Remnant

By: Randi Darren

Narrated by: Andrea Parsneau

Length: 13 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

Steve doesn’t know who he is.

Or who he was.

He doesn’t know anything, actually.

Not even where he is.

Other than a vast open field of dirt.

All Steve knows is that he’s apparently supposed to build a farm. At least that’s his only workable assumption. Given the number of farm-tools left to him. That and the massive number of sacks full of seeds.

Unfortunately, this isn’t even the strangest part of this new life.

Hidden inside the farm tools, Steve finds messages. Messages that appear in floating windows in front of him.

Messages from his past self, telling him that he’d already failed once.

But he has no idea what he actually failed at. Or how he can succeed this time.

Beyond all this, and unfortunately for Steve, the world just underwent a radical change. A change that’s going to have Steve fighting the undead, bandits, nature, and even himself. All while the world falls down around him.

And the only weapon he has is an axe.

Warning and minor spoiler: This novel contains graphic violence, undefined relationships/harem, unconventional opinions/beliefs, and a hero who is as tactful as a dog at a cat show. Listen at your own risk.

This story is an adult fantasy novel.

©2019 Randi Darren (P)2019 Randi Darren

A Remnant of better books.

Let me preface this saying I own all of “Randi Darren’s” books and the vast majority of William D. Arand’s. As such I’m something of a fanatic around these books, and always purchase them when they make their way to audible within the first day or two. As such this review is based only on the metrics of the author’s works and not the rest of the genre, as let’s face it, there are few who can out write William in this space.

Normally such books get 5 stars all the way down from me because they really are well written, well thought out, with interesting or thought-provoking characters. However, in this case it seems “Remnant” is in reference to the characters as much as the story. The vast majority of characters seem less fleshed out, less unique, or seem like weaker versions of characters that exist in his other works. As a small spoiler, at one point in the story some of the characters die, usually this would cause the reader to feel something, anything from anger to sorrow over the loss. In this case any emotion I had for the characters was from how much they reminded of other "Randi Darren" characters from other works (knowing the writer's style, I suspect this may be intentional) ,but this is also a bad thing as it means these characters failed to resonate based on their own merits. Even the main character seems to shrug off their memory and just accepts their loss, which I suppose is in character as he himself admits to not be a smart man. However, this underscores the lack of emotional depth which is usually placed on the character. If the MC doesn’t REALLY care, why should we?

The overarching story doesn’t feel as interesting as some of his other books either, the word generic comes to mind. I honestly found myself taking a few days in between listens simply because it wasn’t as enthralling as his usual works, which for me is not normal, especially on the first listen. Honestly, the world building overall is rather lacking but can of course be fleshed out in future books.

Andrea’s performance is still superb, she does the best with what she must work with, and I think with a less talented voice actress this audio book would have only been more difficult to get through.

Overall if you are a fan of the writer, I’d still buy it, but if you haven’t yet purchased all the other books from the author then I suggest getting those first.

Got Better...

Waited a long time, and finally decided to buy this. I was very disappointed in the beginning, especially when St meets Nicky.

It was a little too neat and easy, but it got more interesting and better.

Praise for the author--No dilution of the story problem: Stv's memory loss--not verbose or overwritten.

My summary--

There are places where this story could derail, wander, and go off track, but deftly, the author did not fall into any traps or let the story get too dull.

One flaw: Nicky is too supportive in the beginning. This creates a vacuum of non-tension, and only the conflict of memory loss and the fish lady keeps us going.

With later chapters it gets better, but there are other weak points and potential for conflict with other characters that are skipped over and missed.

I like this book not because it's great, but I can see the skill in keeping it from being a disaster, and the writing style is remarkably effective while sparse.

That alone, sparse writing style, takes great skill, and she still tells the story.

Final criticism: The characters come off a little flat because if this, but the author never gives up on revealing more about them in successive scenes,

Listen, this not the best book ever but it's not really bad either. It has flaws but the author has successes here too.

There's more to celebrate here than I first thought, being disappointed at first, but now it's above 'Meh'.

My irritation over buyer's remorse has been allayed.

Review ends...

Purchased Immediately "Audio Quality review"

I buy almost every Randi Darren audio book as fast as I can, even if I have read the books multiple times. The audio is always high quality and the voice actors and actresses even more so. Andea Parsneau always gives characters their own flavor and I associate the character voices given in the writing every time. Especially in this book with many characters this helps bring a sense of life to the book that writing always has a hard time with. i'll leave the story reviews to others as I am no poet but I recognized good hard work and quality 5/5.

Different.

I don't really like this. Based on the description I was expecting something very different. Despite this I enjoyed the story for a while. Up until a point.

*Warning contains some spoilers

Starting with the narrator. She is a great voice actor with a great range of voices. Although, the voices chosen for many of the main characters are grating on me. After a while I got used to Steve's voice but it still sounds like an old man with a lung condition. Nikki's voice is likewise irritating , being is high pitched and nearly screechy, although I guess it is supposed to make her sound young and bubbly. Misty sounds like a genie. I am surprised by the pure range of voices she can do but I feel they need slight tweaking.

Now, the story. I originally thought it would be about some sort of NPC realizing his reality and trying to protect his land from mischievous adventurers (Which I was really looking forward to btw). Instead we have Steve who we think might be a player with memory loss, OP farming gear, an extremely short temper, and a message telling him to build a village.

He knows nothing about the world but seems to just go along with everything not having a real voice of his own. He meets Nikki coincidentally and less than few days later, bam! Then several days later he gains women left and right. Women he barely knows fall into his lap. We are given a rather weird explanation for why there is a 1 to 6 ratio between men and women, and why they all apparently want to have tons of children.

To me, all this is rather shallow. It feels to me like the author just wanted a "monster" girl harem and threw a bunch of interesting races at the MC without any real thought or backstory. Sex is sex. This isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The sex scenes are decent and aren't glazed over. However, there is a sense of hollowness, of emptiness behind the reasoning. Nikki for whatever reason breaks countless years of tradition, laws, and moral reasoning within a couple days of meeting a human. All this falls under the warning in the synopsis.

There are backstories missing, lacking, or being half-assed. The characters get thrown at the MC. The MC accepts this and doesn't have a real voice of his own. The world itself is rather shallow. World destroying force that MC somehow has the only cure to stop. There isn't much that contributes to the LitRPG genre either...

Nia is probably the most adorable character though. I get a great sense of satisfaction from Steve being a father figure for Nia. It does seem out of place though in such a raunchy book to have such a pure relationship. The last quarter of the book was probably the most intriguing.

TL;DR Everything is thrown together halfhazardly. Sex is for Sex sake. While none of this is terrible and it wasn't a bad listen it could have been so much more in my eyes.

I was recommended this book by audible after listening to the Mask of the Template series which I really enjoyed. It is not a LitRPG but it a fantastic example of a fantasy harem series.

A little too cringe-inducing for me

Look, I get it, harem stories, wish fulfillment, erotic fantasy, and characters that aren't boy scouts, etc.. That's fine, it's been done well before. It's just that the main character made me cringe so hard I couldn't listen to it while driving. He has virtually no redeeming qualities, and a number that are irredeemable. Take a creepy incel and write a story where women threw themselves at him and here we are. I stuck with it for a good while too. I figured as the story went on, the MC would grow and become humanized and maybe learn a thing or two. Nope. I honestly feel a bit bad for Andrea Parsneau for having to read this out loud.

Shitty book

The narrator was good, but the story was awful. No real plot development. The characters are bland and boring.

In piece or in whole an amazing tale

Here is another fun tale by Randi Darren, coughs Arand, and it is not exactly what you expect from him. The book starts off as a bit of a mystery as the MC, Steve, awakes with barely any memory of his past, which he discovers via a message left by “Past” Steve who traded his memories for some rather awesome and powerful gear. Farming gear to be certain, with the message to build himself a nice little farm and if possible a village.

It isn’t long before Steve finds himself embroiled in a mess of forbidden love, love with non-humans, which only grows until he earns the title of Zookeeper, and no this isn’t a tale of beastiality but rather of half human half other ladies like naids, nagas, etc. Thankfully, the combo of Steve’s incredible strength and gear make him a force that is not to be trifled with and he just goes about his business trying to accumulate wives and territory while fighting a zombie invasion and staving off territory disputes with his neighbors.

The story basically follows this route, Steve builds his farm while slowly accumulating women as he fights either soldiers or zombies. So you get some construction/town building in addition to the harem building, and can I just say that this is some of the fastest harem growth I have ever seen in a novel! He goes from none to like ten before the book finishes up. Mind you, he didn’t actually sleep with all of them in the book, there were some that he kind of set aside for later I suppose.

The world is interesting, in which it has game like rules and pop ups, magic gear that is soul bound, and allows for the acquisition of various titles. It also has a mystery of what created and or guides the strange creeping mist that makes the dead walk or materialize out of thin air. Also, why is his watering can so powerful that it can affect the zombies in the way that it does? Why is he so strong? What events did he fail at so badly that it caused him to reset his life? The book leaves a lot of questions to be answered in the following books, but it doesn’t make you feel like you missed out on something. It is rather smartly orchestrated and artfully told so that you simply enjoy the story.

As for the naughty business the book is full of it, and Master Darren is pretty descriptive. It is fairly well fleshed out, and very visual. The scenes fill the screen in your theater of the mind, so if you are looking for some grown up sassy time you won’t be disappointed.

Turning to the narration aspect what can I say? We are talking Andi P! And she can make her voice go from sexy to sultry in 2 seconds flat. So far, the only thing I don’t think I’ve heard her do is a screaming O but I’m sure that’ll happen some day. Andrea is a top notch voice actress, she has voices for characters, and voices for the cousins of those characters, as well as their neighbors. She would kill voicing cartoons and mature animated movies, she has serious range. She plays these ladies, and Steve, so well that you genuinely believe that she experiences the emotions that they do. You can never go wrong listening to Andrea.

I found this to be 8.4 stars, great story and amazing narration by Andrea. My only grevience was the quick way that the Mayoral sisters took to Steve. I think that they might have been just a little resentful for how he coerced them into joining him. Other than that this book was practically flawless.

Not for kids

This is a harem I didn't bring down the stars just for that but because there are very few game stats and a lot of really awkward sexual arrangements. Magical plauge leeds to fewer males so that females are basically brainwashed into large communal relationships with one male. sounds like Delvers LLC but a lot worse. Not meaning anything negative against Delvers. The storyline really takes a back seat to the continual sex and romance.

Another great one.

Same amazing author. Same perfect narrator. Different cast of characters and story. Small similarities to other stories by the author, but that helps to bring an early feel of welcome familiarity to it all allowing you to become invested in the characters and their struggles all the quicker. Definitely do NOT skip this one.

better story than I was expecting

when I read the preview of the book it really didn't sound that great to me but after actually getting into it I was pleasantly surprised. on the other hand I do think they could have tone down the sex and the book would have been just as good

Recycled junk

This is so bad it became painful to listen. The author clearly has no more inspiration and can only overly recycle the same book. This is almost the same as previous books. There was a good premise in this one but the author ignored that for the "erotica" and that too was recycled, boring and even stupid. I don't usually review books but this one really made me angry. Waste of time.

Simplistic even by Randi Darren's standards

Copy and paste scenes. Basic plot, forgettable world building. Avoid, even if your a fan.

Just awsom

Yet again knocked it out of the park.
Like the other books the characters are solid and story flows well. Can't wait to hear the next one.
Andrea parsneau brings depth to each and every character. Love her work and a fantastic choice for the book.

poor and simple

the book is not like his other novels and is more basic. more conveyer belt women and just poor all around

loved the story

putting aside the adult themes witch was interesting, I loved the story, I was pulled in and I want to know more.

great

i very much enjoyed these books i just cant seem to put them down and always start the trilogy again when a new one is out or i start the entire series again the re read factor is amazing and you enjoy them as much the tenth time to the first great books and character great writing to tie them all in together just amazing

interested story a bit to much sex .

now don't get me wrong sex is fine and I have no issues with it but I kind of was more interested in the main plot.

there is action and we learn about the world as we go, some things are clear if you read the authors other work but not so much if you haven't, I would guess the next book will clear thing up

was a good listen

been chipping away at this book for a bit wish they used the same voice actor as ssosh

Okay, not overly amazing though.

A lot of sex, quite a lot of it.

Felt like the story could of been focused on more, would of made everything feel nicer. I’ve already got book 2, so i dont think its bad by any count but... it’s odd.

just cringe worthy

This book has obviously been written by a lonely man that still lives in his parents basement. Or that is the impression I get.

The way the main character acts and speaks to the women just makes me cringe.

And the situation he gets in is just laughable and not in the good way.