The God-Stone War

Mageborn Series, Book 4

By: Michael G. Manning

Narrated by: Todd McLaren

Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's Summary

Seven years have passed since Mordecai's battle with the Shining God, Celior, and since that time his control of his abilities has vastly improved. He has at last envisioned a use for the 'God-Stone,' but the gods want vengeance and now seek to destroy everything he has built. The secrets of the past threaten the future of his kingdom, his family, and perhaps humanity itself, unless Mordecai can discover the meaning of 'Illeniel's Doom.' How far will a desperate wizard go to protect his children...or will his efforts merely damn them all?

©2013 Michael G. Manning (P)2013 Tantor

Great from Start to Finish

God Stone War is the first in this series (Other than the prequel) that I was entertained from start to finish and then even kept you intrigued for Final Redemption. With the previous 3 installments, I kept loosing interest before being caught up again. Manning does that really well. He wants there to be filler in the books so that they aren't over in a 100 pages, but the filler is never that great. With God-Stone War, he doesn't need filler, and the filler he does use is intriguing (Like the discussion over the World Road and the Trip to see Marc).

The fight between the people of Cameron and the Gods is brilliantly done because it tells us how smart Mort is beyond how powerful he is. It also brings together the characters and binds them even more into a family. Which makes it much more of an intriguing story.

Then after all that, you get the battle between Mort and Timmy, and the horribleness that follows that fight. It's a great/sad conclusion to this book that sets up everything in the future.

Book 4 is fantastic and you can tell that Manning is getting better at his trade with every word he writes. I always wondered how Embers of Illeniel was so great while Blacksmith's Son and Unbound felt a little lacking, but with God Stone War and now listening to Final Redemption, it's clear that Manning is finding his stride.

McLaren does his usual fantastic job.

Wow what a ride.

Where does The God-Stone War rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

It is a high rank as far as medieval time of books.

What did you like best about this story?

The Humor of the main character's troubled times.

Have you listened to any of Todd McLaren’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I don't remember, but Todd does change his characters while reading.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

yes.

Any additional comments?

Just waiting on the next installment.

Wonderful!

Where is book five? I love the first four! There must be some information on a release date. Please let us know!

to many convenient inconsistencies.

I've listened to the whole series. Entertaining, but the author conveniently/inconsistently empowers or underpowers characters.

Enjoyed it to a point but now frustrated

WARNING Spoilers ahead: I've enjoyed this series, and this book in particular it was the best one up to a point, I like how he defeated the 2 shinning god through cleaver and daring plans (way more entertaining than the defeat of Celior), but i had to stopped immediately in disgust when the author had the main character enslave the dragon. I realize what the author was trying to do but its entirely antithetical to who the main character is, I would have been fine with it but there simply was not enough personal trauma to cause such a drastic change in the main characters world view. Sure he had basically captured and enslaved the 2 shinning gods but they had done direct harm to him and his, and showed little regard for life. and the dragon had done no such thing. In every interaction before this point he has not used his power to enforce compliance on another being unless they had first tried to do so to him. the interaction was so jarring it brought me immediately out of the immersion and i had to write this review. i hate to leave a review when i haven't finished the book and i might finish the book later and change my tune, but I'm so irritated that I've got to stop listening to it for now.

P.S. the Narrator has a good voice but he's terrible at female characters.

Just good

This has turned out to be a surprisingly good saga. We are looking forward to listening to the rest.

Some unnecessary repetition, but overall good!

I’m really enjoying this series from Manning - despite the fact that characters repeat themselves with a shocking amount of frequency and / or explain things that have just occurred in the dialogue. The effect is similar to back when we watched tv shows with commercials and there’d be a bit of recap or explanation after every commercial ... I know we’re all getting shorter and shorter memories, but this is a bit much.
Otherwise, enjoyable, if at times unbelievable tale (even for fantasy) and interesting enough to keep me going.
Really good job on McLaren’s front, much much much better than the prior narrator!

Good story, confusing accents

I liked the book, but the inappropriate use of vastly different accents was distracting. For instance; Mort and Dorian grew up together yet Dorian has an Australian sounding accent, and Mort has an American accent.
The narrator’s portrayal of female voices made me cringe a little at times, but not bad enough to stop me from listening to the series books 1 through 4. Looking forward to book 5, hoping the new narrator proves to be more consistent with accents.

This series has devolved into a tedious soap opera

As the plot crawls along, Manning's characters indulge in endless melodramatic soliloquies. The book is a tedious explication of banal neuroses, stitched onto plot based on an incrementally recovering (buried) memory. By this installment of the series I have lost all sympathy for the 'good' characters, and all interest in the 'bad' ones. And the plot lurches from one crisis to the next not necessarily from something logical in the development of the story line, but from the next outrageous hidden feature of the fantasy world brought suddenly to light. This was not one of my better literary acquisitions.

great book

Only problem is you still hear end of disk one in the middle of the book