The Broken Cage

Godclads, Book 1

By: OstensibleMammal

Narrated by: Christian J. Gilliland

Avo was born to destroy New Vultun. In a twist of fate, he'll become its only hope for salvation.

The gods were the enemy. The slaver. The chains.

With dreams of paradise, humanity slaughtered them and stole their powers, opening the path to become more—to ascend.

Instead, they nearly destroyed the world.

Vast hive cities serve as the final bastions against the crumbling of reality. New Vultun is the greatest of them all, and within its borders, ascenders wage war to determine the laws of existence itself.

The world descends ever deeper into ruination.

Avo was born a weapon, a slave to his instincts and his masters. He and his brothers were made to burn New Vultun to ashes. Everything changes when Avo gains immortality and becomes heir to an impossible legacy.

He must ascend the megacity of New Vultun.

He must challenge the very tyrants that usurped the gods.

He must finally free the world from chains.

©2024 OstensibleMammal (P)2024 Podium Audio

Words

So much exposition and a bit of torture. Struggled at times with this book due to rambling details. That said, I did enjoy it for the most part.

A truly unique setting

Lot's of books promise a unique world and mostly end up as generic with one or two twist. I can guarantee you will have never read anything with a setting like Godclads. However, a unique idea alone doesn't carry an entire novel. Godclads also delivers here, with great characters, prose, and world building (often times confus

Best I've found on audible so far

Fun new world, interesting characters, just a lot of fun, can't wait for the next in the series

Kindly old man voices man-eating monster, it's perfect.

Christian brings his A-game in this one, and boy does Godclads deserve it. Far and away one of the most creative, unique, and well written takes on both cyberpunk and the litRPG genre. A story about addiction, nature vs nurture, and overcoming oneself to become the best version of us we can be. It is also about a man-made living weapon that gets orgasmic pleasure from human suffering. A lot of philosophy and funny dialogue interspersed with intense, graphic violence involving a lot of torture and cannibalism. The setting of the story is such a brutal place, however, that the two hardly clash at all. New Vultun feels like a real place with real history, and in all reality could be called a character in its own right.
The epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter do a lot to fill out the world building and give context to things the readers wouldn't be able to learn without the usual info dump. A lot of the times, the quotes are either very revealing about the culture or history of the world or give insight into the mindset of a New Vultunite, other times they're just plain funny.
Only a few minor complaints about the voice actor mispronouncing things weirdly at times. Usually it's a one off thing, but sometimes it's not. It's also a little jarring to hear the Sang talk as Christian goes with the Japanese-y route of Rs becoming Ls, which doesn't really make in universe sense because everyone has been living in the same city speaking the same language for nearly a thousand years.
10/10 listen, I recommend reading the rest online. even if you choose not to, it may be helpful to check out the index chapter of Godclads terminology (there's a lot of cyber-wizard-priest/street trash babble)

To observe a monster

I adore books where the main characters aren’t human, be they monsters or animals, and Evo is a wonderful example of how you write a monster following the morales of another and trying not to fall to his base urges.