Ordinary Hero

By: Ellis Michaels

Narrated by: David Quimby

Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's Summary

Sometimes life is a game. 

There's nothing out-of-the-ordinary about James Callahan. He's just your average, everyday college student. But when James finds a mysterious scroll on the desk of one of his professors, his life quickly becomes anything but ordinary. 

After a series of strange events, James learns that he's the only one who can defeat Carter Livingston, a powerful gang leader responsible for robbing banks all over the city. With the help of a few beautiful women he befriends, James sets out to put an end to Carter's reign of terror once and for all. 

But does he have what it takes to defeat Carter and his gang? 

Warning: This audiobook contains adult situations and language. Listen at your own risk.

©2018 Ellis Michaels (P)2019 Ellis Michaels

Infantile, with terrible narration.

DNF. This book reads like something written by a 14 year old who found their parent's porn collection. Shallow characters, repetitious descriptions (e.g. every woman the MC met was "smokin' hot" (sometimes multiple times within a few paragraphs)). Ugh. It's possible that the plot would resolve somehow if I had stuck it through to the end, but 3 hours in it still seemed deliberately designed to convince us not to care -- we're basically told that none of what's happening is real.

And just to make it just that tiniest bit more excruciating, the narrator sounds like the stereotypical "dirty old man". His voice is so far from what you would expect for a young, college student that I can't understand how he was chosen. He also seems to be completely unable to capture any nuances in the female voices. Frequently, one of the female leads would say something and then the narration would conclude with "... she said in a sexy voice", and I would burst out laughing.

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A Real World Simulation

One of the things that separates out a good LitRPG novel from a poor one is if the gaming experience impacts the player in his/her real life. Ordinary Hero seems designed for that purpose as it takes place in a simulation of the characters’ world and initially they do not realize that they are playing a game.

The action is fairly straightforward, balanced between James (our hero) having as much sex with as many women as is humanly possible (or probably more than is humanly possible) and James getting into dangerous situations in his need to keep impressing the women as a hero. There wasn’t a lot of depth here, but I think that might have been on purpose. If the storyline had been much more complex, James probably didn’t have the goods to resolve it. Still, watching him stumble through his virtual environment, figure out he’s in a game, and decide to play (in many senses of the word) was entertaining.

Michaels had the good sense not to end the story when James defeated the big bad, but instead brought James back to the real world where he had to interact with people he knew in the game and think about what he wanted from his life. There’s actually room for a sequel here as the player who was the big bad is clearly very angry that an “ordinary” guy like James managed to defeat him. It’s also nice to see James using his experience to change his life.

I received this book from Free Audiobook Codes in exchange for an honest review.

Good example of gameLit. A fun listen.

Overall, this is a very fun listen. A little predictable, but the narration is good. I especially appreciate that the game stats don’t intrude on the narrative. They only come up now and then and only take a few seconds.