Goblin Summoner

A Deckbuilding LitRPG

By: Tracy Gregory

Narrated by: Graham Mack

Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's Summary

Life and death decided by the draw of a card!

When an accident claims his life, Gareth finds himself reborn on Acamida. Dropped into a world where sorcerers draw magical power from a deck of cards, summoning monsters and flinging spells, Gareth must adapt to having arcane power at his fingertips. It’s just a shame he’s found himself with the weakest cards around - goblins! 

Joined by a fallen goddess, a deposed demon king, and surly local, Gareth sets out into Acamida. In a realm where experience points and levels are very real, Gareth must grow stronger if he intends to have his second life last longer than his first. With monsters around every corner and dungeons beneath his feet, Acamida is a dangerous place. 

As Gareth finds new cards and grows in power, the rumbles of war stir in the west. If he’s going to survive, Gareth will need to master his deck and find the strength hidden within his goblin allies.

©2021 P.W Hillard Fiction (P)2021 P.W Hillard Fiction

Not bad, I'd recommend it.

Amusing story, annoying author gets a negative one star for being one of those social justice types who watch propagandized American movies and entertainment and decide they know how the world should handle violence and social justice, and just "have to" occasionally slip it in. Barf. But aside from that, not bad.

Exceptionally poor narration

Writing 3 stars
Characters 3 stars maybe 2
Plot 4 stars
story progession 4 stars
Narrator 2 stars - piss poor editing & mispronounced common words.

very good card system

very good card system that plays nicely. one audio issue of repeating but otherwise very good. if you like card games and litrpg, this is likely for you. mc is not overpowered but gets the job done.

don't waste your time

for as short as this audiobook is it's taking me almost a week to finish it. the former goddess character is insufferable. the main character is a really good self insert. I'm biased though because I like card games. but it's the casual misogyny that really just sends me. the anti-hero that we're supposed to like and relate to is just casual about disregarding people's beliefs and personal views on life. there was no character growth. everyone started out and ended the book in the same spot. the whole magic system seems messed up. it was never really truly any challenge. I never once feared or thought that anything bad would happen to any of the heroes. if I had a book club I would have this as a side project to read so that way people could discuss a good world with absolute shit development of it.

MORE! MORE! WHAT A FUN READ!

GOBLIN SUMMONER is the first in the DECKBUILDING LITRPG by TRACY GREGORY and I truly hope this is the first in a long series! Totally enjoyable,fast paced and loaded with goblins/monsters/angels/demons and some really nasty bad guys!

Gareth is a human from Earth who died while plugging in a game console . He goes from being dead to being plunged into the world of Acamida, where sorcerers and Gareth draw their powers from decks of cards that are merged with them. Gareth finds he is favored with goblins,which are pretty poor choices of monsters. As Gareth moves around more in Acamida he finds more friends,more enemies and more adventures .

I loved GOBLIN SUMMONER! The characters are so funny , each with their own decks join up with Gareth,who himself adds humor to his situation, even when facing the most deadliest of monsters and odds. I want to hear more from Acamida!

Graham Mack does a great job with the multitudes of voices!

I recieved this audiobook free in exchange for an honest review.

Fun and unique take on magic

This book has an interesting concept that was executed very well. The story is enjoyable and the main character is fun to follow. There were some minor audio problems but otherwise it was a great experience. Would definitely recommend.

I loved it

Tracy Gregory did really good with this and it's even better than we the people, I'm going into the second book as soon as possible!!!. I loved this book.

the Narration was good as always, you can always expect that with Graham mack. all the voices were different and you could tell them apart, and Grahams voice is just dang right soothing. I can't wait to hear more from him.

Characters aren't bad, I didn't particularly dislike any of them. they were all awesome in their own way, the Mc was down too earth and relatable and the same can be said for the side characters.
Character development is lacking. I can't say the Mc or any other character for that matter actually developed. I can say there was alot of skill progression. I want too say that the deck building aspect is truly awesome and more books need too be like this, I like the duel system/magicsystem and I don't have dislike anything about the skills. I think that the goblins are actually quite a boon. Character plot isn't much better either, there wasn't really a character plot. I couldn't tell anything out between the characters, I can say they're was some but that's it.
the regular plot though was way better, I can say the plot in this book was way better than most. from the start of the book you couldn't really tell where it was headed, sometimes that's a pro or a con. in this book it's a pro, it was a perfect mix of plot and foreshadowing and that's just downright hard to accomplish.
the base storyline was also really good and I liked that. I can't say it's better than the plot of the storyline is nothing too scoff at.
world detail isn't as good as I'd thought it'd be. it was good but it could be better. it was like I couldn't really imagine I was there or there was detail left out. if the world detail is really good that's what you should be looking for. world building was way better and I really liked it, the world they were in and the way it was built was unique.
The fighting wasn't lacking at all, I loved the duels and how they played out and it was a treat. they were detailed and weren't drawn out.

this book is worth the credit and every penny, I'm hopping right into book 2.

Excellent twist on the LitRPG genre

I've read many LitRPG books and they tend to follow one of a handful of formulaic paths to get the main character into the game / world / VR and this book was no different. However, we don't read LitRPG to learn how another character enters a world in this case; we read it for the game mechanics and stats. This is my first deck-building LitRPG and I am hooked!

The main character is not overpowered, nor is he arrogant or stupid. He just has some good ideas on how to build a successful deck. The fact that he is saddled with Goblins as his creature type seems like a really bad break but it turns out really well.

The interactions between characters is well written and enjoyable. The magic system is really good. The action is great. All in all a great book. I look forward to the next one!

I received a free copy of this audiobook and chose to write a review.

Exuberant

Every witty line gives me joy. the narrative does not linger on any unnecessary details, though re-listening to story provides great foreshadowing. the main draw for new listeners, is the characters. The heroes are delightful.

jumped to the top of my favorits in litrpg

this was unexpected. the cards aspect of magic was really cool and a take on litrpg i haven't seen before. i really liked how decks were used, this brought back memorys of me as a kid playing magic the gathering, Pokemon, and yugio.. how the cards are displayed kind of reminds me of yugios cartoon show. cards are more like magic the gathering.

the characters are well done, likable, what you want to happen does. world is well built well for whats mentioned.

the narrator does a great job. i feel like im watching a nature documentary with his voice.( more memorys as a kid)

i really cant wait for another audiobook. this one has moved into my top 5 maybe even higher.

Its time to duel! But with goblins!

Rpg level up system, reincarnation/portal story about not being the hero, building a magical deck and gaining weird and interesting allies along the way.

excelent story

terrible narrator but the story is from another world ;) i hope this last many many books

Intriguing premise, lacklustre delivery.

The premise of having a card game mechanic as a magic system is admittedly a cool idea.

But it doesn't help that the depressing ex-goddess is just annoying and childish, the humour is a dry British kind that didn't hit the mark most of the time for me and the magic feel weirdly and inconsistently limited at times.

One thing that sums up this book for me:
"Your world might be imaginary, but my annoyances is very much real"

The story and world seem very cool and interesting on the flip side though.

Wouldn't recommend, especially not to people (like me) who have played these kind of games before, mechanics felt imbalanced or just weird personally.

Unsatisfying last few chapters

The book starts off well enough, but has 2 major flaws in my view:
1) The narrator isn't great at giving each character a voice. He's quite mono-tone.
2) In the second last chapter, one of the main characters kills a major enemy with the same rare affinity and amazing cards, then they just left his cards and corpse there instead of taking the cards. Absolutely unbelievable. the author didn't even give a reason for it.

It's an okay listen, but there a deffos better RPG style books on Audible.

fantastic

such an unusual book as it's card magic rather than normal wizards and stuff but I think it plays it really well

“We can admire the deadly killing machine later”

A great LitRPG!
Does it have some flaws? Probably. But honestly, that doesn’t matter! It’s just one of those easy to listen to books that you find you can’t put down with plenty of adventure, battles and cool characters!
The narration is great too and makes the story so easy to listen to. There could be a little more distinction between some character voices and I’m used to hearing stat sheets read differently, but I’d honestly listen to anything that Graham puts out!
Again, thoroughly enjoyed this book and I’m straight into book 2!
This is my honest opinion on a free review copy.

Deck mechanics make for a nice change

Most of the time, books in this genre tend to opt for a more conventional rpg-style when it comes to the game mechanics that form the basis of the world, so this book being based around a deck building game makes for an interesting change and one that the author executes well too.

Beyond the choice of mechanics, this book delivers a solid combination of good characters and an interesting story that works well to setup the series and as a book in it's own right too.

The performance of the narrator could be better, there's too many wrong and inconsistent pronunciations that took me out of the story, even though the general performance was decent.

Overall, interesting mechanics and a strong setup to the series make this an enjoyable listen and I will be keeping an eye out for subsequent instalments.

[Note, I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.]

Excellent Addition To Isekai

Loved the twist on the isekai style I've never seen a book with the card based magic system before and I was sceptical but it works really well. My only complaint is that Graham Mack cannot decide how to pronounce certain words and will say some words 3 different ways in the same couple of sentences and it's incredibly annoying, it's fine if you get the wrong pronunciation just please pick one and stick with it! Otherwise an excellent performance.

Looking forward to the next book

I finished this a while back and I'm checking in here every once in a while to see if anything new is out. I think that says a lot for a book 🙂

Great story but....

Something different, a Deck Building theme. An interesting mix of characters.
The story built up well and left it open for the next in the series.
However whilst I don't normally like it when narrators change part way through a series this one would benefit, sorry but he's not the greatest. A litany of mispronounced words and words with the wrong context (I guess the latter could be the writer but a good narrator would handle these.)
I look forward to the next one and hope for better narration.