A Warrior's Path

The Castes and the OutCastes Book 1

By: Davis Ashura

Narrated by: Nick Podehl

Length: 17 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's Summary

Winner 2015 Beverly Hills Book Awards for Fantasy! Bronze Medal for General Fantasy in the 2015 Reader's Favorite Awards! Finalist 2015 International Book Awards for Fantasy! Finalist 2015 Indie Excellence Book Awards for Fantasy!

Sweeping from the majestic city of Ashoka to the perilous Wildness beyond her borders, enter a world where Caste determines mystical Talents, the purity of Jivatma expresses worth, and dharma may be based on a lie.

Rukh Shektan has always understood duty. As a member of Caste Kumma, the warrior Caste, nothing else is acceptable. He is expected to take part in the deadly Trials, to journey the Wildness and protect the caravans linking Humanity's far-flung cities. Though the mission is dangerous, Rukh's hope and optimism are undaunted. Karma, however, is a fickle fiend. His caravan is destroyed by the monstrous Chimeras; twisted servants of their fearful goddess, Suwraith. While Rukh survives the attack, events force him along an uncertain path. Morality becomes a morass - especially when he encounters a mysterious warrior, Jessira Grey, a woman whose existence ought to be impossible. The holy texts warn against her kind: ghrinas, children of two Castes, abominations. They are to be executed whenever discovered, but for the first time in his life, Rukh defies duty. Jessira may be the key to his city's survival.

Meanwhile, a secret society seeks Ashoka's demise; foul murders cloak a deadlier purpose; and behind it all looms Suwraith. But it is the Baels, the leaders of Her Chimeras, who may hide the greatest deception of all.

Book 2, A Warrior's Knowledge, is also available.

©2013 Davis Ashura (P)2015 Davis Ashura

Critic Reviews

"The characters, dialogue and action are mature enough to satisfy readers at the older end of the YA range, and the author weaves them all into an attention-sustaining tale...the milieu is markedly original...first rate world-building". ( Kirkus Reviews)

Confounded and Confused

I lost the thread repeatedly in this story and had to rewind. I'm still not sure what happened when. The caste prejudices were belabored to the point where my teeth were grinding and I had to skip ahead. The magic is poorly defined and feels like it has been sprinkled through the story at random. I would not recommend this book at all. Even the excellent narration by Nick Podehl couldn't save the story.

Tedious start. But dont give up.

It started out in a tedious fashion. A lot of info is thrown in your face and its hard to absorb it cause its not easily relateable. I almost quit and the out of nowhere it sucked me in. I am glad I stuck it out.

good book but needs more

good story but never felt a connection to a character nor felt anything for them

a bit long winded.

i liked the story but it took a while before the writer progressed the story. The action scenes were good but too few and far apart.

Couldn't get into it

I dont know, a lot of good ingrediants but to me it just didn't click. Too much buildup. Couldn't get into the world or the characters in it. Great narration as always with Nick.

Great book and promising start to a new series.

Any additional comments?

A very engaging story with excellent character development. The author created an excellent blend of mystery, magic and action that kept me interested throughout the book. Nick Podehl is a master craftsman in the art of narration. I can't wait until the next book is available but I guess I will have to be patient.

"This audiobook was purchased by me, myself, and I at the cost of 1 audible credit so you can most certainly be assured that this review is completely unbiased."

It didn't get any better

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

Warning* contains some small spoilers, easy to include when you don't like the book.I felt like I was listening to a soap opera. Like many of the other reviews said there is a lot of action and something is always happening but the characters and their interaction is so unbelievable that It made the whole book a disaster. Only reason I stayed to the end was that previous reviews stated it would be better at the end and worthwhile. It didn't, and I don't understand how they could write that in the reviews. You only need to read the first chapters in this book, then you can put it to the side because nothing else story wise happens. It ends exactly the way it started.

Things that bothered me (there are a lot and I wont take all)

Love drama from the start to the end. If I wanted that, I could read the twilight books. Besides the fact that the dialoge between the "lovers" is a disaster and unbelievable the author includes not only 1 relationship, but 3 that we are forced to endure. This of course doesn't drive the story forward but backwards.

The human race is at the brink of extinction, but doesn't allow people from different cast to procreate and thus improve their powers. Unbelievable.

The imagination of the author is unimaginative. The city Ashoka could be any town in modern society, they have theaters, bars, restaurants, prostitutes, police. To make things more annoying, the author spend to much time on describing a society that really doesn't require any further explaining, as it is a copy of ours.

As the city is described in detail, we don't get any description of the world outside Ashoka, and yet the characters spend months outside Ashoka.

The people of Ashoka is given a great tool to fight evil, but no, they won't use it because their culture won't accept it. If any culture is at the brink of extinction they would use it no matter what and in the end, it was this fact that made me hate the book.

Has A Warrior's Path turned you off from other books in this genre?

It might have if this was the first book I read. Fortunately it isn't and I have read many great works that make me love the genre. I fail to see how this book could be liked by anyone over the age of 20.

Would you be willing to try another one of Nick Podehl’s performances?

This book was recommended to me because I have read books performed by Nick and thus I gave it a try. I don't think he is a bad narrator, but if he continues to perform for these shitty books I might avoid the books he has performed in the future.

What character would you cut from A Warrior's Path?

All

Any additional comments?

Do not read this book. I believed the other reviews, I shouldn't have. If you like me have read the great works available, this book will be a big disappointment.

Very Bad... why all the good reviews?

I got this because it has around a 4.5 average review. For the life of me I can't understand why. The fantasy genre has some very good books in it, the Warriors Path is not one of those.

Ashura is not a good writer. I could not figure out if this was meant to be a young adult read (and thus I was missing the point because I'm an old codger), or if this was meant to be a serious fantasy read on par with Game of Thrones or Name of the Wind (its not).

The world imagined by Ashura is paltry. It has these clans that can work a sort of magic. The clans co-exist in isolated cities surrounded by a wasteland desert of goblin like creatures that want nothing other than to kill those in the cities. This has been going on for 1000's of years.

The story follows a few different youths that act naively. I wanted to thrash them because they were so annoying.

The plot is goofy. Mostly a coming of age story with sappy B romance thrown in.

The writing is bad. I could not care less about what was going on. Both in the prose and the story structure. Ashura is not a good writer.

So why was this book nominated for so many awards? Why the great reviews? I don't know. I must be missing something.

A welcome surprise!

What did you love best about A Warrior's Path?

I listen to average of about two or three books a week primarily in the fantasy genre and I was beginning to get frustrated with the books I read recently. This book was a wonderful and welcome surprise. I was unsure about it initially but somewhere around the first quarter of the book I didn't want to stop listening and stayed up way too late because of my investment in the story. I finished the book the following day and I've immediately started the second book. I believe that most fans of fantasy will thoroughly enjoy this series as well. Last but definitely not least is Podehl's performance in the narration. In my opinion he is one of the most talented narrators out there. I hope you enjoy his performance as much as I did.

Making wildest dreams come true

The subject line is mainly for the author. Can't help writing a review with the prompt at the end of this book.

As I've written before. I'm not a full fantasy reader. But I've dabbled here and there. I've listened to a bunch in between mysteries and thrillers. Son of the Black sword, Was my last review but not my latest fantasy book. I've been off on my reviews lately, Not writing very many. This was probably one of the better fantasy books I've listened to an a while, not counting Son of the Black Sword. Though I may have liked it almost as much. Nick Podehl is one of my favorite narrators so that didn't hurt.

The simple review would be that this is very likable book, with a great cast of characters. The worst fantasy books for me are ones that are filled with tedious ongoing stories and little action. This doesn't jump around all over the place with a million different names you have to try and remember that all sound the same. This book had a nice easy flow and I've already downloaded the second book. Hopefully it is very similar.

That's my while working - Quick review.

For what it's worth, J

Left me wanting more

A slow start which was a little confusing but once I untangled the characters I couldn't stop listening.

A hero brought low by political machinations

Would you consider the audio edition of A Warrior's Path to be better than the print version?

loved every thing about this book apart from the main villain reminding me of the wicked witch of the west

What does Nick Podehl bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

Nick led me to this story via narrator search after listening to his previous work

good book

I really enjoyed.
begging of the book didn't suck me in, however as I went along it became better.
about half way through the book I was hooked. now I want to go through all 3 of them

Great book

Was not sure if I was going to enjoy this book but once it got started great listening

anticipation

really enjoyed this book,characters and plots are well thought out and brought to life by Nick,am lookin' forward to book 2

Better than expected

I took a chance on the complete kindle edition and liked it enough to get the audio. Enjoyable read, great story and surprising that I havn't heard more about the book, it's certainly better than a lot of the more well known titles out there. Good narration and story.

slow start to the book but great in the end

narrator was great the book took a bit of time to start up the characters do not disapoint in the end you will get addicted to it

Enjoyable will read on

Pacing at times went a little slack when switching from the main protagonist. In general I feel like authors do it too much to try and be... more diverse? More intricate? Fortunately the story of the protagonist rather than the side plots and characters kept me reading and it ends on notes of promise.

Too much characte detail, not enough story telling

I really struggled.. Less detail more story development. I got lost way to often with narrator pronunciation of difficult character and location names

Decent story, but not groundbreaking

I'll review the entire trilogy. The story starts off with a few weak chapters. Many irrelevant characters are introduced only to have them killed shortly after that. It was a disappointing start.

So don't worry if you don't remember all the names until chapter 5 or so. As long as you remember the events, it'll make sense. It's not a complicated story, but the number of irrelevant characters killed the momentum somewhat.

The writing has some flaws, but overall it's a good story. Not the most satisfying ending, but by that point I got used to the fact that this story didn't want to show me or give me what I wanted to see. Some effort was put into world building, but a few details were lacking and were left to the imagination.

I suppose most of the work went into developing the relationships between people and that's probably the story's main strength. It was satisfying to see the characters fight their challenges. And the author didn't seem unfair to them, even when a few/some/most/all died.

This is an author who respected his characters. And mainly for that, I respect this story. There are enough characters to root for, who won't disappoint.

The world building had gaps, the motives of the villains were sometimes unclear, the magic system was a little vague, the "epilogue" was a last chapter and a real epilogue was absent, the story left plenty of conclusions unsaid, but I found that despite my misgivings after finishing book 1, this is a story I'll think about for a while.