Returner's Defiance 3

De: Bruce Sentar

Narrado por: Christopher Boucher, Jessica Threet

Bran returns to Vein City to find Gloria jealous that he came back with Nyx and Circe. While trying to solve that, Vincent becomes even pushier about entering the Vault.
When going to open it, Bran discovers that this life has changed yet again. For whatever reason, they had gotten perilously close to cracking the Vault on their own and drawing all the future heroes of the First Demon War in a demonic trap.
It's up to Bran to make sure they all make it out alive while reaping as much reward as he can from the Vault.

©2025 Bruce Sentar (P)2025 Bruce Sentar

epic

bruce never let's u down! great story! love the characters and the action! salivating for the next one.

One of the best!

Easily one of Bruce’s best if not THE best series he’s made! This series great progression in the liteRPG format, can’t wait for the second book!!!

A missed opportunity.

I like anti-heros, but it's like Bran isn't really being changed ethically, mentality or morally. This time around he's not wondering the globe and fighting where he's needed, and being a wondering king, but trying to build a kingdom of sorts, and preserve humanities strength before the 1st demon war, and beyond. Gloria had a moment where she could have learned patience, timing and delayed gratification, and as someone who's had power her whole life, I find it intentionally dumb to make her create the issue she did because power went to her head. and that Bran basically shrugged, and didn't chastise her for creating the problem, a problem she couldn't get out of without him. if you want to portray her as a "strong woman" you're doing a great job of that. But if you want to portray her as a capable woman, and a great character, you're falling short of it, you got to make her bail herself out of the issues she's created, and learn something from it, or chastise her when she can't bail herself out, and creates problems that effects everyone. I've noticed that a lot of your stories have your characters be intentionally dumb in many instances for the plot. silly things like forgetting they have an item that could help them avoid an issue entirely, a unique item at that. you had a chance for Gloria to have to bail herself and Salone out of a problem she created, by the skin of her teeth, and grow as a character, but just had Bran fix it.

Very mild.

The story was great, I enjoyed the new characters, and the environment that we spend the bulk of the book in. The voice actors where great as always, even though Jessica got mixed up a time or two. But I was very disappointed in the glaring lack of spicey content.

Don't get me wrong I am here for the over arching plot. But over the five series of Bruces' that I have enjoyed i've come to expect a certain level of "heat" in his works and this one just didn't bring it. That being said I am looking forward to the next book becuase I really enjoy the universe Bruce has created in this series and can hardly wait to listen to what happens next.

awesome characters

i love this whole series it really is top knotch story telling. 10 out of 10

Hints at future enemies

It feels like connective tissue and sets up for the next book to have some more exciting events, but overall is good.

Amazing story.

Been following this series since the beginning. Chomping at the bit for the next addition in the series

only one issue

The final battle dragged on and on with no sense of urgency.
I had to skip ahead to get past it.
also a nearly total lack of spicy scenes.

a very transitional book

I enjoyed this book this book had everything I wanted. but when I started it it was like oh they have 2 years left it hit me that is way too long My whole mindset goes oh yeah I'm excited but then I was like that's way too long .. for some of you who just want to see a review of this basically there are some time before the initialization of a the system to the world so for the events to happen I'm happy.

before I speak of spoilers I will go to a non spoilers

The characters
in this book we actually get to see some growth in some of the characters and the inner workings of demon culture not much in the whole concept and everything but we get to understand how their society works and hierarchy of everything. we also get to see more of how the characters view each other. for example Simone what she wants and what Gloria wants as people for entering our mc harem. Gloria pretty much states to be actually inside the harem what she wants for someone to be actually in there rather than just a servant. so we see that Simone may want people to be with The MC but she doesn't consider them sister wives. we also get a lot of development for the people who are his servants such as Jenny and Amanda I think they got the most development which is good we can understand how their mind works and what they actually really want.



the story
The dungeon in this is like a trial we get to see the MC showing what his specialty is he actually you actually get to see him how much he loves inscriptions and how good he is compared to others until now we've only seen him like talk about it but we really get to see him utilizing it and how useful it is. I'm not going to say who because spoilers but there is a very powerful person who seems to know and interferes with the mc

I do this is a transitional book so a lot of stuff is more of just establishing everything right before book 4 we've already seen everything that he pretty much can do right before the actual start of everything. The MC has his goal has a team built up a fundation has his clan involved and has backing up everything that he needs to. well not everything is complete he has actually done more than he actually intended to prior to when he first was reborn .

final thoughts

I enjoyed this book I mean this book made me excited for book 4 there is so much stuff that the MC doesn't know now there's also so many questions I have why did the MC go back in time what's affecting his change and does anyone know he went back in time I'm talking about something someone that knows about the timeline and stuff like that. Will the influence of the MC have negative or positive effects on the world. My final question is in the biggest one . are we going to see anyone from the other books showing up like the dragon King or dar... or the MC from legendary... I read the other series from Bruce so I don't want to spoil anything but dragons creating mana naturally and what we know is going to happen from the book I believe this book takes place the start of legendary rule or the ending of it I just say after the events of book nine of dragon Justice if what I believe is the cause of this system initialization. after a certain person a forced it on someone but I could be completely wrong... okay maybe I just want an avengers moment we're like all the other series MC come together and they interact with each other

Decent, but not stellar.

it definitely was less fun than the last two. the Vault was h9nestly kind of boring compared to other areas and elements in the world building. Merlin is fun. The boss fight was... Shockingly boring. it wasn't bad overall but just felt more like filler to speed things up, I personally really enjoy the gangster elements and they are basically missing from this book. the narration was almost perfect, some audio volume balancing is needed as several times they would say something quietly and I had to rewind more than once and crank the volume to catch shat was said