Great story

The story was good, characters engaging and the plot moved along well.

Voice acting was great as I’ve come to expect from sound booth theatre. Characterisations were clear and defined who was speaking. I’ve noticed SBT seem to have recently began adding more sound effects and dramatic background music and this is well done, occasionally the fight music is a bit loud and interferes with the narration but that is a minor niggle.

Fantastic listen. Looking forward to the next instalment!

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5 Star, ready for the next book!

This was a great book, the sound effects are great for the battle scenes. Looking forward to the books to follow!!!

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WoW, more please.

I really enjoyed reading this book, I couldn't stop, nice pace, many twists, some empire building, characters with depth, and it has the potential to evolve to greater story. I am eagerly waiting for the next book.

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2 people found this helpful

Brilliant story telling

Absolutely fantastic story, progression and world building. Soundbooth Theatre always delivers also. Hail Jeff Hays and his ilk.

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A promising start to a series.

I won't say to much about the narration, as anyone that listens to audiobooks of this type will be well aware of Jeff and Annie's abilities. It was the first time I'd heard Will Watt, but he was very good as well.

The story itself is quite good, and does have quite a lot of scope given that the Earth is moved to a new location by aliens to be part of a new conglomerate of planets, but are deemed to have too many people and too much pollution. They enter a year of stabilization where 91.5% of the people must die, and three days after the planet moves monsters appear and the killing starts.

The main character, Allistor, uses his knowledge of gaming when he sees the new world works much like all the MMORPG's he used to play. So he works to level up, learn skills and add people to his group to try and build a strong enough alliance that can stand up to the aliens that will be allowed to come onto Earth to make their claims for resources and territory.

Overall it's pretty well-done with some new ideas and some that are staple across most LitRPG books. I thought the author should have done less glossing over things though. I don't like LitRPG books that do character sheets too often, or ones that go overboard telling you every detail always, but I found the fact he never tells you his upgrades annoying. For example if his healing or damage spells rank up, he doesn't say what the new spell rank does. Same for his other abilities.

Likewise I found other issues like the fact he learns how to create weapons, but not blacksmithing, which made no sense when he makes a sword in a manner that should have earned that skill I'd have thought. Then he also keeps some rubbish rebar spear he randomly made at level 3 at the start of the book for the rest of the book. Which again made no sense when he was bugging everyone to improve their skills and make better weapons and armour.

He also is lousy with his abilities. I'd hate to follow this idiot into battle. Honestly, read it and see what you think about how he uses spells like barrier, where he rarely uses it or uses it quite often after he has been shot, stabbed, bitten or run through a door into a room with enemies. Add in he seems to think highest level equals most suited to tank despite not having the right gear for it or stats for it. Someone focused in strength, con and agility could well be far better at lower level.

Negative points aside, this is still a pretty good book for a first book and I will certainly look at book two of the series.

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Pretty good with a few flaws

It's no System Apocalypse, but this genre is fast becoming my favorite. The story starts out pretty solid with good characters. Whoever does the female characters for the forest ranger and others needs to fix her mic or EQ values. She literally sounds like she's phoning it in--like with a telephone. There's no bass, and it doesn't match the rest of the recording at all. It's a bit distracting. The MC, despite being a so-called gamer, is a bit of a dumbass. First, he gets a Barret .50 cal sniper rifle. He has a legit marine sniper in his group who'd love to have it and would actually know how to use it, but nope! That's his shiny toy. Much smarter to have the gamer nerd blast away blindly than give it to a professional. Then the MC picks up a shield spell. Great! He might actually be able to stop getting the crap kicked out of him every encounter. Nope! NEVER uses it before an engagement. Used it once AFTER nearly getting killed and cast it on his ranger gal pal once that saved her from being splattered. Still not enough to teach the so-called gamer to cast his buffs before jumping into a fight.

That being said, I signed up for Audible's free trial just so I could download books 2 and 3. Like I said, it's becoming my favorite audiobook LitRPG genre. Definitely worth a listen all complaints aside.

PS: Book 2 still has the bad female voiceover. Please fix your EQ.

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Great take on the genre, overly noisy production

Title says it all really. Great take on the genre, some nice character arcs, some shocks in places.
I'm not certain multiple voice artists adds very much to the piece, but I'm certain the sound fx and music don't. They're far too generic to actually add anything significant and would seem to just add unnecessary cost and production time to the project. Music was often mixed much too loud. You could argue that in a full dramatisation occasionally obscured voices could add drama - I'd disagree, but I'd accept its a valid argument. In a straight audiobook... Nothing should get in the way of the text.
Definitely eager for the next book.

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3 people found this helpful

Favourite series currently; fantastic.

First the narration;
Excellent.
I've heard a few people complain that sound-booth theatre can 'over-do it' occasionally with sound effects etc, but this was just perfect. Personally I like the touch that sound booth theatre put on their work, especially using multiple narrators, it just works.

The story feels unique but so easy to grasp, without having an entire world to build and for us the reader to understand. Progression of the characters is made clear and plays a big part throughout. Our MC is not overpowered and often gets himself into bad situations that end up with injury. Side characters are interesting, each of whom are relatable in their own way.

If I understand correctly, there are currently 3 books in this series, sound-booth having finished the narration on the second last Nov, so come on Audible do your bit for us fans.

Dave Willmarth nailed it with this one.

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Awesome book

Enjoying the series so far, can't wait to listen to another one! Another great book from Soundbooth theater! There is no production crew better than these guys! They have changed the game on so many different levels!

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Loved it

Loved it but felt they could of done more with the crafting aspect of the book

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