Cry, Voidbringer

By: Elaine Ho

Narrated by: JiaLing Pan

In a broken system, do you save yourself or fight for the people you love?

With the godspower waning, the queen of Ashvi has had to find another way to bolster her fight against her imperialist oppressors. The solution: wrenching children of other cultures from their homes and conscripting them into service.

Hammer was one of those children. Now, she's a jaded soldier waging Ashvi's perpetual war, thinking only of her own survival. But when she accidentally rescues Viridian, a child with rare and potentially devastating powers, her priorities shift. The girl appears to be the answer to the queen's prayers—the perfect weapon to restore her kingdom's ancient borders, even if the colonized cities they reconquer don't want her version of liberation. Can Hammer protect Viridian from the system that broke her...before the girl's power is unleashed on the world?

Cry, Voidbringer is a gripping saga of how far one will go for freedom and control—and how easily it can all be taken away.

©2025 Elaine Ho (P)2025 Podium Audio

Terrible audio, confusing story

I listen to 150-200 audiobooks a year and this performance was by far the worst. The narrator’s lack of voice changes for chapters of different characters’ perspectives (specifically hammer and the queen) made me have to think really hard about who was even talking at certain points, and then when the voice for the godchild changed I couldn’t differentiate hers with the other female characters either. The worst part, however is that this audiobook was poorly edited, if at all. The narrator would speak a phrase or sentence, pause for a couple seconds, and re-read the same words, changing her intonation. This happened at least 7-10 times throughout the book. There were also a few background noises that made me remove my noise canceling headphones in my empty house and look around for what was making the sound. The story was confusing as it is and this audiobook made it much worse. Color me disappointed :(