Voltsmith

Apocalypse Engineering, Book 1

De: Aest Belequa

Narrado por: John Joseph Rogers

To Hal Riley, the apocalypse is just another problem to solve—all he needs to do is build the right tools.

It's rush hour in Chicago when a system integration ends the world as Hal Riley knows it. Forced into its hardcore tutorial, Hal adapts, thrives, and emerges with the perfect class for an auto mechanic: [Voltsmith].

His new class promises to teach him the very secrets of the Universal Order. All he needs to do is understand the underlying principles of magical engineering, use them to build bigger weapons and greater tools, and perhaps even uncover the inner workings of the system itself.

But as Hal builds his creations and grows in power, his enemies grow stronger, too—and not just the ones in the dungeons across Chicago. Gangs looking to rule, rogue tutorial survivors, and powerful world bosses roam the city, and beyond its borders, there’s smoke on the horizon.

Hal’s ready, though. The apocalypse is just a bunch of nails, and he’s making hammers. It’s time to engineer his way through the apocalypse.

©2025 Aest Belequa (P)2025 Royal Guard Publishing LLC

GREAT story with some minor suggestions

The only issue i had was the pacing seemed a little rushed. This may be more of a me thing but the story felt rushed and a-lot happens with a very short time frame making it hard to connect with the story at time. The setting is great and love the twists it adds my man suggestions would he a stat block as it own chapter that way if you not interested in that part you can skip back to the story and a little more time in unique locations and events so the story doesn’t feel as rushed other than those 2 things 10/10 from me.

It's Fine

I hate to be critical. There was nothing particularly wrong with this title, aside from the repeated use of "roared", "smashed", and "crashed". I found the characters largely tolerable. Every time Hal said "X was like figuring out a machine" or "a problem to be solved" I sighed. More showing how he was working the problem would be nice, like that bit of reasoning with the fuel line problems in the Explorer. I really liked that. More of that, please, but for how he's beating monsters, solving dungeons, even building Voltsmith things. The RPG elements were almost distracting, and I don't feel like I got a good sense of the relative scales, powers, or expected system behaviors. It wasn't bad; just a little empty, like a thin soup.

dumb!

this title was a disappointment, I feel worse off from listening to only 20%, reviews are plugs, don't be fooled!