Shadow Sun Survival

Shadow Sun, Book 1

De: Dave Willmarth

Narrado por: Will M. Watt, Jeff Hays, Andrea Parsneau, Annie Ellicott

How well would you fare if the apocalypse fell upon you? Could you survive more than a few days? Would you be able to feed yourself? Find clean water? Safe shelter? Heal your wounds?

Allistor is a gamer geek who has spent most of his life indoors, playing virtual reality MMORPGS and reading classic LitRPG books. But when Earth is seized by an ancient race wielding incredibly advanced tech, who transport the entire planet to a new location with twin suns, he finds himself fighting to survive in real life. The human race is declared a contaminant, and the new overlords decree that 90 percent of us will be exterminated. Creatures out of myth and legend are sent to do the killing. Dragons, titans, alien creatures, big and small, all with a hunger for human flesh. Humans who survive the first year will be rewarded.

After seeing his family killed in the first week, Allistor leads a small group of survivors in their struggle to stay alive. Not satisfied with simple survival, he strives to make himself and his people stronger. The new "magic" RPG system that now governs the planet is something he can work with, and teach others to exploit. Thrust into a leadership position, and with vengeance in his heart, Allistor aims to establish a stronghold, then take the fight to the monsters who seek to enslave his people.

©2019 Dave Willmarth (P)2019 Dave Willmarth

Another great book from Dave Willmarth...

...And a questionable production by the normally fantastic Soundbooth Theater.

First, this book falls into the sub-genre of post-apocalyptic RPG GameLit where after an outside force hijacks the planet, seeds it with horrible monsters and introduces an RPG style interface/stat system, the remaining humans must level up to survive.

So yes, this does have quite a few similarities to The System Apocalypse by Tao Wong among others. That said, though the circumstances might be similar, the characters are totally different. And Willmarth is telling such a compelling story that the similarities fall by the wayside. I think it would be shortsighted and petty to lower the number of stars given just because this book’s setup shares some of its primary features with another book that came before it.

Now on to the production. As I said up top, Soundbooth Theater has generally produced great audiobooks in my experience. There have been a few titles here and there that didn’t rock my world, but on the whole they’re great.

Here, for some unknown reason, they decided to add a bunch of totally unnecessary sound effects and tension building drums to all of the action sequences. I found it jarring, ham-handed, and lacking in any kind of subtlety. Worst of all, it repeatedly pulled me out of the story. I could compare it to watching a movie and every 20 minutes or so your TV would shoot out a cloud of the smell of whatever is happening...

Though it didn’t ruin the book, I didn’t ever get to the point where the sound effects and drums were ever more than a distraction. When the narrator tells you that a character shoots his rifle, you really don’t need to hear a canned sound effect of a gunshot two seconds later in order to understand that the rifle has been fired and what that shot sounds like.

In essence what Soundbooth Theater has done here is decided that our imaginations are not competent to recreate these things in our minds eye and therefore has decided to help us out by making a crunching noise every time one of the characters breaks a bone. What’s next... will they start including accompanying video files and flashing a picture of the car that the characters are driving every time it’s mentioned that they entered an automobile?

Though I applaud their enthusiasm and efforts to bring the art of the audiobook to a new level, the way they are going about it is just misguided.

That said, the narrator and most of the character voices were superb as usual. Regardless of the problems with the sound effects, this book is still a no-brainer when it comes to spending your credits.

Decent but painful characters

Decent story that can be slow at times and the MC is painfully incompetent in battle and seems incapable of learning and keeps making really dumb mistakes he is also and odd mix of assertive at times and a total beta at others.

Great book

Similar to many litrpg books but mostly the best parts of those books. Reminds me of 10 realms or apocalypse gates before it became total shit. This book has no weird sex scenes, to be clear. Hope there are follow ups soon, I’m halfway through so hopefully it keeps going strong.

not bad

Don't listen when going to sleep There is added background noise unrelated to what's going on. The voice acting is good though. Story is ok.

pleasantly surprised

saw alot of negative reviews about the story and sound booth performance both were amazing and coming from someone whos been reading and listening to litrpg novels for many years this is an excellent addition to the genre.