Martyrs

Legends of the Great Savanna, Book 1

By: Justin Lincoln

Narrated by: Matthew Broadhead

Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

Welcome to the Great Savanna!

Explore hidden adventure within expansive grasslands, protect the unique race known as the Martyrs, and discover the Legends of the Great Savanna.

Martyrs are a unique type of creature. They are born as tall as you or me and grow to twice our size. When they are cubs, their fur is the same golden brown as Savanna grass. Playful at heart, Martyr cubs prowl and hunt like humanoid lions. When they reach adulthood, their features harden. They begin walking on two feet, making it easier to handle the weight of their Ancient Oaths.

James is a normal type of human; short on cash, and desperately trying to build a life for himself. His parents died when he was a young teen, leaving only his little brother Michael behind. They made it through together, but James knew they would never have a comfortable life. So when the military approached him with a high paying contract, James couldn’t refuse. That was how he became the first person ever to enter a fully immersive virtual reality world.

Join James as he saves the life of a rambunctious Martyr cub, is adopted into their clan, and uses magical spells and abilities to help his new family grow from a small band of survivors on the run, into what they once were: ancient and powerful protectors of the Great Savanna.

LitRPG Categories = Town Building, Warrior Mage Main Character (MC), Tower Defense, No Logout.

©2018 Justin Lincoln (P)2018 Justin Lincoln

MY NEW FAVORITE SERIES

I’m so obsessed with this book! I followed the author on RoyalRoad and am already loving the chapters he’s posted for the sequel! This book is very well crafted, with the right mix or story and RPG elements. The character and plot development are well orchestrated, and while James is the main character, Torunn is hands down my favorite! The author does use the character names a lot when he could easily say he or she.

The narrator was decent. He had a very nice voice, but he sometimes inflected odd parts of sentences. Some parts of the story I was very into it, and some parts it felt like the narrator was just reading a script.

Mathew Broadhead ruins it again...

The writing in this book isn’t by any means professional grade. It’s filled with lots of the mistakes that new writers make when they don’t have their work edited by a competent editor, i.e. misuse of similar sounding words, repeating the same words or adjectives several times in a paragraph, non-sensical shifts in scenes without explanation, and over-simplified repetitive internal justifications for actions that don’t really make sense.

In spite of this, the story was still good enough to keep me listening. Unfortunately, Mathew Broadhead’s horrendous reading forced me to quit before I could get to the end.

If this was the first time I’d had to endure his low-rent, used-car commercial voice I might have stuck it out, but alas I’ve tried to suffer through several other books he’s read and it just gets worse. I won’t go into the litany of obnoxious quirks he brings to the narration, but I will say that this is the last book I will buy with him narrating.

If the author had just gotten Jeff Hayes to read this (like almost everyone else in the genre) I think I would have been able to give this book a positive review in spite of the writing flaws... But Broadhead could have made The Name of the Wind into an unlistenable train-wreck, he’s just that inept. Please do us all a favor and go back to doing voice-overs for infomercials.

Cool concept

Martyrs is a book I would readily recommend to a few types of listeners, those who are new to the genre, young adults, or families looking to listen to something together that’s light and fun. The book is not overly heavy on the numbers, and is most certainly meant for a younger audience with references to characters like Lion Dude. Well, I should say that it starts off stat lite and works it way into the numbers and game info at around the 30% mark of the book.

James, the MC, wakes up and finds himself in game. His mission, as far as he knows is to take six months and figure out what he can about the game. He arrives in the camp of the Martyrs, a group of lion folk, and settles in with them for a bit. The mechanics of the game do work pretty well, and one aspect that I liked was how the game gradually altered as he learned about how to play. I enjoyed the town building aspect a lot, but the one thing that did throw me was the sort of game within the game, that got played out like Tower Defense. I could have done without that bit altogether. Still, it is nice to see a new fantasy race, and not your standard elves, orcs, dwarves, and goblins as the MC’s best pal.

One thing that really bothered me was the way the Martyrs were handled. They were on their last legs as a species so to speak, and yet they continually do nothing to stop the rapid decline of their numbers. At the end all I could think of was here is a pretty neat new race, and they are doomed to extinction because of poor decisions and lackluster defense. Another thing that bugged me was the way that the MC and pals behaved. I have five and seven year olds who act more mature and consider their actions better than James. I find it ironic, too, because at the beginning of the book he is mistaken for a human child because of his size. I just wish that he had acting more like a grown up (I hate that term), rather than a child.

In spite of this the book does hold your interest and has some solid moments that keep you hooked, it is certainly worth the time that you put into it, and like I say this is some good family fare, and if you have ever listened to me you know that I love family books because then I can listen to a book while I drive and get the added bonus of the kids keeping their yaps shut for a few hours. I really didn’t mean that. Much.

Matthew Broadhead has become kind of hit or miss with me. He was great in the Bathrobe Knight series by Charles Dean and the Artificer by James Hunter, but then he tanks hard in Warscapia by Garrett Boggs. Here, he kinda hits the middle of the road, not bad, but not amazing either. I’d say he was solid, but did not stand out. I really think for him it is the material. If he doesn’t have a strong connection then he doesn’t pop as much as he should. Here he seems almost languid in his approach to reading this, and I know I have said there were times that I wanted to slow down my narration speed because the action was so hot, here I wanted to speed it up. I didn’t but I should have. It might have helped. Either way he was just a 5 or a 6 on the narration scale. This saddens me because I think he was the first narrator that we found who was for the whole family, that even my wife enjoyed.

There were some issues, so I’m going to give this a 7.5 stars. Honestly, the game within a game bit just made no sense other than to throw it in just because, and the narration choked the book a little as well. It is a fun slice of life styled book, and I think it only struggles when it gets away from that aspect.


Even though I did receive a promo code for this review it in no way influenced my considerations of the material, and in fact, inspired me to be more honest. Getting a code generally makes me harsher as a reviewer as I am more often concerned what someone like Me will decide based on my review.

If this review helped, please press the YES below. Thank you immensely!!!

As seen on the LITRPG AUDIOBOOK PODCAST, please check it out on Youtube.com

Young Adult Fiction - Eh

The story isn't bad, just trite. Its the epitome of YA fiction, not good, not terrible, but bland. I lost interest in the characters mid way after they kept pretending to be adults but acting like children. No, lets get this out of the way. They act like children and young teenagers. Yet the story keeps saying they're adults in their twenties. There's no way, they don't act like adults, they don't think like adults, and even the NPC's treat them like children. The stakes are child like too. With apparently no one thinking to fortify the martyr village or even seek higher defensible ground until after pretty much all of them are slaughtered, again, and they all run away, again. For a race built on survival, how on earth did they survive undetected for years on the open savanna with fires and hunting parties? The lizard people should have found them years ago. And when they do find the Martyrs again, its a complete slaughter. I believe it was said that less than a dozen are left. Well again, because this is written from the point of view of children, none of them realize that that's too small a population to support regrowth, because the gene pool is too small. Basically, the Martyrs are doomed, not today, but eventually. Even if all of the remaining males trigger their "Last Seed" ability and force the remaining females to bear 3-5 cubs all at once (and then die).

The narrator is the worst part of this audio book. He's Microsoft Sam the Male Text-to-Speech Voice #2. Was this a deliberate choice? Is this how Justin LIncoln normally sound? There were brief moments of emotion, where for some odd reason he reminds me of the voice from the Toppers Pizza commercials on the on-hold line when I call in. And then there was the TWO HOURS and FIFTEEN MINUTES of listening to the TTS program narrator NARRATE A LOSING BATTING IN A MOBA! League of Legends is a boring awful game, and being forced to listen to someone narrate someone LOSING a game of LoL was my breaking point. I couldn't do it anymore. I opened up the book and finished reading the rest of the story in about two hours.

What would have made the book far more enjoyable is if the entire nonsense of playing a simulated MOBA game inside the MMO game was outright removed. It was unnecessary. Instead have the spirit inform the group that the great evil had escaped and was now underground and that they needed to construct a portal to the underworld or maybe have Patrick's mining exploration accidentally uncover a surface tunnel. You can still have the Ogrim and hero/villain battles, finding Michael. Even have it take over the entire rest of the book. Or have the Lich King Overlord subvert and control the lizard people. You can even have the soul weapons being made from the humans from Earth. But the whole, lets go ignore the entire story to go play a sub-game inside the game that won't be used again...WAIT WAT? THERE'S NINE MORE???? No, I'm not reading the descriptions of nine more League of Legends games being played.

I love this book.

It's well written and a good read very exciting story line i will read it again.

Painful narrator

This storyline is ok, well not that ok. It has a lot of drag and plenty of repeated lines.
But the Narrator is horrible, he tries to sound like David Attenborough "very husky" and every word sounds like it ends with an explanation mark.

A very good story!

This is a very good book. It has an excellent plot and a great direction and I am very interested in where it will lead. Good characters with great potential!

Unique litrpg setting & fun story

I don't think there has been a litrpg set in a savanna yet. It kind if reminded me if the barrens from WOW but funner.

True LitRPG

I've been sick of a lot of the books popping up lately that claim to be LitRPG, but are just convoluted messes.

I liked it

Another good book in the Lit RPG genre. An entertaining story and a solid performance.