The King's Henchmen

By: Craig Halloran

Narrated by: Alexander Cendese

Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

A washed-up pro athlete is transformed into the deadliest warrior in the world.

Still reeling from the tragic events that threw his life into turmoil, Abraham Jenkins now rides the lonely roads as a delivery man. Until one day fate intervenes....

Abraham is suddenly catapulted into a bizarre fantasy world unlike anything he's ever imagined. A world of assassins, monsters, and brutal lords. To survive, he must lead a notorious group known as the King's Henchmen on a do or die mission.

Surrounded by henchmen who don't trust him, and a ruthless king’s death sentence hanging over his head, Abraham must do whatever it takes to live long enough to save a kingdom in chaos and figure out how to return home. Because even a humdrum life on the road beats braving a bloody kingdom in chaos.

This one-of-a-kind gritty fantasy adventure series offers everything from the classic Chronicles of Thomas Covenant to the savage world of Robert E. Howard’s Conan.

©2019 Craig Halloran (P)2019 Podium Publishing

Fantastic Beginning

This story takes a man in a not-great current existence and plunges him back into a life or death situation in some other dark realm of fantasy. The world he gets transmigrated to is harsh and gritty, much like the one he left, but with the promise and ability to succeed at some point giving it more purpose. He's thrown into a group of henchmen who are generally unpleasant characters but with good backstories and reasonable motivations that increase the realism of the story. It doesn't hurt that the narrator does a good job of portraying these characters.

I received the review code for this audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this honest review.

HOLY S@#¡ ( for books 1-3 )

okay first of all these books are awesome! i get excited every time i think about em . Alexander Cendeses Unbelievably Spectacular telling of the already amazing books had me so deeply invested i stayed up all night and took a sick day because it almost felt like i was abandoning my brothers . thank you Craig Halloran and Alexander Cendese for the joy you gifted me ,u too audible 🙂

Great start to even better story!!!

Not much to say that’s bad about the book, it definitely grabs you from the get go and the story is very entertaining!!

Incredible series starter

I have been a big fan of Craig Halloran's writing ever since I discovered his Darkslayer series. When I heard he was writing a completely new series I was excited to see what he was coming up with. When I found out it was portal fantasy, I had flashbacks to books like Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame and really got psyched about where he would take the book. I can happily report it keeps the best traditions of those others, while blazing its own path.

Abraham Jenkins, ace pitcher for the Pittsburg Pirates, had it all. A hugely successful career, a beautiful loving wife and a son he loves to death. That is until they are killed in a car crash, and he's left alone in his misery. Walking away from baseball and his former life, he is now driving a beer truck, just trying to forget his past. Passing through a tunnel in West Virginia, Abraham's truck ends up in a cave. As he exists the truck, a man runs past him, and Abraham is stunned. When he recovers, he discovers himself in a new body, that of Ruger Slade, leader of the King's Henchmen.

The King's Henchmen are the King's troubleshooters, expendable hunters of the kingdom's enemies, but they have been on a bad luck streak lately. Their missions have been failures, and they are facing increasing pressure for success, or its back to prison for most of the Henchmen. Joining the Henchmen in the middle of a mission to return a group of evil witches alive to the king, Abraham finds himself in a world where people live and die by the sword, quite literally. Having to establish himself in his identity with the Henchmen requires him to assume a brutal aspect. He desperately needs to get the witches back, or the Henchmen are done for good.

When things go terribly wrong, Abraham and the Henchmen must face the wrath of the king, as well as the king's son, a prince who will do anything to bring the Henchmen down. Luckily for the Henchmen, the dying queen intervenes, and they are given an impossible task to redeem themselves: Get a supposedly mythological item that can save the life of the queen. Well, if anyone has a chance of pulling it off, it's the Henchmen, if they can only recapture the magic that made them so successful in the past. Adding a new ally, they make their way towards their goal, and what they discover will change their lives forever.

Like his other series, the author relishes creating complex characters, and The King's Henchmen is no exception. Abraham is a great character, trying to move on after an awful tragedy, all while adjusting to a world not his own, and suddenly being responsible for more lives than he's comfortable with, some of which would rather see him dead than follow him. The secondary characters are fleshed out well, and you get a good feel for motivations. The plotting is taut, and you never feel as though scenes are just filler. The world building is some of the best the author has attempted so far, and you really feel right there on the ground in the various scenes in the book.

This was the first time hearing Alexander Cendese narrate, but I was not disappointed. He has excellent pacing, and really does a great job nailing the various characters, bringing them all to life. I look forward to hearing him narrate book 2 of this series.

The overarching storyline has plenty of room for expansion, and I am very excited to see where the author takes it. I highly recommend this book, and will be following up on the subsequent volumes. Definitely a good addition to Craig's writing portfolio.

What an unexpected treat!

I wasn’t expecting this book to be so good, I thought it was going to be pretty much the same as others in the genre. The characters are awesome, the narration is great, story is super, and it’s very amusing too. Well done! I’m looking forward to the next in the series.

the Kings henchmen

Really enjoyed the story and performance was spot on story was interesting and interesting of how men travel from the future to the past

the kings henchmen

good movement throughout the book. narrative was done well. looking forward to the next book.

good but super short

This book is pretty enjoyable however the author has odd plot points and not a lot happens during the book.

A very promising premise but fell down a bit

I struggled to rate this one, as there are a few aspects that I really loved but others that just didn't work for me.

First, let' talk about the audiobook narrator.
Alexander Cendese once again gives us an all-star performance! His voices are wonderfully crafted and even his female voices are believable. He has excellent control of vocal inflections and his tempo shifts throughout the text are nothing short of masterful.

Now, for the story.
First, I actually quite like the main character. In strong counterpoint to some of this author's previous work, Abraham Jenkins is a good person with a strong moral compass who is trapped in the torment of having lost his wife and child. Although I don't quite believe some of his actions and motivations, he's a great character.

My only real issues are A, I really dislike main characters that are instantly and automatically expert warriors that are virtually undefeatable. I can accept it when the character is a war veteran and it's explained. And yes, a certain amount of combat ability is muscle memory, so he would inherit a certain amount of his host's skill. But not all of it. He certainly would not still be the best swordsman in the world.

And B, I'm left having flashbacks of the torture that was Thomas Covenant, in that we have a character who goes from the real world to a fantasy realm but doesn't believe the world he's in is real. Except that this breaks down in his reactions and internal motivations.

**small rant here. Feel free to skip it***
See, the big issue is that writing a character who truly doesn't believe what he's experiencing is real is an extremely difficult thing to do believably. If he truly didn't believe in the world around him, he would not agonize over any decision. He wouldn't put any thought whatsoever into how his actions are going to affect anyone. And he certainly wouldn't put any thought into the thoughts, feelings, or general well-being of those around him. Nor would he go out of his way to protect any of them. And for that matter, he probably wouldn't do much to safeguard even his own life, since he would be expecting to just "wake up" if he "died" there.
***okay, rant over***

The majority of the side characters are sadly little more than set dressing until the very end, but there are a couple of gems.

While I understand why the author chose to open with a prologue that takes place around the middle of the story, I can't help thinking the story would have been better as a chronological narrative. If he wanted to make it clear from the get-go what kind of story we were reading, I think he would have been better served using the epilogue (or a shortened version of it) to open the story.

Speaking of the epilogue, I still can't wrap my head around why it's there. At first I thought maybe it was there to explain a few things that are left as wide, gaping question marks during the main story, but it doesn't really answer those questions. It gives some good background and does a good job of adding substance to several characters (while adding a giant inconsistency), but overall it felt completely unnecessary.

My best guess is that the author wrote it as a prequel novella to be a freebie for email subscribers. But again, I can't fathom why it's present in the audiobook. Especially at the end.

Now, the plot of the story is rapidly paced, with a new battle or other conflict around every corner. The downside to this is there isn't a lot of depth to it. Much of it just seems a little too convenient, particularly the way the main character "shares" memories with the body he inhabits.

However, for all that, if you accept this book for what it is (just good action-packed fun sans explanations or any real message) and don't mind its flaws too much, it is a lot of fun to read.

If you like your fantasy deep and epic, this probably isn't the book for you.
But if you're looking for a more conan-esk heroic fantasy featuring a main character from the "real" world, then this might be just what you were looking for.

Great book

So action pack with alot of intriguing characters. I recommend this series I'm glad I bought the first three