Monarch: A Prince Out of Time

Monarch, Book 1

By: J. McCoy, Eligos

Narrated by: Luke Daniels

Length: 22 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

To save the kingdom, he'll have to stop his own murder....

It’s hard to be a drunken idiot when the world keeps burning down around you. Cairn, the charming-yet-utterly-irresponsible heir to the Uskarrion throne, is all too happy to toss the crown aside. But an invasion, conspiracy, and rise of a terrifying villain result in his untimely death. 

Then, Cairn reawakens. It's a decade earlier, and he's in his childhood body. But he remembers everything...there's much to accomplish. First, however, he'd really love to stop himself from dying.

Monarch is a progression fantasy epic set in a time loop where planning and cleverness are as vital as swordplay. It a story about a spoiled prince who discovers what it means to rule. Watch as he gains power, learns magic, forges alliances, and delves deeper into the mystery of the loop itself and the nature of his relationship with the ruthless antagonist.

©2022 Aethon Books (P)2022 Podium Audio

Multi-Reborn

Minor Spoiler
Unfortunately the synopsis was slightly misleading. This story is about a prince being reborn true but it didn’t mention that he keeps being reborn multiple time whenever he’s killed even for the most foolish of reasons. If you what to hear one of the most powerful plot armors there is to a MC this is it. Also our MC come off as greatly weak willed, this is explain due to the abusive nature of his father but even still it’s excessive.

It just not my cup of tea, I dislike such an important element to the story so I’ll be dropping this. The narration is well and the story isn’t by any means poorly written but I wish the author would of mention multi reborn and not come off as a one time.
For anyone that’s ever seen Re:Zero this is the same concept.

Flashbacks ruin this otherwise decent book.

Voice acting is OK.7/10. Story is a 2 out of 10. Constant flashbacks with no warning. Feels like 25% of the book is just flashbacks that happen in the middle of fights/conversations with no warning or indication that a flashback is happening. This author lost a reader with this series.

A LOT OF FLASHBACKS.

The story was really good but the way is told is by adding a flashback to every single decision the main character makes, if he is about to buy a red robe he’ll flashback to a conversation he had with his sister about some red roses and the meaning of the color red, if he is about to talk to someone he’ll flashback to a conversation he had with his father. It’s so often that gets under your skin, like trying to watch a movie but getting interrupted every 5 minutes by 90 sec adds. It got specially bad towards the end when he got ptsd from being tortured and every 2 to 3 minutes he would flashback to all the different ways he got tortured making him into a self loathing self pitying person on the last 5 hours of the story. At this point I was too invested on the story to stop so I push myself to finish it leaving me bitter about the whole thing.

The narration was probably the worst part. It was rushed half of the voices were well done but the other half were barely a whisper it was hard to understand any conversation, there were no pauses between interaction felt like they voiced this on a time limit and they had to read the while book really fast to get it over with it. Plus it was annoying to have to raise the volume to hear the whispering voices only to get your eardrums erupted on the same second another character with a high pitch voice started talking. I gave up by the end of it and just hoped that whatever the whispering character were saying i would understand it by the context of what was happening. Not to mention the thick heavy accents which I would have enjoyed if the voices weren’t swapping between a whisper to a screech in less than a second like they were trying to get the conversation over with as quickly as possible. Most of the conversations felt like i was listening to a 2x speed on how fast they were rushing it.

Overall good story but I don’t like the amount of flashbacks it has, some people would; probably, and also I have a hard time keeping up with the narration.

Good story, great narration

A good, occasionally dark time loop story, and of course Luke Daniels kills it, as usual.

I am fully invested in this persons life....

ok, first of all
to address ALL the concerns you have read about "character growth" in the other reviews. I read them and its what stopped me from reading this book for so long.
TWO THINGS
1) there is MORE TO LIFE than MAJOR change. Not everything has to slap you in the face ALL the time.

2) as for the - unsavory - individuals that are trying to make this political...i can bet they haven't looked themselves in the mirror and taken responsibility for ANYTHING their entire life, so reading a story about a boy who KNOWs how to apologize and FORGIVE others...it must REALLY rub them the wrong way.

I finally broke and started to listen to this book because i was desperate waiting for some other books to come out...
but unlike all the "stagnant" character development i was expecting, what i got instead was a subtitle mind game. Now, I can see how some could see that the guy didn't change that much, to give the fair critics their due, but, isn't that....normal? we as people don't usually change on a dime and its only book one. He's going to still have the same basic personality because as we get older its harder to change that, but what's CHANGING....is his PERSPECTIVE on LIFE....yes? We can ALWAYS learn MORE!!
dang it now i'm getting excited all over again and i need book 2!!!

Slow start but turns out pretty epic

Really glad I took a chance on this one. The genre has a lot of really great stuff but this stands out as particularly fun. Beware though, the author has adopted this irritating literary device where the story starts midway into a situation that later gets explained. If you like that then you’ll appreciate this even more… just not my favorite way of telling a story.

I bet nobody saw this one coming…

Hot damn this was a good one! I will be buying the next book for sure…

Surprising

I didn't expect much from this story, I just was waiting on other series and needed something as filler. The shock I feel that this was a really well put together book and didn't lose my interest is pure joy. There is some pacing issues I have towards the end when the story starts to jump a bit, otherwise really solid. Voice acting is top notch.

Excellent!

I read a story every week. Unfortunately its been some time since I was truly engaged. Monarch was different! Really good. Highly recommend. Buying the second book now!! Bye!!

over all it was nice

some of the voice acting is corny but I liked it way. over all it was a good job. I also likenthe story it is like Re:Zero but I this one better. Over all well done and enjoyable.

Good start, but second half is filler like

The story is pretty good and the character develops nicely in the beginning. The time warps can get a bit tedious. Except for time warps there is lived random memory, which just comes and almost always brings nothing to the story. Both could have been a bit less complicated and thought out. Second half of the book is somewhat boring as the story-, magical- or character-development stops and ground to a halt. A lot of random events that are pretty boring. The detective conclave arch is really bad and much too long. MC turns a bit whiny and morality plays too big a part of the story. Hope it won’t go full SJW.