Overlord, Vol. 1

The Undead King

By: Kugane Maruyama, so-bin

Narrated by: Chris Guerrero

For twelve years, the virtual world of Yggdrasil has served as the playground and battlefield for the skeletal lord Momonga and his guild of fellow monsters, Ainz Ooal Gown. But the guild's glory days are over, and the game is shutting down permanently. When Momonga logs in one last time just to be there when the servers go dark, something happens-and suddenly, fantasy is reality. A rogues' gallery of fanatically devoted NPCs is ready to obey his every order, but the world Momonga now inhabits is not the one he remembers. The game may be over, but the epic tale of Ainz Ooal Gown is only beginning...

A decent start to an epic story of conquest

While some of the translation decisions could be a little iffy it’s overall great. A story from the side of the villains in their way to take over the world. My only complain would be the voice acting in terms of variety for the men and quality for the women, Ainz’s voice is adequate but not as regal is it could be, specially in the moments when trying to be intimidating. As for the women well, the voice tends to be more shrill than anything, also sometimes the tone didn’t match the word context. Oh, an Mare’s voice specially when flustered leaves much to be desired, sounding way more whiny and annoying than timid. But these are surrounded by an otherwise good narration so it is passable.

Good, but needs work

I thoroughly enjoyed the light novel, and Mr. Guerrero’s performance was very good in places there were only a few things that bugged me.

Of course, I’d be partial to the idea of Overlord as an audio drama; wherein the actors from the show performed the book. However I know scheduling conflicts could definitely wreck such an idea. There were times when it was hard to tell certain character’s voices apart, especially during Ainz’ and Gazef’s conversation due to how similar the voices were.

A very small, albeit nitpicky thing that I found myself bothered by was the pronunciation of the names of the 9 realms from Norse mythology; ‘Nifl-hay-m’ rather than ‘Nifl-high-m’, and so on. It just seemed to catch my ear whenever I heard it.

That being said, I’d love to see more of the light novels become audiobooks in the future. Chris is quite the talented individual, and it’s always fun to have a new medium to enjoy something you like through.

Great Book and Awesome Voice Acting

This book was fantastic and made even better due to the Reader being the same voice actor from the English dubbed series.

Overlord books have all the detail missed

This is a great book that has all the details that are missed in the Manga. I feel like albedo's voice is a bit weird but hey it's just one guy doing voices so can't complain. Looking forward to all the other books to come out on this format.

love these books

love this series, love the anime.....I am a major fan. the voice acting only make it better