Snakewood

By: Adrian Selby

Narrated by: Joe Jameson

Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins

Publisher's summary

Once they were a band of mercenaries who shook the pillars of the world through cunning, alchemical brews, and cold steel. Whoever met their price won.

Now, their glory days behind them, scattered to the wind, and their genius leader in hiding, they are being hunted down and eliminated one by one.

A lifetime of enemies has its own price.

Adrian Selby brings us into an unforgettable new world filled with magic, mystery, intrigue, bloodshed, and betrayal.

©2016 Adrian Selby (P)2016 Hachette Audio

A very good fantasy novel, incredible performance

This is a good book made into an incredible audio book by Joe Jameson.

Strengths:
Character development
Narative/plot
Performance
Unique take on performance enhancing drugs

Weaknesses:
Image work
Action scenes
A few minor logical issues

While the quality of the prose is good, its surpassed by the weaving of a multi-perspective, non-linear narrative. While I did see the twist coming, it wasn't because of any mistakes. At times I thought some of the image work wasn't as strong as it could be, but the character work is excellent and its hard not to admire the story.

What really pushes this to five stars instead of four is the performance. Its one of the best I've heard so far. I legitimately thought it was more than one voice actor, he was that good.


Worth the credits/money.

Very grim, but satisfying.

No rosy finale here, sprinkled with peanut butter and hugs. Here there is moral horror, visceral savagery, and a glimpse into the darkness of human nature. When when one finds that even one's heroes have blackness in their hearts, and the crushing, eternal debt from the woe of innocents, well...enjoy, if you don't feel like a Disney ending. I know that I did.

Beautiful prose details murder and revenge....

Although it took longer than expected to delve into the meat of this story, I was entranced with the writing and the narrator. Ultimately, I began to loathe a main character and wanted to wipe him from the board! All characters come alive in this revenge chase until the reader learns the actual truth that has been camouflaged until near the end.

great story great narrator great writer

its hard to find really good books, some books are good story but have grade school writing. this here is peak writing complex and powerful

Incredible Grimdark Fantasy

This book is incredible and I am shocked it only has 52 reviews. I found this book as a recommendation from Joe Abercrombie at the end of one of his First Law books. It did not disappoint! The whole premise of revenge by mercs hopped up on different potions to enhance their ability to kill was not only original and exciting but extremely well done. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes fantasy over the age of 13. Really a great book with original ideas

Always two sides to a story

Another five star book remarkably performed by Joe Jameson. After reading the blurb on this story, I was hesitant to start it, but I knew I liked Joe Jameson's narration so gave it a try. No regrets here, as this story grabbed me quickly and the earbuds stayed on.
It's a compilation of journals and papers by Scholar Goran, about supposedly the greatest mercenary crew to take a purse. Twenty men known to have saved the Old Kingdoms at Tharos Falls, Kailen's Twenty.
It's fifteen years after disbanding and someone is killing these brave men. This is where the journey begins, to learn the who and why. To do this, we listen to various narratives each with a different point of view, stemming back to the events of fifteen years ago to answer the question. It's an engrossing tale, as in the mercs take special brews in order to temporarily make themselves into super fighters by enhancing speed, sight and hearing. These brews, overtime, discolor the skin making it bark like, colorful, and tend to mentally affect the user. This in itself had me hooked on the story, with the fight scenes, but the mystery of the whole story kept my interest.
About the twenty; they're a rough bunch of players and I didn't particularly like them, but as the story progresses I found myself seeing a different side of things. As brutal as they were, they were also soldiers doing a job.
Revenge makes an appearance, an ugly face that has changed it's players into something as monstrous as those it follows.
It's fascinating and I wanted to know where it was going and where it would end. I wasn't disappointed.