Age of Heroes

The Pantheon Saga, Book 1

By: C.C. Ekeke

Narrated by: Roger Wayne, Adenrele Ojo, Kaleo Griffith

Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

Every hero has a beginning. So does every villain.

Titan, the world’s greatest superhero, has been murdered by his longtime archenemy Lord Borealis. And from the ashes rises a new generation.

Gifted with powers on the night of Titan’s death, 15-year-old Hugo awakes to the strange world of superheroes. A world he isn’t prepared for.

But with godlike powers and a history of tragedy, will Hugo become a guardian of justice...or agent of chaos?

Warning: Contains moderate swearing and big damn superhero action. If you’re not a fan of moderate swearing or big damn superhero action, this book might not be for you.

©2019 C.C. Ekeke (P)2019 Podium Publishing

three storys one book but why together

so i liked the book but i have some issues. i uderstand that the storys are trying to show difrent view ponts in the world. but stoys are onley conected by the fact that thay are in the same world. as the three storys fallow difrent people and have no real interactions between them it is hard swaping back and foreth between main characters almost every chapter. it also chooses to do it at very poor times. driving me at some points the skip ahead chapters and then go back see what happened with other character. for example there are a couple times when you are in the middle of a fight and decides to go on two different main character. before it finally gets back to the character that's in a fight. I can't understand that in this scenario where are the other characters might have some effect on the outcome of the fighting or being involved in some way but it's just a completely different thing that they're doing that could take place before or after a daring and there's nothing that really tells you that it is happening at the same time. they also have three very different stories that would each be good on their own but do not complement each other in any way. and almost felt like reading three different books at the same time. as you can freely switch between the characters storylines without learning anything really would affect others. I'll give the Nextbook a shot but if it doesn't get better I probably will not continue book series.

mostly excellent

only complaint is the reporter arch. that story aspect was too much imo. I'm not as interested in office politics as a super hero story. it kind of dragged on too much.

Good idea, less than stellar execution

The story and world that this book illustrates is interesting and engaging, after a somewhat slow beginning. However there are a few issues. The author has a tendency to over-describe everything, and not always well. Some characters are described every time they are shown, and it is not always consistent each time they are described. The most egregious one of these is in the beginning when Hugo is described as "A skinny overweight boy". What does my mental eye even do with that? The author also describes things strangely with odd comparisons and references. And if the female pov describes her hair as "kinky" one more time I'll find a way to enter this world to shave it all off. Speaking of which, the female POV is just a bad story. I get that it is supposed to give us background knowledge, but her storyline is bland and her character is unlikable. A reporter that gets that worked up at the very beginning of an interview so often is useless as a POV. It almost seems like this storyline was written by a different person, as while all the characters have some over the top corny lines and horrendously lame jokes, this character seems to dial it up to 13 for some reason. Lastly, the female narrators performance is noticeably worse than the other two narrators. Her voice is stilted and robotic, with odd inflection on common words and strange pauses in the middle of sentences. Her microphone also seems much tinnier than the others, which is painful when using headphones.

Last criticism, I wish authors with multiple POVs would realize they are not REQUIRED to switch between the characters in order between chapters. This is especially jarring since there is zero connection between the storylines. I'm sure they will connect later, but in the meantime there is less than zero reason to take us out of the middle of a big fight to have us watch the reporter across the country in a bar for half an hour. Don't cut away from the action to something else unless there's a good reason, that's just lazy writing. This isn't a TV show where the producers are waiting for the source material to catch up, finish the scene before switching characters!

Overall the story is interesting and I plan to continue, but I genuinely hope the author improves their writing skills over the course of the series or I may have trouble getting all the way through.

Story decent. Narration disappointing.

Female narrator seriously reduced any enjoyment of the book. Even trying to get past her poor narration, it was hard to focus on the story without being distracted. If I decide to check out the next book in the series, I will be reading it, not listening to it.

Amazing take on superhero genre.

Amazing story. Lots of diversity without it feeling forced just for the sake of it. Interesting characters. Amazing narration. Loved this book.

Surprisingly well-written, but harem-ish

This book is surprisingly well-written for books of this genre; the three main characters follow their own growth paths and their behaviors are all plausible given what happens to them. Some scenes are contrived to accommodate the plot. For instance, in this book, one of our socially awkward main characters asks a super popular girl for a date in front of all her shallow friends and is humiliated. Typical superhero scenario. Except we later learn that our awkward protagonist already has a secret relationship with this girl and would have had ample opportunity to approach her more privately, which makes this scene highly implausible. This humiliation, however, was necessary background for a continuing subplot.

I also share the revulsion another reviewer expressed over the omnipresent teenage lust in this series. Not teenage love, but lust. Every character is evaluated by the degree of sexual arousal they generate and our main characters are continually experiencing a "stirring in the loins". One of the main characters is only 15, so this feels inappropriate.

Kind of a young adult The Boys set in Midwest

A good story, nice action, good character development for the most part. A fine read/listen

something different from Marvel and DC

the story is engaging and something different from the classic superhero trope that is so popular in cinema these days all of the characters are flushed out and you can really put yourself in their shoes.

Can't wait for the next book!!!

Loved it! Never heard of this author but thought I would check him out because I'm into superhero type of stuff. I'm soooo glad I did. Great actions and I love the diversity of the characters. I'm hoping the next one comes out soon!

Laced with strong profanity unnecessarily.

The story was entertaining, but clearly directed toward a younger audience. Which made the unexpected peppering of strong profanity all the more offensive.
Also, the actors natural voices were great, but any attempt at gender or ethnic variations were utter fails! As a result, I found the found all the extreme ethnic descriptions unnecessary and extremely distracting. The female voice actor can do two accents... her own and some muddied Indian-ish accent. So, the Irish and native American men, as well as the Cuban, Bronx, Mexican, vague Latina and Asian women, all sounded like a Simpsons parody of a 7-11 employee.
Fortunately, the male actor didn't even attempt the Irish accent, but just stayed in his regular voice and let the author's description be sufficient. Unfortunately he did not do the same when attempting a female voice. Instead of raising the pitch of his voice to indicate a female, he stayed with his deep voice, but enunciated words like the stereotype of a gay man to "sound like a woman". Ugh!
Many other voice actors with even deeper voices that his are able to modulate their pitch. They don't really sound like a woman, but sufficiently convey the idea without sounding like a gay man.
Hopefully someone will give these actors constructive feedback so they can improve. They seem to have great potential, but PLEASE eiher learn how to do other voices successfully, or just stay with your regular voice.