Essencers of Aelathia

A 3-in-1 Book Series

By: Joshua Smith

Narrated by: Tim Gerard Reynolds

Length: 54 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

Three epic books. Fifty-plus hours filled with magic, war, myth, and characters that leap to life.

Bedel and Raynt, two powerful mages known as Essencers, have dedicated their lives to holding back the tide of the Dark Sorceress Jocina. After her defeat thousands of years ago, she is desperate to return and drown the world in darkness once and for all. Her time has come.

Priestess A’banna has spent her young life in service to the Sorceress. But when she is commanded to sacrifice a living being in Jocina's name, her faith breaks. She flees into the waiting arms of the Essencers.

Bedel and Raynt believe A’banna may hold the keys to defeating Jocina once and for all, and fight to protect her at all costs. However, ending a millennium of struggle isn't so easy.

Jocina has been busy. Building allies. Corrupting rulers. Growing her dark and powerful army. And now, her coalition threatens all the realm with a war to end all wars.

It will take more than magic and Essencers to stop her. Bedel, Raynt, and A’banna will need to bring the kingdoms together. Otherwise, Jocina will finally have her revenge.

Buy this special edition box set to experience a sweeping epic fantasy series suitable for all ages. Fans of J.R.R. Tolkien and Brandon Sanderson will love this vividly imagined and detailed world.

©2020 Aethon Books (P)2020 Aethon Books

Confusing, Incomplete, and Under Edited but Promising... maybe?

The storyline of the series was confusing with the world lightly hinted at and barely explained. I kept looking for a fan site to help me understand what was happening. The individual nations and races are unique and hold a good appeal. I wouldn’t mind making a DnD game with them. The creation narrative of the world/apocalypse generator idea or at least the direction that I hope it goes also seem interesting. The characters have an obvious motivation and are complex, which is good. However, that being said this is not a complete trilogy it ends on a cliff-hanger with very little clarified. Few to none of the character arcs are complete and it seems obvious to me that more books should be included. I am not the most highly aware of grammar or structure but even I was off put by some issues that could have used a good edit. Additionally I think some of the confusion might come from consistency errors?
Tim did a great job for the most part but the audio editing was super obvious in a number of places. Paragraphs were very obvious recorded at different times with different emotions/ weights. The characters didn’t necessary have a very different feel/ voice which didn’t help the confusion of the writing when plot lines started to come together with all ~10 characters in every changing groupings.

Deeply engrossing

This series is deeply complex and thoroughly engrossing. You should only read them when you can devote your full attention. i found myself replaying parts almost every day.
I highly recommend the series. It is well written and very well performed.

not my cup of tea

hard to keeo on track. lost contact with the story would request a refund please

Excellent Narration

The narration is excellent. Seriously, one of the best matches of narration to subject matter I have ever heard. I am about 5 1/2 hours into the book so far. The story so far is good as well, both the characters and their world described in detail and the plot coming fast and steady. There seems so far to be a good balance of depth, detail, and story advancement; there has been only one spot so far where I felt the details just went on too long, and for such a long book that is a good sign.

Reader ruined it

Tried so hard to like this book. Reader was awful, you can’t tell who is talking.

Great Story

Narrator is good...he's not the problem. The editing is terrible. I have come to expect much better from Audible.

Intriguing Sci-Fantasy with Potential

High Points: Narrator Tim Gerard Reynolds does an absolutely fantastic job, as always. There is a reason he makes my top 5 audiobook narrators. The plot is interesting and does not stick to purely Western European fantasy tropes and mythologies. A diverse set of characters and the sense that nobody is safe, which adds to the buy-in on the story. A nice blend of sci-fi and fantasy aspects, which I won't spoil here.

Low Points: There are times the exposition drags and the end is not a "the current conflict is resolved, but life goes on", but instead feels like this is NOT the Full Series that it is advertised to be. Given some of the sci-fi aspects, it can be taken as the complete series, but it really needs at least one more book to bring it to a more satisfactory conclusion.

Overall: Decent plot and characters, intriguing blend of sci-fi, fantasy and mythologies and excellent narration. Enjoyable, but leaves you wanting more.

Disclaimer: I was given this a free review copy audiobook and have voluntarily left this review.

unnecessarily complicated

too many characters seem to pop up out of nowhere disappear and then re-emerge later. it's hard to keep track of everyone especially when you think they're playing a minor role in the story and turns out later they had a key pivotal role in the stories outcome.

Old School in the best way

Where has this author been hiding? I read book one individually, and then this... geez. The series is so good. Reminds me of older style fantasy but with modern writing and characters. The cover does a vivid job of showing me the world and it accurately displays the feel of the books. Reynolds did an amazing narration job.

Worth listening to

The first book was hard to follow, the second and third were much improved.