The Raveling: The Complete Saga

By: Alec Hutson

Narrated by: Guy Williams

Length: 51 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's Summary

2016 Ink and Insights Competition – Judges’ Favorite

2017 Readers' Favorite Award for Epic Fantasy

Second in the 2017 SPFBO

#1 Amazon Best Seller in Epic Fantasy  

Long ago, the world fell into twilight, when the great empires of old consumed each other in sorcerous cataclysms. In the south, the Star Towers fell, swallowed by the sea, while the black glaciers descended upon the northern holdfasts, entombing the cities of Min-Ceruth in ice and sorcery. Then from the ancient empire of Menekar, the paladins of Ama came, putting every surviving sorcerer to the sword and cleansing their taint from the land for the radiant glory of their lord. 

The pulse of magic slowed, fading like the heartbeat of a dying man. 

But after a thousand years, it has begun to quicken again. 

In a small fishing village, a boy with strange powers comes of age.... 

A young queen rises in the west, fanning the long-smoldering embers of magic into a blaze once more.... 

Something of great importance is stolen – or freed – from the mysterious Empire of Swords and Flowers....

And the immortals who survived the ancient cataclysms bestir themselves, casting about for why the world is suddenly changing.... 

The complete, award-winning epic series in one volume.

©2020 Alec Hutson (P)2020 Alec Hutson

slow... very slow...

decent story, but it's slow, which normally isn't always a bad thing. however, the narrator reads slow too! seriously, had to increase the narration speed. character voices sound like bad cartoon voices. he would make a better Lucky Charms cereal character. just not a good performance.

Worst accents ever

Wow seemed like a great book with lots of potential. But the performance is incredibly bad. If you want to listen to bad Dracula accents for 40 hours with a few Italian American immigrants and Chinese broken English for 40 hours I’d say by all means go for it.

Classic in the best way

Alec Hutson is the real deal. This is a fantasy epic with an old school sensibility and cutting edge awareness of how the genre has grown. Wondrous world building? Check. Nation-shaking plots? Check. Magic and mysteries to beguile the mind? Triple check. If you're hankering for an epic that'll deliver on every front, grab yourself a copy of The Raveling.

Absolutely Enthralling!

I just started listening to audiobooks, and oh what a wonderful introduction! This is a superb take on the coming of age story that is fresh and enthralling, absolutely unputdownable! Loved the narrator!

Story ok, performance pretty annoying

Ok, I get it. The author intended to underline the different countries with different dialects. But hell it is annoying to listen to hours and hours of nothing but a bad Italian accent! The story was interesting enough to listen till the end, but I’m not going to suffer through this book ever again. The end was a little disappointing. Also wondering if there’s going to be a follow up story as this ended on a sort of cliffhanger.

Narration is intolerable

This might be a passable book. The narration is so bad I honestly can’t tell. I made it to chapter 16 before throwing in the towel. Women are portrayed in the usual two dimensional fantasy roles. Crafty, smart sexy lady. Crafty, smart, atypical, but sexy if you're a real man women. Scrappy, street-smart thief/fighter who takes the poor young man under their quirky, loving wings so he, I assume, grows and surpassed them in skill and wisdom but still manages to stay humble. Sigh.

Decent story but it’s formulaic in places

This was a good story but just once I would like to read a fantasy story that doesn’t have abductions and maiming in it. It’s so formulaic. The magic system is inventive and the story is good but the author uses so many cliches that it almost ruins the book. I still recommend it though. I enjoyed it but it was very frustrating at times.

Worth the Credit...if you have patience

It needs to be said that this title came off as young adult, due to the main character being incredibly naive and ignorant. It felt this was intentional, but the relatively short timeline of the stories didn't allow for much growth. The poor young sorcerer got into his version of Hogwarts, only to stay a few weeks, departing unschooled in even the simplest of spells. A good device to let other characters shine, but this also left some amazing magical performances perplexing.

That being said, the narration was very 'listenable'. with vocal distinction between characters making things easy to sort out. It was very nice having the POV for each character stated at the beginning of each chapter, because while the stories all tie together, the character arcs overlap enough that it could have gotten confusing.

The world building aspect isn't hamfisted but rather assisted by the various encounters and events. There is some repetition, and some things are left unexplained - but that is the case in most world event stories. I would like to see the adult version of this character in future.

awesome

loved this series, matter of fact it was so good I'm going to listen to it again. performance was fantastic. everything about these books are great if you like wizards, magic, mystic creature s and the war. adventures of several characters, all at once but separate until they come together to stop the end of mankind. Well worth the time and it was a great buy. yes listen.

Boring and Disorganized

Seems like author kept changing his mind about the direction of too many characters and never develops the main character except one sentence near the end where another character basically says "you've changed" to which he replies "a lot has happened."

Also, the primary method of transitioning from one scene to another is characters being knocked out(assumed dead) then waking up somewhere else. It's incredible how often this is used.

Looking back I wish I hadn't finished the whole story. Hopefully the author learned something for future works, but I will be hard pressed to read anything more by them.

Epic Fantasy - with all the tropes

I picked this up on a whim, and was very pleased to have done so. Its an epic fantasy tale, full of all the familiar fantasy tropes, however it is very well written (maybe overly so) so the very familiar themes and characters do not feel worn-out. The writing style is incredibly descriptive and full of world-building. The voice actor does a good job and seems to have a unique scots/arabic accent for characters from a certain region.

Overall I would recommend these books to any fantasy fans who dont mind a little of the familiar.

Diverting is the Raverling.

so, i found this a really difficult book to get into as a listener. more than any other book. I preserved, steadfastly believing there was a great tale to unfold. I was rewarded for my patients. Now I need to see if there are more books to follow but you will have to invest your time....It's worth the investment.

Very Enjoyable Saga

I have taken to looking for fantasy audiobooks which span a number of volumes and this was a delight. Some of the characterisation is a bit dodgy, only because I feel English actors are better suited to Fantasy work than Americans, but that’s a real picky point because the story is really compelling. The right amount of sword and sorcery and not at all derivative. I thoroughly recommend this bargain purchase.

hard going

long winded and dragged out in parts overly complicated. I normally enjoy fantasy book but not this trilogy

good old fashioned fantasy done well

I very much liked this book - I thought it could be a bit cliched at first but I soon got into it and it made me remember how much I love a good fantasy epic! this is really quite well written and the story and plot are entertaining at all times not to mention this is very good value for one credit.... the narrator is really really good - good voices for all characters and he managed to make me find none of them annoying which is a rare thing! overall - read if you like standard fantasy - with good worldbuilding and some great ideas. Don't read if you are looking for something completely origninal / dont like architypal protaganists

Unfamiliar But Recognisable Worlds

I added this to my list purely based on the synopsis and decent length without ever having heard of it, but am glad I did! It's a great story arc with depth and world-building, complex characters and emotion. Unfamiliar but recognisable. ❤

predictable

being a lover of fantasy books I found this book to be predictable but enjoyable!!

i enjoyed listening well worth a listen

loved the narration tho took me a we while to adjust to the husky grumble common voice of the narrator but once i adjusted i really enjoyed it. tho theres times the plot changes and you have to rewind thinking did i miss out on something. meaning theres times (only a few through out all 3 books) at the end of a scene it does not notify you that your on the next part. so i dont know if thats the writers fault or narrator. but all in all i give a solid 4. if there was a book 4 id deffo want to listen. it has no real big pizaz or that wow factor but it has a wide variety of great story wirh an epic magical world and things going on in it and enjoyed that the most common way the story is laid out and you think ahhh this is going to happen but it dosnt

Way too long and complex

It is an epic story but too many characters and is needlessly endless. After 38 hours I have given up as there is no build in the story, just endless events.

Missing parts

I did enjoy it overall with its world building and story line. Except cho lins world felt like it was just plucked straight out off chines history book compared to the rest which didn’t have such a strong geographical link but while remaining familiar. Might be the accents that the reader used that pushed it to much into this world which kind of took me out of the story.

Major problem is there are 2 big chunks missing from what I can tell. The part just after the spider cave in the first book they just wake up in the next chapter miles away from it in cosy beds and kept referencing back to how nell and the paladin conversed.

Then in book 3 cho lins chapter seams to start halfway through Keilan while she is hiding in the tunnels and again references later things that seam to be just missing in this audio version. As I have no physical book to reference this to I can’t say exactly.

Hopefully this can be resolved.