The Raveling: The Complete Saga

By: Alec Hutson

Narrated by: Guy Williams

Length: 51 hrs and 3 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

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.

Wow great!

Glad it was all compiled into 1 bigger book, I would not have spend my credit on a smaller book. Great pacing! Brain Sanderson’s stormlight 4 could learn a lot about how to pace and tell a story from this series.

very enjoyable time spent

I really enjoyed this epic adventure and the characters. I sometimes don't like when there are multiple character story lines, but I found it was done nicley and I was interested in the different lines, and how they come together. They didn't give you cliffhangers when changing between storylines - a cheap trick - instead they were satisfying. It was a lovely mix of struggles and rewards, and genuinely caring for the characters "good" and "bad". I am very glad I gave it a try.
it is hard to find good stories these days.

Great Series

I am glad that I transcended the negative reviews on this one.
The writing is poetic and the reading is in the storytelling spirit.
I enjoyed the characters and the situations as well as the environmental backdrops.

Good story, bad main character

It took me a bit to get back into it, but overall I enjoyed it. My only complaint is the main character Keilan. Keilan is the most useless and plain main character I've ever read about and only the rest of the characters kept me interested in the story. It just seemed like he was a plot devise to move the story along, and everything he did had little to no consequence except for one thing toward the end. Other than that the story itself is pretty interesting and unique.

Narration issues

The book is good but a bit slow paced. This is made worse by the slow cadence used by the narrator. He also tends to exaggerate the accents to the point that some of them are comical.

Great story

Great story very in depth and would like a sequel as it leave characters with more story

good book

Despite some of the other comments I think its a good book with a good story and the narrator did a good job.

Slow and Underwhelming

Story is very slow, sometimes feels disjointed like he wasn't sure where he was taking the characters.

The narration is amazing, the only reason I actually finished the series.

Well done, not great, but well done series.

The performance is the only way I got through this. His unique and varied voicing of each character was a great benefit to this reading.
For me, there were too many characters to track and follow in each of the books. Lots of quick twists and unexpected left turn have left me quite confused several times. Almost like the writer got tired of a direction and killed someone off so he could write in another direction. So expect radical changes and somewhat strange or luke warm endings.
ADVICE: If you purchase the 3 book series, it might mentally work better if you finish a book and wait a few days to start the next.