted about 2hrs to long. Hope this helps.