Shadows of the Dark Realm

By: Tyler Edwards

Narrated by: Sam Legg

Length: 22 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

The idyllic kingdom of Parisia sat nuzzled securely into massive basin in the Great Emerald Mountains. The kingdom was protected by the Darkstone, which blessed the kingdom with generations of peace and prosperity. When the elder dragon Darka Mors steals the Darkstone, the entire realm is shaken. Desperate, the King calls on a group of Seekers led by the Disgraced Knight Vale Lox.

To save the realm and everyone they have ever known from the rising shadows of darkness, the team of misfits must survive hostile lands, enemy armies, unspeakable monsters, and each other. With each member motivated by different goals, can they learn to trust each other and work together? Or will their differences bring about their downfall, and the ruin of all?

©2023 Tyler Edwards (P)2024 Tyler Edwards

Amazing narrator!

2nd read (audiobook): the narrator did an amazing job reading this story! I enjoyed this book even more the second time through.

1st read (e-book): I really enjoyed this book. It was action packed with lots of funny banter. Of course, it had dragons but also elven, witches and a royal family. The quest was unique and a lot of different characters introduced along the way. Overall I thought it was good - some missing pieces but with the budding romance between two characters I feel those parts will be explained in a second book!

loved this audiobook

Sam Legg is a wonderful narrator who manages to give clear differences in the personalities and manners of speech in each character. I have found some audiobooks monotone or flat in the past but this one was certainly not that case,I enjoyed it and look forward to more audiobooks from Legg.

High Fantasy. Entrancing Narration.

Truly. It was a wonderful change of pace from the romances I've been reading. Fantasy is one of my favorite genres and this hit the nail on the head. It was fantastic. Easy to follow story line. Great world building. Great characters. I laughed at the character's wit and banter.

The narrator was excellent. The voice inflections on the characters was wonderful and he really captured the immersiveness of the story.

I'd gladly listen to him narrate future novels by this author.

What a journey!

At first, I wasn’t sure that I would enjoy the single narration of this book. I had been listening to mostly dual or duet style narrations for a while.
I was so wrong. Sam's performance was awesome!
The story, the characters, I thoroughly enjoyed it all. ❤️😊

Feels like you're in a book/scene

I am absolutely blown away with Tyler’s world building in Shadows of The Realm. I enjoyed every part of this book, from start to finish. This is a huge book filled with tons of quests and an awesome adventure along the way!

The narrator sounds amazing in this audiobook! The way that the book was depicted was *chefs kiss to me. I felt like it brought the book to life for me. I truly felt like I was in the book/scene or watching a movie/show. The way the book was read captured the essence of the voice, era, and the story. It was a really good choice.

Sometimes you end up with an audiobook where the narrator doesn't match the character, and that can really make or break the story. This was really not the case, and even made me want to pull out the reader and read alongside the narrator!

Tyler Edwards’s novel introduces us to the world of Parisia and to our 5 main characters that we follow. The King has formed and has sent out a group of “seekers” to reclaim the Darkstone. The group consists of 5 people. What you would think would be a group of noble and powerful people, you are left with misfits. We have Vale, who is known as the Dark Knight (grumpy if you want to add that into the mix, ha!), Caelan the thief, Azalea the witch, Dante the alchemist/wizard, and Celeste the noble/royal/princess. Each one of these characters have a story to tell, which is great about them. Even though we have them as the main characters, we are later joined by several side characters. Some may find this confusing, but to be honest I think it made it a lot more fun!

I feel like there were times when some characters were meant to make you want to dislike them or hate them, and Tyler made me feel exactly that. What I like about this fantasy story, is that it is far from the typical romantasy that is out at the moment. This book has enemies to friends, all over it. I could be wrong, but I was also getting newfound family vibes. I like that it is highly driven by adventure and its quests. I like that we are focused on building more on each character and their foundation as people, individuals, as a group, and newfound family. I want to say minus Celeste, but maybe she has a purpose of being the nasty person that she is (like I said, unlikeable, ha!).

Let me tell you that when these characters banter, they BANTER. It was probably what made part of the book most enjoyable. It was having to put a set of people together who can’t help, but want to kill each other, only to realize that they need each other. This book gave me Red Rising and the Witcher vibes, and to me that’s an A++ This book was magical, it was enticing, it had creatures, adventure, quests, unlikely heroes, and epic fantasy. I felt like I was not only in the book/scene, but playing a game at the same time. You don’t get many books that make you feel like you’re interacting with it at the same time.

This book is up my alley, and I truly couldn’t have found a perfect book to add to my 5 star 2024 list! I can’t wait to read the next installment.