The Spirit War

Eli Monpress, Book 4

By: Rachel Aaron

Narrated by: Luke Daniels

Eli Monpress is vain. He's cocky. And he's a thief. But he's a thief who has just seen his bounty topped, and he's not happy about it. The bounty topper, as it turns out, is his best friend, bodyguard, and master swordsman, Josef, who has been keeping secrets from Eli. Apparently he's the only prince of a rather feisty country, and his mother (a formidable queen who is every bit as driven and stubborn as he is) wants him to come home and do his duty, which means throwing over personal ambitions, such as proving he's the greatest swordsman who ever lived.

Family drama aside, Eli and Josef have their hands full. The Spirit Court has been usurped by the Council of Thrones, and someone calling herself the Immortal Empress is staging a massive invasion. But it's not just politics--the Immortal Empress has a specific target in mind: Eli Monpress, the greatest thief in the world.

©2012 Rachel Aaron (P)2015 Tantor

Good, though some of the voices irk me

The story was excellent, however, I really didn't like some of the voices the reader used, mainly Eli's and the servants.

Amazing Series Just Continues to Get Better

When I first started reading this series I thought there was no way the reviews could be right about their quality. I was wrong. This series somehow just gets better as it goes on. The plot is awesome, character development amazing and the narration of this series can't be beat. Love it. On to the next one!

Great book but disappointing audio

I read other reviews that said this but ignored them. I enjoyed this book, if you liked the previous ones in the series then definitely keep going with this one.

But the audio is different than previous books. The voices are all changed and universally for the worst. Even some character name pronunciations are different. It was not good and distracting. May be a book to read in physical copy.

Need the rest of the series

Good story and narration. I could not wait to get the next in the series. This answered a number of questions but left me wanting answers to the rest.

why, Luke?

Best book of the series yet, marred only by a baffling choice of the narrator to suddenly use a different reading voice for the primary narration (much deeper, ponderously slow, and slightly twangy), and different voices for some of the main characters. Got used to it after a few hours, and after increasing the playback speed to 1.20x. Like once of the other reviewers, I at first thought a completely different person was reading, and found the new voice really unpleasant and hard to listen to. Later on in the book, Luke starts to sound more like his old self from Books 1-3, and I was able to decrease the playback speed to 1.10x.