The Slayer

A LitRPG Saga (Aether Gate Online, Book 1)

By: Darren Hultberg Jr

Narrated by: J. Scott Bennett

Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

"Raise your blade. Take up the mantle of Slayer."

Adam’s life was anything but easy. With people at both school and home eager to make his life a living hell, the only place he felt like himself was in the virtual world. At least there he had some control.

When the newest VRMMORPG title gets announced, Adam and his best friend, Max, are more than ready to dive in. Launch day arrives quickly, and Adam is plunged into a world that’s more immersive than anything he’s experienced before. Although the game offers a bevy of character choices, Adam quickly chooses the title of Slayer, a class that specializes in taking down stronger, more difficult opponents.

Adam begins his adventure, but it's not long before he realizes there’s much more at stake when taking a life in this new game. The pain is very real, and death...is permanent. Now, trapped in a virtual world, Adam must take the mantle of Zander Darkblade and brave the dangers of the Aether Gate.

It is a world of mighty creatures and fallen gods. A world where powerful familiars bond with their masters, granting them extraordinary powers they wield with uncanny force...and as Adam and the others will soon discover, it is a world of secrets that have lain hidden for far too long....

Welcome to Aether Gate Online.

Disclaimer: This novel is a LitRPG/gamelit title. Its contents include various role-playing game stats and video game references.

©2018 Darren Hultberg Jr (P)2018 Darren Hultberg Jr

A new twist for this genre

I am not a gamer, but I have found that I am really enjoying this new genre of writing. This story, however, has a different twist to the usual storyline. THIS story is truly life and death, good vs evil, the end is the end of the game. Want to know what I'm talking about? Read the book, because there is no end game or escape in the normal sense of the word. But, believe me, you want to read to the end...
I listened to the audio book version of this book. Scott Bennett is one of my favorite narrators. I love the smoothness of his story telling. He is able to find the heart of the characters and bring them out in their voice and the sense of their actions are felt in the hearing of their expressions.
I highly recommend this book and this narrator!

Simply put it's a very good read.

First off wow I'm in no way new to Litrpgs and this one snuck past me and man was I missing out. This was an absolutely fantastic read, to me had a feeling of a more realistic of Sword Art Online. The author took the light-handed rout as far as stats go there in there but just enough to show progression but not enough to be overbearing or repetitive. The story was amazingly a well-thought-out without the feeling of the story dragging the pacing is fantastic the character progression stat-wise and personality-wise was also good.

The Slayer

This audiobook is one of the most enjoyable in the genre and I am really excited for Aether Gate Online Book 2. So I started listening to book 2.

Great Start to a Series!

This was exciting and fun to listen to. It is what I would imagine playing video games IRL to be. The story kept me engaged and it was hard to stop listening. I will have to get the rest of the series and I recommended to my HS age child as I think he would love this! It is a fun listen I highly recommend.

Book one

Very easy listening . I love how I was immediately drawn into the story as if I were a fly on the wall. the narrator was really good and ive listened to bad ones. cant wat for the next volume

Great for YA, mildly entertaining for adults

This is not the best of LitRPG novels I've listened to, but it's okay nonetheless. I liked the main premise, i.e. the way people got stuck in the game. I also liked the fact that although the MC starts out as a somewhat insecure game character, he grows into it and develops into kind of an action hero - although at heart he's still a teenager or adolescent, with the insecurities that come with that. I also like the game world, and the way it works, the familiars and their bonding to characters, and the Guilds.

What didn't keep my interest were the somewhat superficially developed characters and the interactions between them. For instance, if more time had been spent on who they were as a real person and why certain relationships in their real lives mattered, I would have been able to empathize more with their longing to go home. In that sense there were some inconsistencies in the plot that bothered me. Maybe it was sloppy writing, maybe the author didn't want too many pages in his book, who knows.

Then again, maybe it was because this is probably a YA title that I found it lacking. The thing is, Audible most of the time does not mention this in its genre categories, so I usually only find out through actually listening to a novel. Which is why I'm mentioning it in my review title, to help others along.

However, the ending had some fine nuggets that made me want to listen to part 2 anyway!

Narration was fine, I enjoyed listening to J. Scott Bennett and would listen to other books read by him. He has variety in his character voices and even adds emotion.

So depending on your age and interests, this could be a fun and thrilling game adventure for you. However, if you are a seasoned reader/listener of 40+, I wouldn't spend a full credit but wait for a Daily Deal or a review copy.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review. I was not required to write a positive review and this reflects my honest opinion of the work.

Let yourself enjoy this story!

I listened to the first two books of this series very quickly and am looking forward to the third! These are very entertaining books. I admit that the first book took a bit more "suspended disbelief" than i usually like to credit, but the narration was excellent so i had no trouble continuing the story. It wasn't hard to overlook the occasions when the mechanics seemed off. The book has a definite YA feel to it, but the motivations of certain characters make more sense when you keep in mind that they are teenagers. I am long past YA and I thoroughly enjoyed this new world and the story we find there. I'll just add that book two is even better!

What an excellent start of an adventure!!

This book is absolutely incredible. You're on the edge if your seat as you travel with the main character in this beautiful and crazy virtual world. Can't wait for the next in the series!!!

I want to fight.

This is a good start to the series. I would like to go to this world and fight. I would have liked a bit more of the progression info like his skill options on leveling and a description of the skill when he got then but that might just be me. It is a good story and was well done by Scott.

An enjoyable LitRPG story

I was given this free review copy audio book at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Although this is nothing new to the LitRPG genre, I thought it was a pretty good example of it. I quite enjoyed the story and narration. If, like me, you're running out of LitRPG books, I think you'll probably like this one. I know I did.