Noel

Boring and unimaginative

Revisado: 04-06-25

When the story first begins through out the first Delv I thought I was in for a great exciting book. I was wrong, very wrong. The author comes across as lazy and lacking imagination/originality. Clearly the author is trying very hard to copy the success of books such as Dungeon crawler Carl, especially the humor aspect of the series. None of and I mean none of the jokes the author attempts are funny, and believe me when I say the attempts are way too often. It's like listening to a bad comedy movie.

The story itself is extremely boring with an overpowered MC right at the start. Take a strong mage and take away it's biggest weakness in durability and you get an instant almost unstoppable main character. The main character doesn't even really fight, he more or less bumbles around taking hit after hit thanks to his godlike fortitude while occasionally landing a deadly spell at point blank range.

The author also has a very awkward writing style where they literally have the narrator say the word "Pause" when there is a pause before someone speaks. The author then proceeds to do this over and over and over through out the book. You don't need to have to write the word pause nor have the narrator say the word pause in an audio book. Simply describe that the person is pausing or have the narrator pause before continuing on.

My last complaint isn't a big one but I'm so over this strategy of writing agenda I am going to point it out. For no reason other than to collect woke brownie points the author adds a very unnecessary cringe gender swapping character. To be more specific one of three sisters is magically changed into a male because the Delv system could sense it was what she/he wanted and was planning on trying to do regardless of the assistance.

This one is definitely one of the very few titles I plan on returning.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Cringe woke agenda pusher

Revisado: 12-24-24

I was extremely disappointed to see Sanderson go into full woke lecture mode in certain parts of this book. Before this his characters with certain lifestyles were more naturally woven into the story. This book however he went full on woke preachy about being non-binary and and other things that would spoil certain parts of the story but just as annoying to have forced down your throat. I don't want to pay to read a fantasy book hoping to escape from the worlds politics only to have it forcefully lectured to me while listening.

For now unfortunately I am going to have to be very cautious when considering if I should read any further works by Sanderson now knowing that he is going to push woke lecturing in his books.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 11 personas

Another woke agenda book

Revisado: 10-26-24

Before the book started becoming preachy with it's woke agenda I was already leaning that this book isn't for me due to the main character being both smart one moment then very dumb and naive the next, not to mention you can clearly tell the main character is going to be overpowered right away. Seriously lazy to make a main character that is a mage (healer to be) be able to instantly in one short lesson become an assassin capable of taking out multiple NPCs without much effort.

Then the author hits you with it's preachy agenda out of nowhere for pretty much no reason other than to check off a box on their woke DEI to preach list. It doesn't stop their though as it happens once again and from that point I called it quits on this book as I'm clearly not the target audience.

The lazy writing was bad enough on it's own but the preachy agenda was the nail in the coffin for me.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Unoriginal copycat

Revisado: 08-13-24

When I saw all the 5 star reviews I went into this book optimistic that it wasn't another imposter 5 star book. Unfortunately while it isn't bad it's not a 5 star book. First and foremost is that the author clearly is trying to cash in on the success of the book Beware of chicken which I and nearly anyone else would agree is superior to this book in almost every way. The jokes aren't really all that funny, and the name drop references don't quite hit the mark. Take his companion for example, the name the protagonist chose was not a good choice and probably should have gone for something a little different than Sgt. <Name>. I get that they were trying to be witty similar to the main companion from Beware of chicken but, however in my opinion they really missed their mark.

As far as the main character goes, I'm not sure why the author decided to make him a naive and borderline carefree idiot while disguised as being clever in the eyes of many of the town folk. Similar to the old 1980's cartoon Inspector Gadget where Gadget had been bailed out by either those around him or pure dumb luck or in the books case misunderstanding and rushed presumptions. Another gripe is so much is just straight out handed to him and he is seemingly very knowledgeable in everything related to fishing, even though while on Earth he didn't even know the basics about different hooks and how to properly bait a hook.

Like I mentioned earlier the book isn't bad but it's definitely not the 4.7/4.8 star book it's getting at the time of this review. The story is purely vanilla and not in a good way. Perhaps if I had never read Beware of chicken it would have been better perceived by me, but then again it still would just be a copycat book lacking the originality to not replicate the storyline of another successful book. I wanted to read heretical fishing and if I wanted to read Beware of chicken again I would read Beware of chicken.

Finally the narration is 4.5 stars, however until Miller can become an actual voice actor narrator and not just a narrator I can't give him a solid 5 star review. If you want an example of voice acting narration give Jeff Hays or Travis Baldree a listen. I am not saying Miller can't do some voice acting, he absolutely can but it is very limited and he can't seem to get away from his native accent.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

A great book with a very predictable ending

Revisado: 06-06-24

Another great addition to the series. Wow not really a complaint, some of the ending of this book and choices made were very predictable, especially if you were paying attention to the series.

One issue I will slightly complain about is that while it’s not hard to figure out that the author pulls much of the game mechanics directly from World of Warcraft the author often forgets how some of the raid mechanics work. As a former tank in endgame rating guild in both everquest and World of Warcraft, when multiple raid bosses are in a single encounter aggro will always begin on the first player to aggro anything in said encounter. This being the case, there is a particular raid encounter, Omen faces which has a mechanic that makes it extremely difficult to borderline impossible to win against given the massive penalty, if any of the raid bosses, switch targets at any time during the fight. The flaw with this mechanic specifically, the penalty, is that Agro of two of the three raid bosses would switch immediately after the first tank began the encounter when the second and third tanks pull aggro off the second and third raid boss to begin tanking since it is impossible to single pool, a boss in a raid encounter such as this. The penalty for losing aggro would then trigger twice and would cripple the raid seconds after it began. Considering how difficult the encounter was, I honestly doubt they would have won, let alone be able to continue on to the next raid encounter.


The raid mechanic flaw is minor though and can be mostly overlooked but I thought I would still mention it as it immediately stuck out to me like a sore thumb.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Poor narrator **Update**

Revisado: 05-19-24

**Update**
I got up to book or I should say I tolerated my way up to book 5 before I finally had enough of the authors not so subtle increasing agenda being pushed onto the readers. I won't say what the agenda was but needless to say I am not the target audience.. I can handle all the other issues the book had below but I won't continue to read agenda content that is so roughly ham fistedly inserted into the story just to check a box.

I can't believe so many gave the narrator a positive rating. He sounds like Captain Kirk from Stark trek reading a book. What I mean by this is he clearly struggles when beginning to read a new line and pauses heavily or draws out the final word in the line above to give himself time to find his place on the line below, causing the narration to be extremely choppy throughout the entire story. This is further amplified by the narrator speeding up his narration after beginning a new line causing it to sound like a car going down a road with speed bumps 5 seconds apart, where the car slows down before the bump then speeds up to make up lost time in between bumps. Even speeding up the speed of the book doesn't help since it can do nothing to alleviate the choppy narration.

Another major issue I have is that most of the characters dialogue is read as if the characters are speaking very loud all the time during normal conversations. The entire book is read as if the narrator wants his audience to think the characters are constantly shouting all while trying not to raise this own voice.

As far as the book itself I find it very good but not incredible. Some of this is due to the lack of writing skills by the author misusing words and creating sentences such as "The distant sun in the distance." While perhaps the person responsible for proof reading or editing the book should have caught mistakes such as this, it should not have been written as such in the first place. This is a basic error most are taught to avoid at a young age in school.

The story itself is enjoyable but there are times where it becomes a bit boring and certain rift grinds should either have been skipped or summarized in a shorter fashion. There are also things the author purposely points out such as side characters who have absolutely nothing to do with the story later on that are clearly just fluff to artificially add to the size of the book. This also includes interactions and confrontations between the main character and random characters that are unimportant and do absolutely nothing to progress the story and are again just fluff in my opinion to artificially inflate the total word count of the book.

To anyone looking to purchase the audio form of this book I would suggest listening to the sample a few times and ask yourself if over 16 hours of choppy narration is tolerable to you. If the answer is no, I'd suggest purchasing the print version of this book.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Poor narration by essentially a fancyscreen reader

Revisado: 01-18-24

As a blind person I have a lot of experience listening to both audio books and e-books read out by screen readers, which is essentially what "Virtual voice" is. Unfortunately this means that you get all the short comings of a screen reader with none of the benefits of an actual person narrating a book.

I should also mention that whom ever was in charge of proof reading and producing this book did a very poor job as there were so many typos that a screen reader can't correct on the fly unlike a human narrator. This essentially leaves words that should be read as "your" read out as "you". Something that also happens often is this artificial narrator doesn't use the proper pronunciations of words that the same spelling but totally different meanings or definitions such as the word "Bow". Virtual voice also can't properly pronounce words that should be read out as sounds such as "Psst", reading it out as P S S T. There are also times when the proper pauses and breaks are not taken which cause certain dialogue to come off as a run on sentence, especially when a second person is speaking immediately after someone finishes.

This will probably be the last book I read that is read by "Virtual voice" as it takes too much concentration on the listeners part just to understand what it's trying to narrate. Buying an e-book using a built in screen reader is a much smoother experience, especially since it's again very apparent that whom ever produced the audio did a very poor job of correcting all of the errors mentioned above. In fact I'd almost guess that person never even listened to the final product due to the amount of typos and errors. Human narrators are superior in almost every way.

As far as the book it's really hard for me to give a review on it as so much of my time was spent trying to ignore the poor choppy narration, however if I'm being honest it wasn't a bad book. It also wasn't a great book but I'd perhaps think of trying to find this in e-book format rather than suffering through the poor narration.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Terrible female narrator ruins the experience

Revisado: 08-22-23

The female narrator is terrible using inflections in her narration.. She is all over the place that it is very difficult to listen to. She sounds like a robotic screen reader, not her actual voice but rather as a machine that doesn't understand how to use proper inflections while narrating. For those who have never heard a screen reader it is similar to listening to a foreign film with poorly done voice dubbing. Bottom line is that she is not very good at narrating and for me personally it ruined the experience.

The over all plot isn't bad, but I was a little disappointed that the author seems to be trying to copy another popular books plot, at least partially in the "You are hear to survive for our entertainment", where humans are a survival show. I understand that copy cat plots will always be around, but it turns me off a bit when an author copies another authors work before that series is even finished.

Over all poor female narration aside the book is just okay to me. Not terrible but certainly not amazing. Perhaps if I had simply read the text version of the book I might have enjoyed it more. I'm actually on the fence if I should see if I can return this book and go and buy the text version.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Seriously proof read your work already

Revisado: 08-07-23

I really like this book and the series overall but please, please seriously either get someone to proof read your work or if you already have someone get someone better at their job. This is the fourth or fifth time in the past 5 books where the author has described an action such as standing up where they make a character do it again in the same scene without saying that character has sat back down before standing up again. In this book it's Parker sheathing her dagger twice in a row without unsheathing it after her first sheathing. Perhaps the author may have meant she was holding both daggers (plural) but it clearly reads as balancing one of her daggers and never mentions that she his holding both daggers. It also never mentions that the second time she sheaths her dagger it is her second dagger, so regardless it is poorly worded no matter if she was holding one or both of her daggers. This may seem so minor to some, but after it's happened so many times it stands out like a sore thumb. Again please proof read your work.

That being said I didn't quite enjoy listening to the main character go insane turning into a jerk, but I understand why it was necessary. The best character by far in this book is Rebecca and I found myself wanting to skip forward to the chapters with her in it. Thankfully I restrained myself and listened to the book start to finish.

I'm hoping this wasn't the end of the series as it left a lot of things hanging character wise and if another book comes out will definitely buy it.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Another uninteresting story of anOP main character

Revisado: 07-26-23

I went into this book with high hopes due to all the "5star" reviews. This is not a 5star book or a good book in general. In fact I found myself clicking the skip forward button so often, especially during chapters with the main character. When you find other characters parts in the book more entertaining you know something isn't right as majority of this book is nothing but a grind fest for the main character which contributes to the overall pain and boredom I felt trying to power through this book. In fact the only reason I finished this book at all is because I am not able to return it, something that I am very sad about as the book does not get better even at the end.

The book starts off with your almost stereotypical everyday middle class main character at his ordinary middle class job when suddenly the world is taken over by "The system" and he and others are teleported away.

Immediately upon arriving into the world created the main character is instantly over powered and his power just snowballs from that point on with very little effort put in. Killing multiple beasts higher than you, no problem. Killing multiple humans alone, no problem. Going off alone and destroying everything while everyone else stays in groups, no problem. Just another ordinary day for the once unimpressive office worker.

I should also mention that the main character is borderline crazy as he seemingly enjoys going on a small killing spree of other humans and is even described as smiling while doing it. However the author tries several times to convince you that the main character isn't actually insane a few chapters later, even though he clearly is, or at least partially as he can't understand why killing others even in self defense doesn't bother him. In short the main character is creepy and not very likeable, as even his co-workers are afraid of his behavior and cringe away from him.

The main characters rise to even greater power after he leaves his co-workers is so ridiculously easy for him to obtain that he for no less than 10 chapters spends his time in a man cave equipped with a bed, shower, toilet and even a library with vast amounts of knowledge, while everyone else struggles outdoors in a forest area trying to level all while trying to avoid being slaughtered by beast and other humans. Even the dungeon trial to get to his man cave is borderline ridiculously easy for him to solve with a perfect score no less with maximum rewards.

Travis Baldree was once again great in his performance, but there are some books where great narration just isn't enough and I highly advise anyone not yet invested in this book to look elsewhere for a good LitRPG apocalypse story such as Dungeon crawler carl.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona