The Crimson Spark

Vagabond Legacy, Book 1

By: William Hastings

Narrated by: Vic Mignogna

Length: 17 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

BREAK THE SHACKLES OF THE MIND

Leo is a boy grieving his twin. Nea is a girl living as a boy to escape her past. Two slaves, carrying the scars of abuse. They form a connection, only to be split apart when their ship arrives in a mysterious and fragmented land, cut off from the rest of the world.

Leo becomes apprentice to a vagabond swordsman and together the two set out to find a stolen weapon locked away in a catacomb city. But what is his new teacher hiding? Tormented by a crippling injury and an anxious heart, Leo must find the strength within himself to keep going despite all that he has lost.

Meanwhile, Nea is conscripted by the Captain of the Royal Guard, who ropes her into the search for a group of men hunting a boy matching Leo’s description. But to Nea’s dismay, the Captain is a woman and Nea must fight past her hateful and damaged mind if she ever hopes to earn her freedom.

When a former child soldier threatens to spark a revolution, Leo and Nea will choose sides. Will they fight to save this cruel land, or punish it? To find the answer, they must confront the horror of the past and fight for the greatest freedom of all, freedom from the fear that rules their hearts.

Read by Vic Mignogna (Dragon Ball Z, Full Metal Alchemist)

The Crimson Spark is an emotional and captivating fantasy adventure. A story about innocence lost and righteousness found. A story about how even the most broken souls can be whole together.

©2019 TGR Press (P)2020 TGR Press

Bravo!

Not only well written, but extremely well narrated as well!! Sometimes the right voice talent truly brings the characters to life! <3

Hoping for a second book soon

Overall the story, world, and characters were well thought out and engaging, I only really had 1 gripe, Vic did a great job for character narration and made it easy to tell who was who(a few mispronunciations and slips set aside) but when he was speaking as the narrator, it was incredibly dry and unemotional, it almost turned me away in the first hour. I got used to it fairly quickly and it didn’t hurt my overall view of the story so I won’t trash my review for just that.

A solid book!

I'm admittedly a fan of tropes. Coming of age to be righteous and save the damsel in distress is a good story to me anytime. I just don't need or want people being horrible and dark to enjoy a story or feel like a character has multiple facets. However this author has brought to life very realistic characters who are complex and likeable who possess the depth to keep their relationships and actions interesting while driving a well put together plot to somewhere I really want to go!
Hope this helps.

Great story, great characters, great performances

Thoroughly enjoyed this story. Great characters that really grow on you as you get deeper in, villains you can't help but love to hate, and a very satisfying ending. The voice performance was phenomenal, amongst the best i have experienced; each character voice is completely unique and immediately identifiable the whole way through.

Don't wait on this one! Take a listen today!

Phenomenal work

This story immersed you into a world that is foreign yet feels familiar, I enjoyed the story very much. The fact you have Vic Mignogna narrate the story and bring the characters to life with his amazing voice acting, it gives the story more depth and you can almost see it take its own life form in your mind!! Can’t wait for the second book and please let Vic narrate it for you so that the story can continue from where The Crimson Spark ends

A captivating and exciting adventure!

An incredibly descriptive and well performed book. With the pandemic, I’ve been moving more to audiobooks instead of television to get work done and this has been the most enjoyable to experience so far

It was like a movie!

OH MY GOSH! This has to be THE BEST audiobook I've ever heard! It had me on the edge of my seat for most of it! It was as though someone blindfolded me, and took me to a movie theatre for a wonderful fantasy/action adventure movie. It was that good! I laughed, I teared up, and I actually talked back to the characters! I really hope there will be a Book 2! I can't wait to go on the "Green Road" w/ Leo and Nea. Bravo to William Hastings for penning such a wonderfully exciting and touching story. And double bravo to Vic Mignogna for bringing these amazing characters to life! He really made it hard to believe all of these voices were coming from just one man! (Especially the female parts!). Please do more!

Amazing!!!

Always a pleasure to listen to one of Vic's performances👏🤗 It really felt like I was in the story itself! This book will make you laugh, cry and sometimes make you wanna scream.. Overall, it was a marvelous literary adventure! Looking forward to more!

A Good Listen!

This story follows two characters, Leo and Nea, who are teenagers both with traumatic pasts. Leo is an escaped slave who finds himself apprenticed to a Vagabond, the ‘protectors of the land’. They go off in search of a lost weapon. Nea is also an escaped slave, a girl who has disguised herself as a boy and ends up going on an adventure with Cain, the famous Captain of the Royal Guard. They’re looking for Leo, or at least the group of men who are hunting for him. Then the shenanigans really start, like they do.

I liked Leo a lot as a character, and he was easy to cheer for. Even more, I liked Seiyariu, the vagabond he travels with. Seiyariu is full of all kinds of secrets that I wanted to learn more about as the book went on, which was right up my alley. To a lesser extent, I liked Nea and Cain. Nea is quite prejudiced against women, and so it takes her a long time to warm up to Cain, but as they travel and Nea sees what Cain is capable of, she comes to idolize her, a little.

Nea talks to herself in her head a lot. Leo does too, but not nearly as much. Leo is the sort of character that asks questions to prompt worldbuilding answers, but I didn’t find this as noticeably irritating as Nea’s constant self-deprecating inner monologue. There is a reason that she is so self-deprecating, and it’s understandable in the context of the book, I just wish that it was presented differently. It doesn’t help that in the audiobook, an effect is added to these bits, which makes them super noticeable.

This one took me a while to really get into. It starts off rather slow, and the timeline between the two characters also seems to run at different rates in the beginning which took a little getting used to. The timeline of events seemed skewed between Nea and Leo, and it was a little confusing. However, the second half of the story, especially when Leo and Nea come together again, was much more immersive and flowed really well. I enjoyed the second half much more than the first. It gets pretty emotional nearer to the end, which had me a little misty-eyed after so many hours of bonding with the characters. Many of these characters have pasts full of abuse, sexual abuse, thoughts of/attempts at suicide, and other unpleasantness. The unpleasantness was fairly vague, but still, if these sorts of things are problematic for you, proceed with caution.

As an audiobook, I thought it was very well done. It is narrated by Vic Mignogna, which admittedly was part of the thing that intrigued me about it. I don’t always watch my anime dubbed, but FMA was one of the ones that I watched (and enjoyed) both dubbed and subbed, and so I was interested to see what this narration would be like. Admittedly, it does listen like ‘Edward Elric tells you a story’ from time to time, so that was alright. ^_^

All told, I liked this one and found it entertaining, if a little slow at times, in the beginning, but I thought that the last half made up for it. It was a good book for putting on and getting some work done. I’d recommend this one to people who like a coming of age story, or a master-and-apprentice story. 3.5/5 stars!~

An Excellent Introduction

In a weird way, The Crimson Spark reminds me of the Kai Lords from Joe Devner's Lone Wolf series of gamebooks, but beyond that this is a fine low fantasy entry. Of particular note is the variety of voice work on display, having a good variety of accents present. If I have any nitpicks, it would be a result of the balancing act of trying to focus on two characters in to arcs, a balancing act at the best of times. In addition, at times it pulls the "everyone has secrets" card a few too many times in its third act, but that's a story matter more than anything else.

Either way, a fine start and I hope to see future Vagabond Legacy books in audio form.