Temple of Sorrow

By: Carrie Summers

Narrated by: Annie Ellicott, Jeff Hays

Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's Summary

Devon Walker has one chance to turn her life around. A half-wit ogre, a legion of overgrown jungle beasts, and a power-tripping AI are trying to stop her. 

Relic Online is the hottest new game out there, and it's Devon Walker's best hope for escaping her hard-knock life. Thanks to her rocking achievements in other games, she's been hired as a salaried player. Even better, her new position comes with cutting-edge implants that turn RO's virtual reality into a full-sensory explosion. Her only task? Drive the game's creator AI to the outermost limits of its creativity. 

Sounds easy, right? 

But when Devon logs in, her expectations shatter like an ice golem hit with a sonic blast. Wearing nothing but a cloth tunic and ragged pants, she spawns inside a ruined city overgrown by steamy jungle. With zero skills and nothing in her inventory but pocket lint, she immediately runs afoul of the city's guardian, a stone golem the size of an apartment building. The encounter does not go well. 

And Relic Online is just getting started with her. 

Soundbooth Theater brings you another instant GameLit classic, narrated by Annie Ellicott. Paired with our troupe's vocal chameleon, Annie delivers yet another wonderful performance that brings Carrie Summers's world of Relic Online to life and will keep you hooked into this story filled with fast-paced action and methodically crunchy crafting and town building.   

The Soundbooth Theater team for this production: 

Annie Ellicott - Narration and female characters 

Jeff Hays - Male characters 

Ivy Sherrard - Proofing, editing 

Griffin Malnar - Production, editing, mastering

©2018 Carrie Summers (P)2018 Carrie Summers

No veil of tears here

Temple of Sorrows is a book made for readers new to Gamelit/Litrpg stories. It has some crunch, but nothing someone coming in fresh couldn’t handle, and it gives you the “I’m going to build up my character blindly” MC. She is basically an awesome gamer, until Devon, the MC, enters Relic Online. At which point she turns into a such a complete noob that she knocks herself out within five minutes of entering the game. She then does just about everything wrong that she can, until she starts using her head and gets into the game. Once she has made her decision to actually help out the area she is in she begins to make semi-intelligent choices. Which allows new readers to flow into the game world with her, and sink their teeth into something not so overwhelming.
Hardcore readers of LITRPG may find this tale a little less spicy than they like. Although the book has some action scenes, there is no real major battle that takes place. Even the confrontation with the book’s big bad had no teeth. It was not exciting nor action packed. It was more of a resolution created by one swift action. You might argue that the scene with the tainted animals might qualify as action packed, but I will disagree. I never got swept away in any of the fights. I can compare it to going and actually watching gladiatorial battles in ancient Rome, and then coming back and watching professional wrestling. It was nice seeing Devon use her head, and out think some things, but the action was completely watered down and carried no weight. Storywise, this looks to be a lengthy series, as Devon has to acquire several objects in order to revive an ancient city.
The writing is actually really good, it is articulate, verbose, and descriptive. It is not boring, and it is fun. There weresome research issues that drove me crazy, things that someone not familiar with animals and insects might make, such as Summers wrote that when a snake was stunned it blinked. Snakes don’t have eyelids, and so cannot blink. She also called spiders insects, they are arachnids, and I swear to you I was congratulating her in my head after those two slips for saying venomous snakes, and not calling them poisonous, when she referred to the spiders as spitting poison. Little stuff like that stands out to me. I am not a grammar nazi, but if you are going to refer to something, know how to refer to it. Research takes minutes nowadays. Otherwise, the tale is pretty flawless, and is a fun listen. I only pointed out those details because they kicked me out of the story. Like I say, the story is good, and the character of Devon is interesting. She’ll keep you reading.
The narration by Annie Ellicott and Jeff Hays is top notch as always. The pair interact with one another effortlessly, and really add some depth to the story. I will say that Annie really fills her voice with emotion that I don’t see in a lot of narrators, male or female. Jeff, on the other hand has a toolbox filled with different voices that he uses to reflect Annie’s acting. I also really appreciate the production quality of this book, it had nary a hitch nor glitch soundwise. Soundwise? Is that Pennywise’s evil narrating sibling? Either way, the narration really picks this book up and meshes with the direction that Summers is taking the story.

I did take off points for a lack of a pay off and no real big battle scene. The story absolutley needed to show the MC growing in skill with a big boss battle, of something major at the end. It just wasn't there, but the story was really good. It just lacked teeth. 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

45 people found this helpful

This Book Surprised Me

I will admit that when I bought this book I wasn't expecting a lot. The Naration caught me right away as it felt very natural. Jeff Hays is always a favorite so his addition also added depth. This is what I consider a very unobtrusive LitRPG. It doesn't have the repetition that some of the more popular titles have, but it has enough to keep it in the forefront. The story did seem a little rushed at times, but I think it was an effort to not have the overall story bogged down with the aforementioned repetition. You can only have so many battles with spiders before it starts getting boring. The book ends up being fast paced with just the right amount of humor injected by the games AI. I look forward to the next book in the series.

6 people found this helpful

LitRPG seems pretty hard to pull off

I tend to like LitRPG authors who bring more to the game, namely humor like Scott Meyer, and Robert Bevan, but Mrs Summers builds a pretty good world without bogging down the story line with repetitive details of stats, grinding, or glossing over how the characters or story line gets from one point to another.
This Author has a voice, and I hope I don’t have to wait too long before I hear it again.

4 people found this helpful

Well written and performed litrpg audiobook

I enjoyed this performance. The voice actors brought the characters to life. I do appreciate that they used different actors for the male characters vs. the female characters.

The stoey itself was well written and had good city building aspects, which I always enjoy.

Highly recommended.

1 person found this helpful

Couldn't stop listening

I loved this story! I lost some sleep because of it. The characters have dept, the world is complex and challenging and the narration is top notch. I would recommend this to anyone who likes fantasy or litRPG. I'm looking forward to the narration of the second book.

1 person found this helpful

Fantastic

Great writing. Good humor without being too cheesy. SUPER bummed audible only has the first book...... looking forward to the rest of the series! Also, I'm starting to like Annie Ellicott as much as Nick Podehl

3 people found this helpful

wow

has everything I wanted to read
strong female lead
video games
great story line with plenty of twist
comedy
and no harm

5 people found this helpful

Soundbooth theater is awesome!

Love the voices and effects. The story is a good litrpg. I love the female lead. There is no romance and it doesn’t need it. The lead is likeable and there are no harems in site. Waiting for the next installment

1 person found this helpful

simply awsome!

I don't normally write reviews on principal but as a huge fan of Jeff Hays and Annie Ellicott working in collaboration pleases pleases continue the story and all of your ventures together. If you like LITRPG like my self and are on the go this is a great story whether your driving, catching public transportation, walking and or taking a casual jog/run. This story covers everything to fill the time don't believe me? give it a try!

ps. no spoiler alerts

1 person found this helpful

Temple of Sorrow...loved this!

I could not put it down! More, please!! As a gamer myself and an avid reader putting the 2 together was perfect for me. the audio version allowed me time to 'read' even during my busy schedule.

1 person found this helpful

WOW. Great book

This is an amazing litrpg book. Very few books cast a female MC but after reading this book I need more! Firstly the class system is rather unique and the abilities are interesting and rather unorthodox. But nonetheless this book is a hidden gem. There aren't many jokes but this book has been well written. I will be continuing with this series

Thumbs up 👍

Read four of books out the collection Ellicott and hays are first rate narraters, they really draw u into the story, can't wait for the fifth book in the collection ❤️😘

copy paste litrpg

no real bad guy, just the world abd seeminhly reoetative, unrepresentative uncreative. generic to the point of stilted dialogue.

but outside of that, a great litrpg, lots of world and doesn't fall apart/Have any plot holes

Love this book!

This was my first real LitRPG book (after Ready Player One if that counts) and I totally loved it - brought back many memories from lots of MMORPGing - the game world itself seems awesome and I would definitely buy into a game like that. The story itself, and the writing, was excellent, a great introduction to the world and characters. the Main Character is believable and very easy to emphasize with - superb! Will definitely be buying all of the books in the series. The actors were good and believable (was nice to have several actors getting into character - helps bring them to life) Looking forward to reading/listening to more. Highly recommended.

fantastic, brilliant

Amazingly great book, very well written and the narration is spot on Annie Ellicott is a perfect choice of narrator for this serise. I Thoroughly enjoyed this book, the characters are as expected great with pleanty of depth.
I'm really glad I found this. It's well worth getting.

I've listened to it for a 2nd time and it's as good as I remember.

I'd deffinatly recommend this serise
5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐