Alpha Warlock Academy

Alpha Warlock Academy, Book 1

By: Noah Layton

Narrated by: Erin Bateman, Matt Hicks

Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's summary

I was just a normal guy making his way in the big city—until I found myself transported to another world to train at the Alpha Warlock Academy.

Not only do they want me among their ranks, but they want me to train among the most powerful of warlocks at the Academy.

I've got a lot on my plate: cramming spells, training for combat, and trying not to get myself killed during my initial challenges. Fortunately, I've also got plenty of friends to help me out, including my hobgoblin neighbor and the smooth-talking genie across the hall. And as an exceptionally powerful warlock, let's just say that more than one of the Academy's beautiful members has her eyes on me.

As an Alpha Warlock, I'm also bound to a super-powerful artifact. And this weird object? It keeps making strange sounds, even though nobody else's does. And the energy contained inside? I'm about to find out just how powerful it really is…

Alpha Warlock Academy features violence, bad language, undefined relationships, and explicit sexuality.

©2022 Noah Layton (P)2023 Podium Audio

Wth

Honestly, that story had no right being as good as it was. I got this as a little filler to kill time while waiting for one of my other series to come out with something. I wasn't expecting the story to be so engaging. Without any spoilers, the story is basically Harry Potter but if hogwarts were a university. The story stuck to the basics, didn't try to over reach and stayed in a reasonable lane. There is no ridiculous "I'm immediately a God lvl threat and I'm humble and magnanimous, so I'm basically my own worst enemy." There's actually character AND story development here. Great first book, most likely getting the 2nd when it comes out.

Light hearted and fun adventure

This is a fun and light hearted story about a guy who gets pulled into an alternate universe and as a result joins some training academy and has some cool adventures

Another great book

Main character is believable and not a bumbling idiot. Realistic relationships between characters. I’m probably going to pick up more books by the author now

Great first book

I really enjoyed this book. It has all the best elements of an Academy book without going too far in the first installment. Surprise, surprise, the story actually takes place in the Academy itself. The MC is confident, but not arrogant, and the women around him are actually intelligent.
Looking forward to Book 2.

Send it

Noah hit all the marks for this genre, the narrative performance was incredible and the story was new and exciting. Worth it!

👍

I found this book a very good balance and the fact that it doesn’t mind skipping time through boring subjects.

Great Voice Acting and interesting story

rather liked the story, got dry in some parts but picked back up rather quickly.

Easily Forgettable

So I did listen to this to this all the way through even though it was a bit of a struggle. It wasn't fantastic but wasn't terrible. It just easily forgettable.

Ok with issues

First, spoiler warning, some things may be used from the story as an example, so you've been warned.

Second, I wouldn't say this is a bad story, it's passable as something to listen to if you're on a commute and can just sort of shut off your analytical mind or hyper immersion and just let the story flow as you drive or whatever, which is what I did, but even while being far more tolerable than I have been in the past, I noticed some things.

Third, to the criticism.

This story is heavy with the everything-comes-easy-to-mc trope. And I do mean everything. Even when Layton is trying to push a conflict in front of MC, Layton turns around and hands MC an easy way out of that conflict in a handful of paragraphs. This really happened with the women MC got involved with. Couple of conversations and interactions and after MC shows some strength, they're all fawning over him and the MFC is "happy to see him with other women" almost instantly. This is really evident with 2nd MFC when he and her get it on immediately after they meet. Sigh. So many harem stories do this because of intolerant fans who will go off if the MC loses one fight or makes one wrong decision. It's unfortunate because the everything-comes-easy-to-mc trope tends to make stories generic and boring even when the author is trying to be creative in other areas of the story. Unfortunately that's what happened with this.

It's also heavy with the military-academy-not-really-it's-just-college trope. I say this because MC and several other characters associate their training with inevitably putting them in the equivalent of the galaxies "Peacekeeping" fighting force when they graduate. Yet, the story is written as this academy that's training them for that is more like a regular college where the students get to hang out wherever they want after school, etc. And I'm talking about first years who in a real military-like training atmosphere would have the most restrictions put on them until the "graduated" to senior training levels. But this "regular college" atmosphere leads me to perhaps my biggest complaint.

This story really suffers from the aliens-are-just-humans-in-cosplay-bro trope. Really. Here's an example. MC and his friends go to A JAZZ CLUB (caps for emphasis) after an exam event. Yes, A JAZZ CLUB. MC has been abducted (remember this in a few moments) and brought to another planet where he is surrounded by nothing but aliens, EXTRATERRESTRIALS, strange culture, etc. Yet, none of the cultures are actually strange. They all speak Americanized English with full on Americanized phrases, slang, and idioms. NO, NOTHING ABOUT A TRANSLATOR WAS SIGNIFICANTLY MENTIONED to the point I kept listening hard when he first arrived for someone to say something pivotal about it and why all of these people were sounding so much like you could meet them on the street anywhere in the U.S. The aforementioned JAZZ CLUB even had JAZZ MUSIC and AMERICAN-LIKE ART DECO DECORATIONS?????

I felt that Layton could've been a bit more creative with this aspect. I get that this is a story with the fantasy-creatures-are-ETs trope and all that, but Layton could've put some time in the worldbuilding and came up with unique cultures for some of these races. To be fair, there were some cultural things spoken of for the ETs, but only to highlight a character trait. Orcs are strong, for example, so it wasn't really anything new. Just used to break the mold for a particular character. MC's Orc friend is more of the intelligent variety, for example.

There were also some continuity issues. Sometimes these happened within a few sentences. Almost like Layton came back to his story and forgot what he wrote maybe like 10 sentences above, but just started writing without care or returning to make things consistent. Sometimes a character would declare they knew about subject A only for several sentences later in the same scene act like they never knew anything about subject A. It's not hair pulling annoying or distracting as I've seen in some other stories, but I put this here as a warning for some who may find subtle continuity mistakes a thing that pull them out of a story.

The narration wasn't horrible. Erin, in my opinion, has been around for a while, yet she sounds the same, and not necessarily in a good way. I've said this before on Audible Narrations that she's done. I feel like by now, like a lot of other narrators, she should've come into having a bit more of a range for the female characters. Matt Hicks, I have to give him props in this one, he's done a great job versus when I've heard him before, hence my point about after a while Erin should be doing far, far better than she is. Beyond that, if you've listened to either of them before and tolerated their narration, then it's nothing so horrific that you'd just stop listening. It's salvageable to get through the story.

Overall, as I said initially, this isn't a bad story. It's easy-to-listen to, mostly in my humble opinion, if you're not hyper focused on it. I gave it 3 stars because I finished the story without busting a brain vein from any type of author-induced-silliness in the story.

Meh

I don't really know what the genre it is going for but it misses out on a lot of the basics of all of them. there's magic but no system to speak of, no basics of how it works and how one gets better. The sci-fi elements are just there for flavor everything is just like earth except there is teleportation for transit (there's coffee, emojis, same turns of phrase except once in the beginning that is never followed up on). If you want a lot of smut this isn't it just enough to entice a few people by having it. I ended up skipping the latter parts to try to see if there was going to be a overarching narrative at any point... He wants to let his friend know he's not dead but makes no effort to do so. The whole thing feels rushed like driving through downtown at 80 mph and being expected to have a nuanced opinion on how the resteraunt scene is. You know it's there, maybe even the relative class of the area but otherwise not even enough to decide if you would like anything or not.