First Sorcerer

Singularity Online, Book 1

By: Kyle Johnson

Narrated by: Basil Sands

Length: 16 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's Summary

The Singularity - the merger of man and machine into a greater whole - is finally within humanity's grasp. When programmer Jeff Lawing gets the opportunity to join Singularity Online, the world's first realistic VRMMO and the testing ground that will lead to the Singularity, he leaps to accept.

Singularity is much more realistic and darker than Jeff had imagined, though. As a Sorcerer, his arcane magic is limited only by his imagination, allowing him to craft powerful spells forged from his desires. As the only Sorcerer in the game, he'll need to carve his own path, with only an ancient specter as his guide.

Will his new powers be enough to see him through the deadliest training quest he's ever encountered or to protect him in a fallen realm filled with undead? Does the have the courage and passion he needs to seize the mantle of First Sorcerer?

©2020 Kyle Johnson (P)2020 Tantor

smart mc is stupid af

what is with authors making smart mc's, but also making them dumber than a box of rocks? mc has magic class that literally lets him make spells useing his imagination... and yet as far as i got the idiot only uses it for THE MOST BASIC crap any fanfic writer puts into their first chapter he doesnt even use it in any inventive ways on top of making situations ten times harder than they should be. needs to cross a lava river useing a shield spell that he just learned to make into any for he wants? instead making a damned bridge, like has thought of in passing this dumbass wants to play leapfrog to start off with.... noo thanks, im good, ill find something else

Not Bad

If you have nothing else to listen to give this a go. Overall the experience was mixed. Mostly it seems things were overly explained and I found my mind wandering to other thoughts then having to rewind to relisten to the last paragraph. The MC seemed just a little whiney early on and the slow pacing of the story doesn't lend itself to dungeon crawls which was a large part of the book. On a positive note the game system itself was indepth and interesting and the world lore seemed neat but I couldn't care about the plot much.

About the narrator

I saw a review saying the narrator was bad. So i held off on this book for a while because of the review. But the narrator is fine and the story entertaining. I did notice a few times the scenes where quite stiff, but that’s more on the author than the narrator. I feel fine picking up more books with the narrator because of his good performance from listening to this book.

bad narrator

the narrator has absolutely no inflection or excitibility In his tone made a good story really hard to listen to.

about as boring and cookie cutter as they get

This story's main conceit has nothing to do with the story...

This being set in a real world where the MC enters a game isn't at all linked to the story besides the usual hand waive of why he doesn't know anything about the world hes in. It's brought back up in the absurdly overused trope of trying to tack on the cliffhanger in the epilogue...(the story itself should give reasons why the tale continues) Just taking on something new and unknown on the end doesnt make it intriguing, if anything it devalues the majority of time spent in the story presented.

MC has no personality beyond "I'm in a game, gotta finish my quests"

Bad guys monologue the corniest phrases pulled from (Evil 101) no motivation beyond being a foil for the MC

Magic and power system is a bit dull and muddled, again simply being "in a game" doesn't absolve the author from anything beyond a hand waive explanation

Voice acting was vanilla as well... nothing bad, but could have been reading anything (phone book included) and the tone would have stayed the same.

Overall... just filled with contrivance after contrivance. Nothing new, original, or particularly interesting in this one

this is bad even by light rpg standards

this is an unsubtle ego whack for the author. everything that he considers great about himself isn't just present in his characters the very RPG system introduced in this book rewards only those characteristics. there is no failure here. there's only the hero gets stronger no matter what. hell even things that might have inconvenienced him are preemptively removed. it's unsubtle, self aggrandizing, ego stroking. the self insert is unstoppable and they don't even try to make up for that with comedy. it actually can be argued that this character is more of a Mary Sue then Ray.
save your money

Was ok. if your into the genre might as well.

Pretty ok book. Doesn't really stand apart all that much from other lit rpg books. There is 4 things that bother me with it.

First, and this is a problem with almost all such books: stat sheet read offs. Just a constant near meaningless reading of every ability, title, and point allocation. I'm sure there's more but i honestly didn't care to listen. At first it only lasted 30 seconds or so but near the end of the book it was well over a minute.

Second: Main character is a good boy who won't cut out his "I'll protect you forever and always" speeches to our lady friend. the rest of the dialog was passable but every now and then it started feeling a tad cringy.

third: it felt lonely. I can only really remember 5 characters that actually did stuff along with maybe 3 side characters that got a name but might as well have been nameless. Now I don't need a giant cast but that's ALL of the people in the book. Aside from the elven crowd of undetermined size at the end. 90% of the book was spent with 3 people. Our MC, our lady friend, and the mental mentor.

fourth: the narrator sounded board and had stiff delivery for a lot of things. I'm honestly not sure if the problem was stiff writing or the narrator. either way it subtracted from the story.


I'd say give it a go if your into this genre and don't want to put in the effort to find a better book. If its your first go at lit rpg find something else.

Only stats

10 hours off stats and 4 hours off storyline. I’m not a fan of this book

narrirator is so horrible I can't listen

narrirator is so horrible I can't listen. mono toned and is just horrible. I'm sure it's a great book but I couldn't do it

great book

the beginning was a little slow but it gets you indepth feelings for the mc and right in the middle of the book you will thank me you got this book but by the end youll wamt the next one hope you enjoy this book as much as me

Solid Litrpg

Solid litrpg, focused plot with lots of magical theory and good characterisation.
Narration is somewhat old fashioned but good nonetheless.

A very original and enjoyable beginning.

I discovered LitRPGs only 2 years ago but have read over 100 since then and find them a very mixed bag. Often my main criticisms are that the creatures they face are rather generic and predictable and how they're full of stats every few seconds.

In First Sorceror, I found none of this and not only was it light on the stats (concentrating only on those relevant to the moment) but the creatures Kyle has created are both original but also worthy of being included in anyone's tabletop gaming session.

Viewed as a standalone story, it is somewhat lacking as there is a Lot of preamble and finding of feet but once it gets going the action is fast, fights innovative and the (rather small) cast interesting enough. It feels a lot like what it is, an origin story and so there is a lot of ground work to place but this may put some people off, which is a shame as it is still thoroughly enjoyable and original.

I've also noticed a lot of reviewers finding fault with the narration, one even calling it 'old fashioned' (?) but I found Basil Sands' work excellent throughout with everything clear and concise and adding emotion where needed and adding a brilliant sense of personality to all the characters regardless of gender.

In all I did find it dragged a little in the last few chapters, almost feeling as if it was floundering a little but this didn't go as far as to leave a bad taste and left me still wanting more and so I will certainly be checking out book 2 in the future.

the story is carried by the narrator.

the narrator is doing a good job, but the story is not served well by its main character.

the main theme of the protagonist is that he has to be immaginative to properly use his powers, but he squanders that power because me lacks imagination.