Biomancer

Biomancer, Book 1

By: Shemer Kuznits

Narrated by: Luke Daniels

Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

A new series in the New Era Online universe from the author who brought you Life Reset!

John Slater never had any interest in video games. Now he’s got to beat one to save his brother.

A battle-hardened, ex-special forces soldier, John was never a fan of games...unlike his brother. But now, he’s got to learn and learn fast if he has any chance of saving his younger sibling. Magic, monsters and levels are new to him, and his real-world skills aren’t as useful as he thinks.

Lucky for him, he’s used to adapting on the fly. And soon, the world will know why his squadmates called him Seraph, the death angel.

Note: Events in Biomancer happen after Life Reset. However, the two plot lines are not directly connected and can be listened to independently.

©2021 Shemer Kuznits (P)2021 Podium Audio

Very Disappointing

No Thought, just do. Incompetent and shortsighted. struggle just to finish. could have been very good, but it wasn't.

Please read

The book is solid but is having an issue of people comparing it to the previous series and not for what it is a brand new series with different direction overall really good listen wonderful narration

Lots Of Filler

This book is Very Boring. There is a lot filler between the main character and him accomplishing his main objective. This makes the book drag to a really slow pace. The MC is not likable, so much so I found myself cheering for him to fail and get hurt. I am a huge fan of New Era Online and this book disappoints

GOAT x2!!!!!!

Shemer Kuznits and Luke Daniels are a match made in heaven!!!! Luke’s narration brings life to this story in a way only a true Audible Hall of Famer can!! Can’t wait for Book 2!

Great new offering from a great author!

As a big fan of Life Reset, I was excited to listen to a new book by Shemer Kuznits, and I was not disappointed! The writing is excellent, humorous in places, and just an overall great story for fans of the genre. The new MC, Seraph, is a funny guy, if slightly sociopathic, but that’s an important part of the story. The pacing is really on point as well, and I felt that the story had a satisfying conclusion, setting up for the next book. I also really enjoyed Luke Daniels’s narration, he’s a very talented narrator and the voices he gave some of the characters had me in stitches at points! If you’re a fan of Life Reset, or just LitRPGs in general, give this a shot, it’ll be worth your time!

Luke for the Win!

To be honest, I’m on the fence…. Performance 10/10 Luke is top tier in his field. Story was good but it’s build up was unrealistic in the first couple of chapters of the book. Not enough back story. Story felt like mmmmm it’s missing suspense for me. Don’t want to give away spoilers. Loved the last series and want to love this one and I hope the next book opens up to the real world and game world mixing more.
Love the narration of the AI’s hopefully more of the snark and crazy!

VI Narration Disappointingly Painful to Listen To

I'll start by acknowledging that the Life Reset series was one of my all-time favorite series, and my audible library is over 300 books strong. The ending of Life Reset was bitter-sweet for me. I knew I would miss the story of Oren and Greenpeace, but I was also very excited to begin a new series (Biomancer) set in the same world, NEO.

My first surprise was that Biomancer was narrated by Luke Daniels instead of whom I was accustomed to in the world of NEO, Jeff Hayes. I thought that the decision to move to a new narrator was a good one. Luke Daniels is already a well-established narrator in the sub-genre of LitRPG and I had previously enjoyed his narration quite a bit. It also made sense in that a different narrator would help separate this new series from the original and help make it stand on its own.

The narration started off well, with Luke Daniels' classic voice. He can't change his voice quite as much as some other narrators can, but he is a solid narrator in his own right. Anytime he voiced the main character, he used his classic LD voice which was solid. Once the VI character, Maxwell, was introduced though, it went off the rails quickly. I don't know what Daniels was thinking in the great, severe changes in his inflection voicing this character but I found it extremely difficult to keep listening to. His voice became grating and scattered, using highs and lows in an over-the-top manner.

One can easily imagine that the actual dialogue of the VI did not warrant such severe changes in tone, often in the same sentence. Think Jim Carrey in his Ace Ventura prime, combined with exorbitant amounts of caffeine, ready to vocally explode while simply explaining basic game mechanics to the main character. Now imagine having to listen to that for extended periods of time. There were times it took a lot of self-control to not just turn the book off.

In summary, decent start to a new series and one that I was excited for. However, the inconsistent vocal narration really killed it for me and I would recommend reading this one the old-fashioned way.

I'm done with Luke Daniels

Wow, Luke Daniels is now doing Saturday morning cartoon voices. The voice he uses for the AI in Biomancer is extremely annoying. Aside from the Iron Druid Chronicles, which he did an outstanding job on, the most recent books I've listened to with him reading have ruined the books for me. I am early into this book and so far I like the premise for the story and the writing. Hopefully the AI character doesn't show up too often. Luke, calm down!

Return to NEO with an old RTS flair!

Another great work from Shemer Kuznits. We revisit NEO after the events with Oran. A man trying to save his brother. Which is a great premise to begin with. The cast, setting, and storytelling are all great. I’m also really glad to see my favorite faction from an old RTS i loved come to life in this story in its own unique way.

Not worthy of 5 stars

Pacing - Its bad the first 8-11 or so hours is just him gonna be leveling with very little and i mean very little plot progression until the last couple of hours into the book and even then it still is not by much.

Main Character - Dude is straight dumb as a rock, if he has a problem he just calls his ai buddy and leans heavily on him through out the "story" and while the character does grew i just found him insanely boring.

Plot - go in game save brother basically the author makes it feel like its urgent and important, and after listening to the first book for 17hrs i can safely say with how little progress there was in book one it did not seem to be all that urgent or important. though they will bring it up every now again but you just do not feel like its something important .

Voice acting - pretty decent overall nothing to really complain about here.

Ability - kinda a unique ability but i felt that with how dumb the author made the main character it felt like it was wasted and could have been far more interesting/better

overall - 2/5 story wise with the voice acting bring it up to 3/5 i do not know why people rate this so high its okay but its just generic lit rpg stuff most authors can write.

Author Read God's Eye By Aleron Kong

And didn't grasp that the "One man on an island solo playing LitRPG" is the absolute worst way to write a game lit story.

loved it

loved the 1st series and love this, and again a narrator that does a splendid job, excellent voices and to be able to hear the bloopers at the end was hilarious 😂 Aa Ssnaaake 🤣

Not as attention grabbing as the first series...

whilst not being as attention grabbing as the first series, I did enjoy the book. 5 stars for the voice acting, the story was a bit dull at points 3 stars but overall it was enjoyable.
the bloopers at the end made me laugh hard, extra points for whoever decided to add them in

Meh

I really enjoyed Life Reset, especially the early books in the series so I am a fan of the original series. this spin off is a bit well, underwhelming. It's slightly boring to be blunt and I really couldn't care less what happened to the characters. To illustrate this and I'll try and do this without it being too much of a spoiler. One of the characters dies towards the end and I'm guessing you were at least supposed to be slightly put out by this but I wasn't even slightly bothered. I don't regard myself as particularly heartless it was just a lack of the writer's ability to get you invested.
I've not definitely ruled out continuing with book 2 but I'd probably have to either have nothing else to read or left it that long I forgot how poor the first one was hence the review to remind me!

Excellent Beginning

A brilliantly written predictable story with an expected outcome which makes me look forward to part two.

Another winner

I loved the author's previous books, and he hit it out the park with this one as well

Monotonous

Main characters choices always come across as childish and forced, so that events can unfold.

I'm disappointed

I loved the original series. So I hoped this would be just as great. Unfortunately it was not. I had a really hard time finishing this book, but i kept hoping it would turn in to a great story, it didn't.
The story is soooo slow, and very little happens. 3/4 of the book is a detailed account, on how the main character goes out, and kill animals to level up again and again. It is just to much of the same