Black Dawn

An Apocalyptic LitRPG Adventure (Fae Nexus, Book 1)

By: Nathan Ameye

Narrated by: Steve Campbell, Marli Watson

Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

Magic, mayhem, and moonshine.

Gage came home to the Ozarks to mend fences with the friends he’d left behind. But when a solar storm reconnects Earth to the Fae Nexus, the world is engulfed in magical energy, altering the laws of nature...violently. Fuel, ammunition, and electronics explode, leaving the world in a dark apocalypse.

As the flames die down, demons emerge through the Fae Nexus, swarming Gage’s hometown and enslaving the survivors.

To fight back, Gage and his reunited friends harness Fae powers, becoming the Wizard, Ranger, and Fighter they’ve always played in their favorite roleplaying game.

With the help of a pair of moonshiners turned Alchemists and the ghost of a long-dead gunslinger, Gage and his friends have to level up fast to free their families and defend their home against the demonic horde.

He may have walked away once, but this time the only thing Gage is leaving behind are his regrets and a pile of dead demons.

©2021 Shadow Alley Press Inc (P)2021 Shadow Alley Press Inc

Overall meh

Never been a fan of these books that take place in the middle of nowhere. The main characters are strange and the story is a little ridiculous. I'm not talking about the litrpg portion just the whole bad guy thing. the whole thing seemed not well thought out.

a fun redneck litrpg

Are you looking for a redneck litrpg where the wizard is a hunter that uses duct tape magic to heal? It was a lot of fun and looking forward to the next one

A Gritty Take on a LitRPG

Black Dawn is a gritty LitRPG that happens in the “real” world as opposed to in a game. The premise of the plot is that aliens screw with earth’s physics to make them follow game mechanics—a process that kills the vast majority of earth’s population. The suggestion is that five or six thousand years ago, this is how the world functioned and for some reason that stopped. Now it’s back and demons have begun to populate the world. Three friends are camping when the event happens and they manage to survive character creation and their first encounter with a demon. Then they set about finding out what’s happened to their town.

This is an action-packed, fast-moving adventure which is frankly lots of fun. It mixes the need for the heroes to combine solid real-world tactics with game strategies. It captured and held my interest throughout the novel. The only thing I didn’t like is that dice are actually rolled when the characters try and use their skills. While it’s true that dice are rolled in RPGs, my friends and I always saw that as an approximation of the chance that our characters could perform an action. If we were actually trying to perform said action instead of pretending to while we sat around a table, the dice would be unnecessary. We would succeed or fail. I thought the dice were just a little too much RPG in the LitRPG, but other than that, I loved the book.

I really like it

this series was really good. I liked the apocalypse aspect. it's hard to find apocalypse books nowadays, us audible fans know that.

Steve Campbell gives this the type of feel no other narrator can give it. this book is a must buy for apocalyptic readers.
The way the system works is so good. It's so unique and systems like this one is so hard to find. This book was a nice light hearted listen, with his friends and the drama going on with the world and his brother it gives you a light hearted listen with still having seriousness too it. The way they all work together and talk about abilities and make ideas together really pulls it together as a team book. Everything goes in sync in this book and the writing abilities that you need too do that have to be superb. You need to get this book.

Heart Pumping Role-Playing Thriller

Get ready to delve into an exciting D&D role-playing-game-turned-into-real-life adventure.

From the outset, my biggest question was, "who is the sadistic DM behind this IRL game?" That diety should be the real enemy in this book. But that doesn't ever seem to come up. The universe is simply out to kill the main characters . . . or make them heroes . . . either one, capriciously, as long as it is entertaining to some unknown audience watching from the outer regions of the galaxy. The characters are quickly reduced to a set of character stats, easily sacrificed (potentially) with nothing more to save them than the roll of a set of dice. I was surprised by how much this underlying premise bothered me. I think the author was going more for a Jumanji-type storyline that was more fantastically adventurous than existentially despotic. That said, I think many people - especially role-playing fans may really enjoy the story.

There are several interesting characters, and the plot is compelling. And I enjoyed the narration.

This book is fairly esoteric, and much of the book is filled with ongoing game-play, dice-rolling, stats, power-ups, etc. Again, some people may really enjoy this as a sort of new individualized game-play through reading. If you can't get your friends together for D&D, this type of novel could potentially give you your fix.

In my opinion, there was an unfortunate amount of language and violence in this book (for a YA book), if that's something you care about.

Excellent Series Starter!

I really enjoyed this book! I loved how the author set the story up. I thought the way he got the characters "into the game" was pretty clever. This one kept me engaged all throughout. Also, I thought the dice rolls were pretty cool!

As always, Steve Campbell was perfection with his narration. It's my first time listening to Marli Watson and I was impressed. She's fantastic. The duet narration was good. It was seamless.

I can't wait to read/listen to book 2.

Oof this was a rough listen

There wasn't much unique or interesting in this book, other than the learning of magic. The combat based on dice rolls was generic and boring. I felt nothing for the characters when they got injured and that was still more feelings than the characters showed. The MC was about the dumbest person I could possibly imagine. He literally threw a tantrum when his brother suggests he take a safer class because this isn't a game. Ha as if, from then on the MC treats everything like a game. This book would have been better as a gamelit instead of litrpg, but instead it tried to do both poorly.

Good one

I enjoyed the story, post apocalyptic system but heavily influenced by DnD, likeable characters, the villain of book 1 was just meh i don't even remember his name only his profession and last they had to roll for everything and i mean everything and i was mostly okay with that

Apocalypse comes to modern day

The principle of the story is what drew me to the book. Overall the story was engaging as what would happen in modern time.

My only gripes is what I would describe as a lack of emotion from the narrators and what felt like a slow pace for the story. Overall I think only 2 weeks of time go by in the story and it felt like most of it was just diving into studying/understanding and not much activity going on

dicey

The roll mechanics.... they are not terrible just not fun. A powerful God force rolls dice to see if you can hit stuff...