Seraph

Monstrous, Book 6

By: Lily Mayne

Narrated by: Michael Lesley

Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

I've already mentally prepared myself to kill the screaming, murderous monster in the cage outside our camp.

I'm used to it. It's what I do here. Kill monsters and other people.

This monster, Seraph, is particularly unstable—has been since the moment he arrived from Collector Mary's monster menagerie to the west, where the military stashed him away. He's in pain. I can see it. But he's not a mindless beast. Not like some of the others think.

When I start guarding him in his cage every night, I begin to see the person beneath the agony that tortures his every waking moment. I begin to see who Seraph could have been if he hadn't been twisted into this monstrous creature.

I realize that I wouldn't be able to bring myself to kill him, even for his own sake, but it doesn't matter anyway. He's already dying, and there's nothing I can do to stop it. Not even when new visitors at our raider camp bring with them secrets about Seraph. Secrets the military has tried to hide. Secrets that reveal the true extent of the horror he's been put through.

And now… Now, I will kill anyone who tries to hurt him again.

Seraph is book six of the Monstrous series, a post-apocalyptic m/m fantasy series that features monsters and human men falling in love. It is best to listen to the series in order. Intended for mature listeners.

©2023 Lily Mayne (P)2023 Podium Audio

So good! Don't miss this one!

This book was so good, made even better by the fantastic narration! I loved it.

Give it a listen to

Performance was fantastic, This was a good book to listen to, but not as much action as the books before which made it feel slower and longer. I wasn’t much of a fan of Lilac but Seraph made me want to give him a big hug.

The narration is amazing!

I LOVED THIS BOOK! I had waited for it to come out on audiobook and it is amazing. I’m going to listen to it again immediately!

love the series

love the series. I have read these books several times. now I get to hear the voices.

The best performance so far

I kove this book the most in the series and audio is no exception. The performance was excelent. And I adore Seraph and Lilac together.

Good performance!

I absolutely love this series! But the way this man has brought these wonderful characters to life has been incredible to listen to! This is one of my favorites out of the series and he knocked it out of the ball park! Can’t wait for the next one! Until then I will replay and replay and replay Heehee 😉

Oh dear...

I will say upfront that Michael Lesley is an amazing VA and his work on the Monsterous series has been some of my fave work out of any audiobooks that I've read, he is a wonderful talent with a scary good range and I absolutely look forward to Lor and very likely Lyri when the book is written and then likely narrated by him in the unknown future

That being said, I was not thrilled with some of the voices in this book. I was aware that Seraph's voice was likely going to be unpleasant given his whole situation, however the voice that Mr Lesley uses is almost incomprehensible. It's such a garbled gurgling voice that I would often have to play back and crank up the volume to try and parse what was said or pull up whisper-sync to try and follow along. I was hoping as the book went on it would get clearer but with how just unpleasant it was in the beginning it's been a struggle to finish the book. To continue on with the voices, Mr Lesley has also dropped the bass of Edin's voice and made it more of a growl/gurgle and also notably dropped Wyn's voice into a much deeper growl/gurgle as well, making both of them harder to understand, with Wyn also speaking much more slowly likely in an attempt to make his voice clearer. It felt like such a strange choice given that all the other voices are much the same, making the first few scenes with Edin and Wyn jarring, though admittedly after a few hours the changes to Wyn's voice did grow on me.

His work with Lilac was phenomenal though with Lilac showing off his emotions in both his thoughts and voice, monotone and flat voice becoming much more lively at just the right times and once again making me teary eyed over the moments that the book had made me though probably much more so with the wonderful added voice work.

tldr: Great story and great work by Mr Lesley as always, but his Seraph voice was hard to follow along with and there were strange tweaks were made to Wyn and Edin's voices

So much squish 

Lily Mayne knocked this book out the park. Seraph gives all the feels and the ice queens (Lilac) machete goodness GASP! This book has all the world building (without the word vomit), great character development, angst , 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ and sweetness. I have reread and relistened to this series over and over. (Side note please give Samson his own story)
Narration is fantastic Michael Lesley crushed it.
I highly recommend you won’t be disappointed.

fabulous

i listen to all 6 books in a row, I love the world that is being built with this series and I already bought the next book on pre order!

My fave so far

Michael Lesley and I are finally on the same page. He voiced Seraph PERFECTLY. I was a little concerned because other reviews were saying he sounded like Dobby. That is wholly untrue. Seraph has a particular speech pattern - lots of stuttering and chuffing and hesitancy. Michael nailed Seraph’s voice. What I heard in my head while reading is what Michael put forth in his narration. I cannot tell you how happy that made me. Seraph is my precious baby and I’m so happy to hear his voice read to me as I imagined him. If I could give Michael an award for this performance, I would.

Lilac on the other hand, I did not like at first. His voice at normal speed is cringy to me. Like he’s high out of his mind and he talks so painfully slow. So I played the audiobook at 1.2x speed and voila - perfection. I enjoyed every narrated moment after that.

There’s a lot of our human and beastie characters from the previous books together in this book and Michael kept up with voicing each person so well, despite the many changes of speakers in several sections. Truly talented.

As far as the actual novel, Seraph is among my top 2, along with Moth. Followed by Gloam. I resonate with the relationships the most in those. I adore this series. It has fantastic world building and phenomenal relationship development.

10/10 would recommend.