Dissonance

A LitRPG Adventure (Unbound Book 1)

By: Nicoli Gonnella

Narrated by: Travis Baldree

A new world. A thousand threats. Welcome to The Continent.

Felix's life on Earth had become a series of dead-end jobs, ruined relationships, and rotating apartments smaller than most postage stamps. By all accounts, even his own, he was a coward. Too afraid to move forward, to take risks. Yet when given the chance to choose between risking his life or walking away from a deadly encounter, he didn't hesitate.

Moments before his untimely demise, Felix was snatched from earth and thrust into a magical world known only as "The Continent". Empowered by the "System", he learns that he can strengthen himself through combat and dedication. To survive, he'll have to push himself beyond his limits, or else fall to the monsters all around him.

Levels, stats, and magic. Death is the start of a terrible fate, but if he lives...no one knows what he will become.

©2022 Nicoli Gonnella (P)2022 Mountaindale Press

Decent Start

I won't say I was blown away but it was a decent litRPG. I will detract a little from my review and explain why though.

1) Distracting / Distracted - I often found myself wandering mentally while listening. Some of this as other reviews have said the stat readouts start to get a bit excessive which seems to start a bit more towards the middle of the book. Early on the character sheet seems simple and fast enough to read off but it quickly becomes too much to get a full read off each time. I often find character sheets hard to listen to when read where as when in paper in a grid or whatever its not too bad to glance at. Beyond this though I found myself drifting sometimes as things were happening and I am not sure why that was but sometimes it just felt long winded in doing things which left me mentally elsewhere.

2) I am getting a bit tired of a character being in one location the whole time while massively moving forward but always finding the perfect maximum difficulty challenge to overcome. I guess what I am saying is that it makes sense for a character to start weak and ramp up towards the top of the difficulty of an area if they aren't really moving around a ton. I don't like how he is put to a maximum challenge the entire time. I guess I chalk this sort of a thing up to making the plot feel scripted and less natural.

Overall, the book was fine. I didn't hate it and I would probably be willing to try out a second but I am not so excited that I am looking to see if there is more to this on amazon / patreon.

Travis is the best.

To be honest I only started with this story when I saw that Travis was the narrator. His performance never disappoints. I'm glad I gave this story a chance because its great. It draws some parallels to some others I've read but it is still able to be completely its own.

I've listened to the series multiple times

I love how interconnected the books can get as you progress throughout the series, something mentioned on one book can have new meaning or expand the story in another

Outstanding storytelling esp last 4 hrs

Could be a standalone novel but excited to hear what comes next. 15 word minimum.

Defines the genre

It is so well thought out, well performed and a pleasure to listen to. highly recommend