Branded

Master of All, Book 1

By: Simon Archer

Narrated by: J.F. Harding, Andrea Parsneau

Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's Summary

Defeat slavers. Take their monster girls. Conquer the world.

When William stumbles through a portal in the middle of Antarctica, he'll suddenly find himself in a world unlike any he's ever known. Now, he's surrounded by monster girls, vicious warlords, and everything in between. 

Worse, his only weapon is a magical branding iron, which seems to have one skill and one skill only, to overwrite slave brands. Thing is, monster girls seem pretty grateful about being freed from the tyranny of their masters, and with each one he brands, the stronger he becomes. 

And that's a good thing because in a world under siege, William and his magical branding iron might be the only thing that stands between them and complete annihilation.

Warning: Contains a harem and adult situations. You have been warned.

©2019 Simon Archer (P)2020 Podium Publishing

Disappointed

Andrea Parsneau only has 20 mins max of time in this book. The other nararator did an ok job, but throwing her name on there for sales is not ok.

Weird narration

instead of using the two narrators to split up between the male and female characters, they decided to do a weird thing where they take turns when the chapter changes focus on a character....... if you plan to take on multiple narrators then have them fill the roles entirely not only partly

narrator feedback

when I saw a male/female team I was expecting them to play the respective parts witch is not the case, its kinda disappointing but they still did good I liked how Andrea would narrate the female centric chapters. It would be nice if they could go back and redo the character parts.

Meh...

Feels like Forger of Worlds, but with slavery, torture, and rape... Not really my thing.

Terrible

Not only the story(Guy runs around branding women with "freedom" which appears to be a permanent drugged up debuff that comes with a side of heavy addiction to his hard pole), but also the narration planning was horrible. It is bad enough that Andrea Parsneau snuck in under another narrator's name, but they divided the labor in chapters instead of characters... anyone can tell you that is a bad idea. Imagine spending half your time listening to a bad impersonation of a character you can already barely tolerate.

Fast paced? Like a fighter jet!!!

Loved the story and the pacing of it. I didn’t feel like I was being dragged down with back story, character development, setting the scenes or overly dramatic harem relationships and poking (if you know what I mean).
Instead the story moved along at a fast clip equal to the timeline of events happening. I felt like I knew the characters and the world too. Loved the story and upset more than I thought I’d be when i discovered books 2 and 3 aren’t available yet.
Uhh dude how am I supposed to get my fix? I need more kicking ass, taking names, and different world cute harem ladies (not girls but badass ladies).
I’d be remiss if I didn’t include how well J. F. Harding and Andrea Parsneau (for real autocorrect that’s her last name stop fixing it) did with five if each character life, voice, personality, and really make my ears believe every aspect of EACH person they voiced. Outstanding job to both of them.

The story is odd, but fun

This follows the general pattern of harem stories. It is fun and entertaining, while downplaying many of the darker aspects.

The narrators did a good job, but the choice to have different narrators voice the same characters within a single book was a poor one. Changes in narrators are one of the most common complaints among long running series, and this detracts from the story. Additionally, it really seems that the addition of Andrea Parsneau is more for publicity than content.

Did not use the 2 narrator's to the fullest

It mostly had the Male narrator doing all the roles but for a few chapters hopefully they work to gether better in the next book

Happy Yet Confused

Narration can make or break a book easily doesn't matter if its a great book or if its a terrible book if we do not like the narrator its going to fail. J.F. Harding is a good narrator going to put him on my list of hes good check out the book people but I got to ask why is Andrea here. She is a fantastic narrator so I would have liked to hear more from her after hearing her the first time I was getting memories from other great books she did and I was excited but then she was gone. She did so little if I told you to skip the two chapters did you wouldn't have missed anything you couldn't have picked up from the rest of the book.

Interesting story but...

This is a interesting story with a great premise, but the narration style made hard to finish.

I brand you, for Freedom

2 hour book in an 8 hour wrapper, every cliche going. chosen one will save planet by branding ever atractive female he comes accross. MC is dull as dishwater, story is slow and obvious and romance is non existent.

Did not finish

I had to stop listening the moment Harding tried speaking as the female dryad. It was just painful.

Very enjoyable

I enjoyed the narration. The characters were very easy to distinguish.
Good fun to listen too, I am already reading the 3rd book seeing as the audio books are not yet available.

Endearing characters, all but for the protagonist

I gotta say, I was pleasantly surprised by this one, it has been one of the better stories I’ve listened to as part of the free catalogue.
If you want a classic good guy fights baddies and rescues the Princess(es), along with some fairly interesting world building and ideas that are the right amount of classic fantasy cheese and interesting new ideas, this is a great choice.
My only real complaint is the main character. I'm not sure I've seen a better example of a Gary Stu than this guy, I can deal with him having all of this survivalist training thanks to his pops, but he was just way too much of a perfect being for me, and whenever we enter another pov, it's solely for other characters praising the main character in a way that would have been egotistical for him to think of himself.

Besides that if you think this sounds like its worth your time, I wholeheartedly think you should take that dive.

ok, but not my cup of tea

litrpg with harem elements. ok, but too little level/adventure focus for my taste. .

An Adventure Story

A fun adventure story where a hero finds himself exploring a new world, gathering friends and vanquishing enemies.

It is an easy listen with many cheesy elements and litrpg style events and encounters. I think these elements makes it a good listen.

Reaction formation

Why do people write about harems all the time? Reaction formation in it's purest form.

Much better than it’s blurb would suggest!

This book is really let down by it’s blurb: I would not have bought it based on the description but it seemed just about worth a try from the Plus catalog. Now having listened to it though, I definitely plan to give the next book in the series a try as I enjoyed it far more than I was expecting!

mixed bag

The world building and story telling are pretty good. The characters are a bit 2 dimensional. The saving grace is the narration which is very good. Not a huge fan of Andrea after struggling through 30+ hours of the Wandering Inn, but this was better. The premise does require a very healthy suspension of disbelief.

Great performances, otherwise… meh

It’s a decent concept, it just feels rushed. Huge social and interpersonal issues just get resolved instantly like it’s a Saturday morning cartoon or something.

Sadly, it boils down to this, the main character is a Mary Sue with a harem.

To Simon Archer: You’ve got some interesting world-building in there, I’d be interested to see more of your work once you’ve got some more experience under your belt.