Black Sun

Phantom Server Trilogy, Book 3

By: Andrei Livadny

Narrated by: Todd McLaren

Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

Zander and his gamer friends used to face danger without fear, finding strength in the promise of a safe respawn. Nothing could harm or destroy them. This was only a game...or was it?

A game, played in an ancient hyperspace network. A game involving dozens of real-life alien civilizations. Earth is deserted. The fate of humanity is unknown.

The few human survivors are now stuck in the Darg star system. All they can do is fight to the last. They must find the Phantom Server - the nucleus of the interstellar network created by the ancient civilization of the Founders. In order to live, they must solve its mystery or die trying.

©2016 Andrei Livadny; English translation copyright 2016 by Irene Woodhead and Neil P. Mayhew (P)2016 Tantor

Love it

This is one of the best series on audible, some cussing but still amazing. I am sad that this is the last book.😭

An ok conclusion

The conclusion was ok. At times the story seemed to have a lot going on. Perhaps in the future I will listen to all three in a row and enjoy it more.

One thing nearly ruins this series for me.

The trilogy has plot holes and loose threads. I can totally deal with that. The action is good. The plot and overall scheme is pretty cool. The thing that bothers me about these books is the love thing with the protagonist. His romantic relationship is probably the worst I've read in a long time. It was predictable, yet utterly forced. Actually, every female character in the book, and their relationships, make me think the author has no clue about relationships with women. I know this is LitRPG, and the genre isn't known for well written female characters and love sub-plots. But this was much worse than normal. Ugh. It's unfortunate, because much of the rest of the story is quite appealing and adds to the genre in positive ways.

Poor game mechanics

Overall I’m not a fan of the Phantom Server series. I love litRPG and had high hopes for this trilogy. Unfortunately, the story came across disjointed and slow. The game mechanics are haphazard at best and greatly self serving when needed to resolve a difficult or pointless situation created by the main characters. Chaos Seeds, Divine Dungeon, and Way of the Shamen are much better series.

Imaginitive Litrpg

Wonderfully imaginitive view of the future of VR, mmorpgs and the human race. I love the concepts for abilities and skill trees.

Very neat and polished ending to a great story.

I enjoyed every word. I would like to see more books in this universe.

I wondered how the author would wrap up the trilogy. I am pleased with the conclusion.

The ended neatly but the universe in this trilogy deserves more.

i loved the first two so much.

I was sad at the pacing of this one. The logic jumps were seemingly random. Almost zero fluff text. You knew ever gun on the wall would be used. World building was abysmal and leaving much to be desired.

I will give any other series by this author a chance even with this book leaving me unhappy. The universe set up in the first two could easily be extrapolated upon and the intergalactic networks could be used to make enjoyable stories.

Terrible writing

Have you ever started something you regreted but was mindset to see it to the end. This author jumps from plot line to plot line without any regard of what he wrote in previous chapters. If you involve yourself in this book, you will be left with unresolved cliff hangers from each book. This series also gave on the spot answers to wrap up non-previously introduced characters and technology the author used to clean up storylines that lead nowhere

What a let down

What would have made Black Sun better?

The end of the series left a sour taste in my mouth with me feeling the protagonist is the most idiotic person making the worst decisions and the story just keep bending to him to allow such idiotic ideas. Half way through the last book I was just hoping this book would end so I can move on to something else.
The book jumped form place to place with so little information I had to go back and find out how did they end up here or what is even going on.

The series had an interesting idea but it felt unrewarding and left to many questions unanswered.