Hard Magic

Book I of the Grimnoir Chronicles

By: Larry Correia

Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot

Length: 16 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

Audie Award, Paranormal, 2012

Jake Sullivan is a licensed private eye with a seriously hardboiled attitude. He also possesses raw magical talent and the ability to make objects in his vicinity light as a feather or as heavy as depleted uranium, all with a magical thought. It's no wonder the G-men turn to Jake when they need someone to go after a suspected killer who has been knocking off banks in a magic-enhanced crime spree.

Problems arise when Jake discovers the bad girl behind the robberies is an old friend, and he happens to know her magic is just as powerful as his. And the Feds have plunged Jake into a secret battle between powerful cartels of magic-users - a cartel whose ruthless leaders have decided that Jake is far too dangerous to live.

©2011 Larry Correia (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Nice escape listen

I loved the Monster Hunter series and bought this for the author. It is a bit different than the Monster Hunter series but a fun listen anyway. I had a bit of a problem getting into the book at first but enjoyed it once it got rolling.

Starts slow, but gets much better quickly

This book has magic in a completely new an unexpected way and the characters are very realistic and you find yourself routing for them as the book progresses, so much so we have sat in th car with the radio on just to see how things work out for them.

Took me a while to get used to the narrator, but once I did the book was great.

I think Larry Correia is my new favorite author. His books are nothing like te books I normally read, but I have them all and I know when they are read and I have to wait for the next one will be hard.

Larry Correia Home Run

If this is any indication for future books in this series I may have come across another top 10 Fantasy Series of mine.

This book is amazing. The world building the Characters and the peiod setting just all top notch. I loved it. Highly recommend.

The Narrator is amazing at accents to which helps so much for voicing such an international ensemble of Heroes.

Fun listen

A really fun book to listen to, a little "comic-booky" if compared to something like Mistborn or Wheel of Time. It made me think of The Fantastic Four or Raiders of the Lost Ark (with magic). I wish it had been longer and had delved a little deeper into the characters lives and the magic system. There is a lot of action, almost non-stop, which I enjoy. Bronson Pinchot does a great job (as usual) and is very funny at times. Worth your time and your credit!

Love me some Larry Correia

I’ve been a big fan of Larry Correia through all of his Monster Hunter International series. I loved those and love these. Narration is first-rate. Overall a great listen.

Interesting, well performed story.

Very interesting alternative history story with lots of twists. Can't wait to start the next in the series.

Excellent story, great acting - but...

This is a wonderful story, very well acted. But the trouble with this title is that the voice acting isn't level. Narration is nice and loud, and then when Pinchot does the characters the voice levels drop considerably. Makes it kind of hard to listen to this book at a volume under 'uncomfortably loud'.

Larry Correia is an amazing writer - and the story itself is almost enough to override the volume problems.

Interesting characters, OK writing

The book did start off with a bang. It was great - amodern world history re-written where people had magic.

The book has great character shells. There's so much interesting stuff in the book. However, the author's execution was lacking. The novel had so many interesting scenes and set pieces, but the author leaned towards the character brooding and big noting themselves, that after a while it got too much.


It always helps in fantasy novels if your main character has the biggest power and thus can claim omnipotency. This was certainly the case in this book.

The book definitely started lagging and I really felt the author needed to get a move on. Larry focussed too much on repeating each characters - he could have done a flashback to the original fight for the Tessla device. But instead, there were multiple references to it. For all its worth, nobody talked about how Tessla ended up with the device, etc.

However, in defence of the author, he had enough characters in the book to deal with. The audiobook is also well narrated by Bronson Pinchot.

Overall, it's not a bad book. It has interesting characters (some better developed than others), cool magic system, interesting re-written world history and strong fight scenes (where some main characters die). It's biggest negatives remains its dragging pace in certain sections and some execution and scene selection issues.

One of the best best stores I've read/heard!

This is wonderful! The performance was excellent! The characters were great! The universe is amazing! I'm reading everything else Larry Correia has ever written in the hope that "lightning will strike twice"...it hasn't yet. The sequal "Spellbound" is pretty good!

The cover doesn't do it justice

Okay, I know, you can't judge a book by it's cover, but I was dubious that I would like this. It just seemed like it was going to be a corny or silly book. I ended up really loving it. Like buying the next installment loving it. Before I even finished. It's interesting-history is just a little different. And I ended up loving the characters. They are so well written. I felt like I knew them.

When I saw Bronson Pinchot as the narrator, I was like "oh boy, this should be something". He completely blew me away. He is one of the best narrators I have ever experienced-and I have listened to a LOT of audio books. I'm so impressed.