A story worth the credit

I'll admit that this book was a LOT better than I thought it would be. Not your typical harem adventure and yes that is a good thing. The narrators did a great job brining life to this listen. Definitely recommendable.

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Revenge has never been so sexy!

I really enjoyed the dual narration it really brought life and depth to the story, now the story is a whole another matter this was an epic tale of sexiness, action, and revenge. I was hooked from the beginning to the end and if you like details and sexiness this is the book for you!

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I like a break away from overdone tropes

Take a sharp turn left for once. Without giving spoilers, this book gives a nice break away from the most used tropes, you can still expect a bit of sauce but it’s nice that not every character immediately throws themselves at the mc. While starting out as a revenge story the mc progresses towards survival and basically makes things more interesting. Worth the listen.

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Nice light read.

Nice light read. Can seam a little repetitive and a few parts seam not needed for the story. Still a good read and recommended it!

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Great plot.

The plot or premise of this book was good but the follow through was not. I think this story could have been a great book.

The main character reminds me of a 15 year old boy not a man who just got back from war. All the characters are under developed and most seem to be added to progress the storyline only.

But with that being said the basic plot is good and very interesting. The book is somewhat light hearted, simplistic, and easy to follow. There is a lot of action which makes it an easy listen.

Narration was perfect and kept me listening.

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Not Bad

Not to bad! love the story line seemed a little to repetitive on some of the parts and the sex sense could of been done better and longer but overall Sam did another good book!! Veronica did an amazing job Clint did to but he almost seems like he drones on or that the way sounds some times. So yes I would recommend this book !!!!!

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Tedious and Foolish MC

Fair warning, some spoilers may be used as examples...

I've tried over and over and over again to get through this story, but the beginning and the MC...just annoyingly dragged out. MC is written like a child but with the backstory of a combat veteran in a world I just can't figure out. I don't know if it's a fantasy world with modern technology or a fictional real world as in our world. Why? Because the first five chapters spend so much time on the MC's faux-bravado and faux-alpha-maleism and not in the way that HaremLit usually does it, but in the way that NOTHING ACTUALLY HAPPENS. (Caps for emphasis)

What Sam Hunter does do is what ALL OF THE OTHER HAREMLIT AUTHORS DO BADLY, is write from the First Person POV while having the MC ogle women while in a high stress situation or when he's supposedly hyper-focused on a goal. And of course he's not because he's so easily distracted by a woman's chest and her crossing her arms across it.

But he annoyed me because he finds out about this serial killer that "killed" his sister per the description/summary so that part's not a spoiler. He finds this out over a letter and then a direct and indirect hearsay conversation in a bar or diner, can't remember which. People tell him Cortez is not to be trifled with for a variety of reasons and a variety of ambiguous unsaid (for the mystery) reasons. Upon the aforementioned conversation, MC high-tails it to Cortez's estate WITHOUT A PLAN OR EVENING RESEARCHING THE GUY. I say that, because Cortez is obviously a well known individual. His antics have been going on for a while. He's rich enough to have a large mansion on a sizable piece of property with a significant amount of employees and minions. So, well known. Enough that MC could've, at least, looked up on something the equivalent of Zillow to map out his enemy's property. Gates, security, something. Again, this guy is a combat veteran. To be fair, Hunter handwaves that by you with a few lines dropped about the war MC fought in at the beginning.

When he finally gets to the estate and fumbles his way around. He, of course, gets found out by a woman. She tells him over and over and over again, along with the previous people in the aforementioned conversation, that several men have tried to kill Cortez and failed. The woman helping him specifically tells him that she's helping him so she won't have to clean up his remains after Cortez kills him. The next woman he gets involved with during this fiasco of a Revenge Quest, also tells him that he couldn't kill Cortez because many men have tried and failed. As another Amazon Reviewer pointed out, MC never thinks to find out the reason why all of these men failed. No, he's just better and will somehow get the job done when he got caught by a random servant. There goes that combat veteran background.

He doesn't listen. He inner monologues constantly, pontificating on silliness and about his dumb decisions and justifying them. This is the mistake of many authors who write First Person POV. They have MC constantly pontificating in their head. Not narrating the story, but just "thinking" about nonsense. Often times having them be precognitive and heavily guessing about stuff they wouldn't know. Like, thinking about how the person in front of them is likely thinking something about them but doesn't know cause they're not in their head. Body language reading, magically knowing people are lying by reading body language and no not in the professional way, etc. The other part of the problem here is that Hunter has every character talking around main points as if they're being cryptic. No one explains exactly why MC couldn't kill Cortez specifically. MC never asks, of course, because of the faux-bravadoism, etc.

So, this dude stalks around a mansion, only getting as far as he did because two women didn't turn him in and let him go forward while telling him that he was going to die like a fool. He clumsily moves about, not knowing where anyone is in the house. Keeping out of trouble because of luck (plot armor). He inevitably gets caught by a guy, a young guard, finally, and when the guy is telling MC to come out of hiding because he clearly knows MC is there because idiot MC left a door open while running to hide from the young guard and another guard while they were approaching, MC is thinking in his head faux-bravadoism. Ok, it's bad when authors have MC's speak faux-bravado, it's even worse when authors have MC's thinking faux-bravado. Or I should say arrogance. MC you got caught because of your idiocy. The guard stands there while you put him in a neck hold. The guard doesn't fight back. MC, you did absolutely nothing, but act like you did.

Idiot MC realizes he could've stayed in hiding instead of attacking the boy and exposed himself. Again, there goes that combat veteran background of a MC who supposedly survived an uber deadly war. So deadly, they piled up mountains and mountains of corpses in the beginning. Of course, he gets trapped and caught by the very person he was there to kill. Cortez doesn't even do anything, his entire guard staff does. Again, this all happened cause MC was a fool. Gathered no intelligence on the estate, his target Cortez, NOTHING. He just impulsively ran to the estate, not even guns blazing.

Either way, once again he gets out of this situation by luck (plot armor) because the same young guard lies and says he's dead when he's not. Why did these three characters help him when they had no reason to and they're all supposedly knowledgeable of how bad Cortez is? Why did they risk themselves for an idiot? Then we finally get to the titular plot line, THE LABYRINTH. All of this setup took almost 10 chapters. Before the main plotline even started. It was tedious.

The two women told him he'd get caught and die, but MC acted like a child demanding that he wouldn't. They'd tell him to leave, escape while he had the chance, he'd once again, act like a child and demand that he was going to be the one to kill Cortez. You might be saying to yourself, well Roy, his sister died and he was caught in his emotion and grief over the news. I would've believed that if he didn't get easily distracted by a pretty woman among other things. I mean just like Hunter wrote that MC stretched the patience of nearly every character he supposedly bantered, negotiated with or tried to verbally defy, he stretched my patience. MC is written as someone who is supposed to be stubborn and hyper-focused as I said, but only exhibits a childlike stubbornness. Almost throwing temper tantrums when someone tells him that he can't do what he wants, etc.

Look, I have no problem with a story taking a while to setup, but this one...good grief. And it didn't get any better. We met the cover girl by chapter 10, she sends MC on another "quest" and the story continues to stay bogged down by Hunter overwriting MC's internal monologuing while doing stuff. In other words, as I said, as usual with HaremLit authors and to some degree authors who can't do First Person POV well, the pacing of the story gets slowed down by MC's constant pontifications on unnecessary things.

The beginning part, IMHO, could've been enhanced and MC's warrior prowess displayed had MC incapacitated, no not necessarily killed, a few guards before getting caught by the first person. Hunter could've also shown, as it was implied, Cortez's uniqueness in some way at the beginning. I get he was trying to leave it a mystery until MC got to cover girl, and even then it's still a mystery, but showing it rather than telling it...yeah, that's the thing. A lot of things are told, dumped on you, rather than shown in this story and it's told by way of MC's internal pontifications.

There was an interesting story here, but Hunter just didn't execute it well. To be honest, this is the second attempt at a Hunter story for me.

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