A Guide to Demonic Ascension

The Guide to Demonic Ascension Series, Book 1

By: Tim Saian

Narrated by: Justin Price

Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

Reais, a fractured abyss ruled by thousands of contesting Demon Lords no stranger to chaos, happens to be the birth place of a new chaos, a new threat.

Punished for disbelief in a mortal life, a soul curses Deities for its unfair imprisonment and psychological torture. Set free by witless demons, this soul sees an opportunity for vengeance.

©2023 Tim Saian (P)2023 Blackstone Publishing

Awesome

One of the top books of read in my 900 book library. I almost never leave reviews.

gets better near the end

mediocre narration poor story telling it was hard to get invested in the characters it got better near the end would say more but it'd be spoilers

refreshing 😊

I found this book to be pretty different from what I'm used to and I enjoyed it. I liked the narrator will definitely try and listen to him again. can't wait for the next book

I was looking foward to this one

Dark i didnt know what to expect but im left wondering what the next one in the sieries will be like.

Entertaining but Poorly Crafted

This book is quite a good read, for most of the story. The MC is vaguely relatable, and has an understandable driving motivation. The worldbuilding is pretty neat, and the LitRPG elements are really cool, especially with how they relate to killing other demons and gaining XP. The plot seems to meander quite a bit, but it's a fun journey, so I didn't really mind. Overall, I think most people would like this book, and I do recommend it.

However, I feel I have to point out several flaws in the book. None of these are major, just little things that irritated me though my read (TL;DR is amateurish descriptions, prose, and plot, sprinkled with a lack of an editor and a meh narrator):

Firstly, the description of locations and people was painfully bad in many places, either being too descriptive or assuming you already know what they're talking about. For example, when first fighting Crimson Demons, each type is immediately described once and named, then only ever referred to by their names through the rest of the fight. It made it quite hard to remember which was the flying one, which was the slashing one, and which was the charging one.

Secondly, the prose had some occasional gaps, where sentences ended abruptly, failed to describe a change in scenery, or had clumsy dialog. I could always see what was intended, but it was frequently annoying. Additionally, turns of phrase (such as "the only thing on my mind") were sometimes used back to back, which isn't how good writing is usually done. It made the book feel like it had been cut up and stuck together again hurriedly. This would also explain why the book tended to assume you knew what it was talking about, when the explanation was later on in the book.

Thirdly, the final segment of the book skims completely over the summoning of our MC and pact-making that follows. What was probably the most interesting inter-character conflict was at first rushed, then strait up summarized later on. This was just after we were abruptly pulled from our previous plot line in Hell, which already felt quite jarring. This was then followed by a baffling plot twist on the MC's primary motivation, which aside from being weird as all hell (and making me wonder if I still was invested), didn't actually add anything.

[MAJOR SPOILERS for this paragraph] After the plot twist, the MC's goals and objectives are still the same (as far as I can tell), but the primary grievance against the gods is no longer valid, and now we're working with a clearly evil woman who literally raped the MC in his past life, so. I'm baffled. This twist just made everything worse and added nothing. I have no idea why it was included. (Side note: who the hell described tongue kissing as "her tongue ran around my walls"?? Straight up had me thinking it was the other mouth she was kissing for a second)

Fourthly, the narrator is very bad at doing different voices. He does acceptably for most conversations, but differentiating between the MC's internal and external dialog is entirely reliant on context. This gets even worse when the MC gets a voice in his head near the end of the book. All three of the voices (MC internal, MC external, Voice internal) sound exactly the same, and I ended up completely missing a bunch of the voice's lines. At least the tones were acceptable, for the most part.


So, overall, I enjoyed this book. It clearly has flaws, and I'm not interested in the rest of the series, but I do recommend it to anyone else who likes LitRPG and fantasy. It's very similar to Salvos, if you've read it. Just not as cringe.

Also, I think this book was translated from a Light Novel or Manhwa. The format seems to match, and some of the tropes do too. The dumb and gimmicky name is also a pretty good giveaway.