The Armored Saint

By: Myke Cole

Narrated by: Michi Barall

Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's Summary

The first book in Myke Cole's The Sacred Throne Trilogy, blending epic fantasy with powered armor for fans of the Stormlight Archive

Myke Cole, author of the beloved military fantasy Shadow Ops series, debuts a new epic fantasy trilogy with The Armored Saint, a tale of religious tyrants, arcane war machines, and underground resistance that will enthrall epic fantasy fans of all ages.

After witnessing a horrendous slaughter, young Heloise opposes the Order and risks bringing their wrath down on herself, her family, and her village. She must confront the true risk that wizards pose to the world and weigh the safety of her people against justice.

©2018 Myke Cole (P)2018 Recorded Books

Written well, but uninteresting

This story is not what I expected. from the image, title and description, I was expecting more armor and less teenage antics and coming to terms with sexuality. The titular armor is fairly interesting, but really is only introduced halfway through and only plays a part in the second to last chapter. The primary faith appears to be ripped wholly out of Warhammer as well, with very few changes to avoid copyright issues.
It isn't a bad story, just not what it was advertised to be. I would recommend it if you enjoy a coming of age tale with a fairly standard patriarchal religion with your standard repressed sexuality and caste system.
The narrator did a fine job though, she is no Steven Pacey or Luke Daniels but she got the job done.

92 people found this helpful

too long of a build up

The story is well written, but took way too long to build to the climax.

44 people found this helpful

a lot of build up for small climax

maybe I'll just jaded but this story felt like a long fuze for a little bang, it does set up book 2 i
guess

17 people found this helpful

Lesbian Steampunk Anne Frank

No spoilers: this book literally has only one chapter of an actual Armored Saint doing things. The rest (legitimately about 80%) is a girl who is locked in a vault, hiding from genocidal fascists, while she tries to figure out where her sexual orientation lies. Oh, and there’s a fairy godfather complete with mouse helper. The writing is abysmal. Word choice is horrible, grammar issues. If you played a drinking game based on “singing in pain”, you’d be hospitalized based on the 13th chapter alone.

SPOILERS: what the hell is that ending twist about? Seriously. We spend hundreds of pages going on about how xenophobia, genocide, strict religious zealotry, and homophobia are wrong, but it turns out they were right all along? Then they fridge the love interest? This book should be titled “Little Girl never Learns a Lesson, Kills Everyone due to her Choices.”

69 people found this helpful

great start to the series

wizardry and steampunk technology in a different era. I'll have to pick up the physical copy and give this a read as I thought the pronunciation of our budding warrior's name by the narrator was off...and frankly very distracting, I wouldn't pronounce "Heloise" as "Hell was" ....other than that..great performance, some unnecessary character development for characters we barely heard from again but otherwise looking forward to the next installment

12 people found this helpful

Protagonists unwise decisions hard to take.

Incessant unwise decisions made by the protagonist are too heavy a plot device. the world-building was really good. The creepiness of the order had my skin crawling! Worth reading, but for heavens sake I hope our protagonist isn't as foolish in the next book.

14 people found this helpful

collegiate creative writing submission

14 chapters and 5 minutes of actual adventure. The story abruptly ended just in time because I am not sure I could have dealt with another droning chapter

5 people found this helpful

Is the main character really named "Hellwas"?!?

When I checked how the name of the main character was spalled, I was astonished to see Heloise (Hell-o-ese), and not Hellwas. Since her name occurred often, I cringed to hear this pronounciation. Other than this, the story was decent.

1 person found this helpful

Is this even the right book???

Ok, so first this book is really really bad. It never gets to the point. In fact the title is completely unrelated to the story. I listened to it twice just to be sure and the second time was even worse. The main character never gets armor, its not sci fi and apparently its mainly about wizards and hiding from knights that are ignorant and trying to kill everything. The narrator probably could do better but with the material given that's not gonna happen. This book is just bad glad I used a credit and not funds.

5 people found this helpful

great first step

This is a great introduction to world that I want to know so much more about. looking forward to learning more about the world of Heloise and the Emperor in the next book. Kudos to Myke and highly recommended.

5 people found this helpful