A Sellsword's Valor

By: Jacob Peppers

Narrated by: Steven Brand

Length: 12 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's summary

The battle is won. But the war is just beginning.

Belgarin’s forces have retreated, but in the city of Perennia there is no rejoicing. The air is filled with the mourning cries of survivors, and the wind that blows through the city carries the smell of freshly dug graves and death.

As the city grieves, Aaron and his companions attempt to hold together an alliance that threatens to crumble around them. While the alliance’s leaders bicker and argue, Boyce Kevlane, an ancient wizard bent on revenge, has taken Belgarin’s place as king and uses his twisted powers to create an army out of nightmare.

To stand a chance of keeping the coalition together, Aaron is forced to venture into Baresh, a city gripped by madness and terror, in search of proof of the coming danger.

But evil is a thing of shadows and darkness, and it will not go easily into the light.

To survive, Aaron will be forced to call on his friends and the growing power of his bond with a creature of myth. Yet even this may not be enough. For there are other powers in the world, darker ones, and there is no telling what secrets the shadows hold.

©2018 Jacob Peppers (P)2019 Podium Publishing

Can't believe the story is getting even better

I love the characters and the story is getting even better . Steve Brand's narration is great and he just brings the story to life in such delightful way. I am a Jacob Peppers fan!!!! On to the next book in this series.

Good slow burn

I love everything Jacob peppers has produced. This series starts slow but builds well burning slow.

voice changed for some chars

the most noticeable voice is the Chamberlains voice... don't know how to spell...Grihael...Grial...Grile....Grihol.. I don't know. but his voice is different from the previous books... oh but everything is good 👍. his voice is suppose to be higher...idk I don't like change.

Drags you right in to the middle!!!

I have read the books and am now listening to them as well. Great job with the story and this book is just pulling you further into what Aaron and the rest are doing to try and save the world! Steven Brand does a wonderful job of reading and performing the characters each in their own way. Keep them coming, I can't wait to listen to the next book!

The series continues with excellent performances

Once again in my opinion the performance was excellent, and one of the most compelling parts of the audio book. This story developed more characters and villains, showing deeds that should yield a great story in the next novel. I would have liked a little more in the way of action and magic on the part of the virtues.

I love the way the plot pulls you in

another great book by one of my favorite writers and my favorite narrator's,this maybe the best book of the series

a little wordy and a bit too much angst.

the story is pretty good. But It suffers from the same thing a lot of the previous books do it's way too wordy way too much angst. scenes where the main character Kearns in a fight seeing his companions are about to be overwhelmed and goes on a 6-minute reflective internal Wine Fest. Before he turns to help his friends. the levels of descriptiveness about the same things over and over again makes the story really slow. If the author could just go from one thing to the next describing things in a reasonable amount of detail an emotional reflection. And move the story forward. sometimes I think he's writing for people with a 95 IQ. all that said it's still a reasonable story and I am going to listen to the next book.

“Get ON with it!”

This book was just painful… and in SO many ways. It was like the author made his point A to point B, plot-wise, but then realized later that he only had three (maybe four) hours of actual storyline, so—in order to fulfill some sort of page quota—he erroneously decided to simply fill this “book” with seven + hours of pointless dialogue… literally pages and pages of rambling nothingness… over and over again… throughout the entire book.
Oh, right… and the few brief moments of plot movement we actually do get are literally FILLED with the dumbest decisions a person can make—on the part of multiple characters. Seriously, how often does this author think he can get away with force-plotting his main characters to just let the “bad guys” go? Really? The MC is a sell-sword, who constantly acts like a worn and torn, disabused merc, but he’s just going to leave lose-ends like that? Over and over and over again?
Where in the world was the editor for this project?!
And all of the excessive, gratuitous scenes of vile things happening to people… I’ve definitely heard worse, unfortunately, but the fact that the scenes just dragged on and on made it all the more difficult to trudge through.
Ugh… painful. Just painful.
I sure hope the next book was better thought out, since I actually enjoyed the story somewhat, early on, and would like to see this journey through to the end; yet I find myself leaning more towards dropping the series, entirely, at the moment. Ugh…

Team Evil regroups … slowly

This would have been a great part one if it had been half the length and combined with the next book 5 (also cut in half) to form an Empire Strikes Back middle to a trilogy. Only, it feels like the author was hell bent on making a series about seven virtues into seven books. As a result, other than book 1 and 7, the rest are bloated with a lot of filler. There’s lots of thinking about stuff, and talking about stuff, and not enough action or movement of the overall story. It was especially aggravating to have yet another book where Team-Good has virtually no contact with Team-Evil.

Then there’s my pet peeve that is princess Adina. Previously, I was annoyed that she was just a plot device: a love interest and damsel to be rescued. But here, I was more annoyed by the attempt to make her some sort of rebel fighter. She’s no Princess Leia, nor Arista from Theft of Swords. There’s a single training session, and then she’s infiltrating a city and leading a coup?!

I continue to enjoy supporting characters the most, especially Grayle and Wendell, who provide humor and heart. And the mystery of Baresh had some cool horror aspects to it. But, because of the bloat, this four star listen dropped down to two.