Desire: A LitRPG Adventure (Volume 1)

By: Cameron Milan

Narrated by: John Downey

Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

An all powerful entity bestows individuals with a powerful brand in the form of a tattoo. Using the system that is controlled by the tattoo, you can learn supernatural abilities, acquire knowledge unknown to man, and acquire objects that would only be found in fiction. The world is changing... and it has yet to be determined if it is for better or worse.

Two friends who grew up together, Ace and Vincent, have been chosen. Ace lives for physical improvement. He loves the feeling of breaking his records and growing stronger. Unfortunately, he has plateaued in recent months, discouraging him greatly.

Vincent is plagued by little to no desire in anything he does. Good grades? Successful life? He feels nothing. Except, perhaps, the feeling of pain and fear. Sadly for him, modern day society is a peaceful one.

The arrival of the tattoo flipped their lives upside down. It granted them the ability to fulfill their desires. However... they weren't the only ones who were given the tattoo.

©2018-2018 Cameron Milan (P)2018 Cameron Milan

Awesome concept, horrible narration!

The story is very creative with such a cool concept. The narrator however is one of the worst I’ve heard. He rarely would change his voice for different characters or emotions. The worst was his pronunciation, he would pronounce Chi as “key”. It wouldn’t be so bad except that word constantly comes up in the book. I sure hope they get a different narrator!

interesting with plus' and negatives

pros: great world building and keeping track of the bigger picture. also pretty interesting dynamics of magic and abilities. the two main characters had unique personalities and the storyline remained interesting. lastly the battles were not always so climactic. in some books it seems to make out every battle as epic. this one is while lack luster in battles also refreshingly simple.


cons: not a whole lot of dialogue. plus the character building of anyone other than the main two was practically non existient. also please dont connect ideas across diff conversations. like "oh geez idk if i can take on the responsiblity" it cuts to the general half way across the county " hmmm i think ill teach him for this responsibility" it comes out a little cheezy. more characters need depth and a little less joviality. it seemed like every character was either boyishly heroic or dasterdly evil. zero grey zone or lateral differences.


plz dont take the cons too harshly. all in all it was worth the credit and a bit entertaining. hope the new one comes out soon.

Great book

Really enjoyed this book. A great start to the series. There is a great gradual introduction of rpg elements to the series in the beginning. We need more books like this on audible for us to listen to.

Awesome!!!

Great story. I was immediately engaged right from the start. Made me stop and think about what I would do and the consequences of those decisions. Narration was perfect, easy to listen to. Looking closely at other people's tattoos now!

good listen

it was an enjoyable book. the narrator not the greatest . the voices were almost the same but different timming so you could tell them apart. It had the fill of a older brother or father telling a story just a avenge story teller. once you got used to the voice it was a ez listening experience. looking looking forward to the next book.

I like your Tattoo, you should do a sleeve!

Ok, couple of things to go with here. First off, the cover looks awesome, but really has nothing to do with the story. This is clearly the effort of a new author, and so I've cut some slack, but I am going to be honest here and say that you can tell this is a newbie effort. It still has that new book smell. There are some errors in dialogue that you can't miss and some characters are little more than two dimensional constructs. If I had to guess, I would say that the book feels rushed. Again, the cover makes you think this is going to be a LITRPG dealing with Survival Horror. It is not. It takes place in an entirely different direction. What the book is actually about in terms of plot and story isn't bad, but if you are going to judge by the cover, then you will regret it.

As for the good, well as far as game system and world uniqueness Desire does a rather stunning job. I really liked the game mechanics, the aspects of leveling and the intriguing power sets really catch your attention and pull you into the book. Even if the characters are a little shallow of depth and the dialogue may be somewhat stilted the story carries it through.

John Downey is where the book falls flat. A great narrator can elevate a decent story into an amazing one, but he reads this with a minimum of enthusiasm. Kind of how you might read a newspaper outloud to someone else. Sometimes I wonder if his characterizations don't make the characters seem flat. At no point did he WOW me. He does an adequate job, but I was not blown away by his work.

As things go I think this is a great first effort, and with some time, and elbow grease, this series will turn into something grand. I have high hopes as the story does keep your attention, and you will want more from this world. Milan just needs to take a little more time to flesh things out a bit and he would have a powerful series on his hands.

Even though I did receive a promo code for this review it in no way influenced my considerations of the material, and in fact, inspired me to be more honest. In fact, getting a code generally makes me harsher as a reviewer as I am more often concerned what someone like Me will decide based on my review.

If this review helped, please press the YES below. Thank you immensely!!!

decent book

I don't know why, but I just had an issue with the narrator. I think the only downfall was not very good voice acting, but the storyline was pretty interesting and fun.

this author is gold

all his books have amazing new points of view and great world building read tower of heaven too

Great story but with bad narrator

I loved the story, I really hit home but the narrator is really bad.
actually so bad I almost stopped listening multiple times. but if you manage to get passed this fact then you have a great story on your hands.

this book is one of the few books I've heard that is litrpg and does not have a lot of flowery language that is not necessary. the book lets you use much off your own fantasy to build the world they are in.

A Perfect Storm of Awkward

Wow, where to even start. This was a hot mess in a really really entertaining way.
At first I was having trouble dealing with the stilted dialogue but if you squint and turn your head it's beat for beat really bad shounen dialogue.
Same goes for the plot, villains appear with paper thin motivations and characters that exist just to point and stare at how very cool the main characters are. Goliath is the standard good guy, defending the weak and fighting evil by moonlight and whatnot. Demon is the typical shounen antihero, bloodlust tempered with loyalty and mental disorders. Though my favorite shounen flaws came in near the end, with random segues to random topics and POVs, all after the climax and into sequel bait.
The actual story was pretty fun, a portion of the population gets a point system to buy pretty much anything helped along by really arbitrary extermination quests against rpg staples. This inevitably leads into the consequences of such a thing and everybody gets their big boy shounen moments.
If you're still reading this pay the man, this is top notch good-bad novel. And Cameron buddy if you ever read this my only real complaint is your tendency to repeat yourself within a sentence or paragraph. Other than that man, never change.