Heart of the Son

The Seven-Fold World, Book 1

By: Erik Roman

Narrated by: Rebecca Woods, Daniel Wisniewski

Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins

Publisher's summary

The Seven-Fold World is protected by the Seal of the Seventh Son but nothing lasts forever. When the seal breaks, the immortal lords of ruin set forth to end the age in blood. But just as nothing lasts, no fate is certain.

The seal might be restored.

Only the seventh son of a seventh son may accomplish this mightiest of feats, which leaves a young man bereft of hope by the loss of all he loves to face the unbelievable truth that his is the greatest destiny of all.

Yet to forge that destiny, Daniel must survive a cataclysm and the hordes of hell creeping across a once fair land. He will have to overcome madness, death, and despair in a desperate search not just for the means to win but the will. It seems an impossible task, but while it is his burden to bear he need not bear it alone.

The only hope for all life in the Seven-Fold World rests in the heart of the seventh son.

©2023 Erik Roman (P)2023 Erik Roman

Good listen

The narration and production of this title was really nice. The story overall was good, but I had a difficult time truly feeling engaged.

Ok, feels a bit rush, questionable execution

Fair warning, a few things are used in an ambiguous way as examples, so potential spoiler warning!

I wrote a more detailed review on Amazon that's yet to be approved as I type this on 2/1/2023. I wanted to write the more detailed review there since there were no reviews for this title on audible and I wanted to be honest about my review, but I was reluctant because I don't want to discourage potential readers or in this case, listeners with what I feel is constructive criticism as I realize this is a new author with a new series and their very first book.

With that said, I'll try to summarize and keep it short for now. Perhaps when more reviews drop in for this title and if I'm in the mood, I'll add more detail or by then you can click on the Amazon Review link and find my more detailed review.

As said in the title I felt by the end of this book that it seemed to have been rushed to get to the end. It was evident to me at a certain point that this was the case because the story starts strong, despite some criticism I can give Erik Roman for choices at the beginning, but it pulls you in with one of the characters, MFC (cover girl) and her personality which for me, chaffed against my views and MC's principles. I wanted to stick with the story to see if MFC's views are ever challenged throughout the story and unfortunately, no. So, this leads me to my other criticism. I felt the character development for MC, MFC, and another Main Character are either flip-floppy, not there, or forgotten. Using MC for this example, Roman will give MC growth, achievements in the things MC needed to move forward and then take those things away (confidence, leadership, determination, etc.) in favor of using MFC as a crutch for MC to HAVE to lean on to overcome a pivotal thing at the end. Yes, I realize the description implied MC would have someone by his side on this adventure, but that's different than what Roman does in the story. Roman uses MFC to tear MC down and take away his growth while also having MFC say she's not doing that and then as I said, have MC have to rely on her for his growth at the same time. This truly culminates and is exemplified at the end of the story for reasons I won't get into, but for those who like to think about the philosophy, themes, meanings, characters, worlds of the stories you listen to or read, I'm confident you'll notice what I'm talking about.

Final criticism. Roman has a tendency to time reveals at the wrong time, have events happen without introducing impactful characters prior or at all, quick example, MC's surrogate father. I felt Roman should've taken some time in the beginning to introduce this character before the main events of the story transpired. For those comic book fans, it would've been like telling you about Jason Todd's (Robin's) death, never showing you Jason Todd working with Batman and then introducing Redhood and telling you throughout the interactions and fights between Redhood and Batman how important Jason Todd was to Bruce Wayne, but you never saw it, so the impact of that prior relationship before those pivotal story events are gone.

Roman does a lot of what I call new author mistakes in this.

With all that said, Daniel and Rebecca as usual do a wonderful job giving the characters life. Also, this is not a bad story. It's not horrible and I may feel that the author rushed it to the end and didn't execute some plot developments well, but I was invested in finishing the story and finding out how it ended. It has an interesting premise that does borrow from Epic Fantasy trends and it attempts to add a new way of dealing with the Big bad. I just think the author fell into new author traps or got stuck in their own head without maybe having a pair of critical eyes review the story and point a few issues that could've been fleshed out better out to the him.

I don't really want this review to be seen as a negative, I'd rather it be seen as a constructive criticism, but of course, I know that it will likely be seen as a negative.