Transformation

LitRPG series. Book I

By: Valery Starsky

Narrated by: Justin Thomas James, Jeff Hays, Aurelia Vazquez, Dalton Lynne

Length: 11 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's summary

If you like fire-breathing giant creatures, dark elves reigning absolute and unchallenged, money-grubbing dwarves, and powerful dragons - you can find them in Transformation.

The familiar world collapsed overnight. As the Transformation progressed, disasters occurred throughout the Earth. Materials changed their properties, new species of flora and fauna appeared. The Game converted our world into a huge dungeon, completely replacing the previous civilization.

However, the alien plans for Earth began to go awry from the very beginning. The conversion was less successful than expected. An ordinary young man stole the bonus for the first gaming action, depriving the invaders of their perk.

How can Yaroslav manage this situation? Which aliens will become his ally? Which ones are his enemy? Dare they rebel against the all-powerful invaders, regain their land, and even create a new world?

The Soundbooth Theater team for this production:

Justin Thomas James - Narration, editing, mastering
Jeff Hays - Ollie, Ellir, and Dar Kroo
Aurelia Vazquez - Eva, Heiro Kamir and the rest of the female cast
Dalton Lynne - Proofing, Guest Voice
Ahmed Mahmoud - Music

©2019 Valery Starsky (P)2019 Valery Starsky

Love this book!!!

I started reading this book on a web sight and loved it then it hit amazon as a fully published book witch was amazing! And now it’s an audio book!!!!! If your reading this and not sure if your going to bye the book do your self a favor scroll up the screen and bye this book! You won’t regret it! I refuse to spoil anything so just bye the book it’s well worth it!

I’m conflicted…

Edit: I think a large part of the dialogue issues I complained about are due to poor translation from Russian. As I just realized this author is from Russia. I mean, I still stand by everything I said, but some of it makes a bit more sense now.

In some ways it’s a good book. In others it’s not. The story telling is decent and the concept is good. The pacing is well executed as well. Except the first few chapters which feel like you’re on a roller coster ride in the dark. One second everything is normal and then nothing really makes sense for about a chapter. I don’t know if it was deliberate, or merely that the author had never written a book before this.

But the main issue I have lies in the dialogue. It’s like the author has never held a conversation sometimes. Especially when it comes to his female characters, which come across as completely unbelievable.

Then there is the narrator, who is actually a decent narrator 90% of the time. But the other ten percent it’s like he just stopped taking the story serious. The vocal inflections in some scenes are just out of place and I almost feel like he is trying to cover up how badly a scene is written by over compensating with vocal tone. It’s extremely off putting when he shifts from a normal conversational tone to sounding like a character on SNL. I have been tempted repeatedly to pull up the book on kindle and see if the author just added a bunch of exclamation points that didn’t need to be there and this was how the narrator decided to interpreted the scene.

I gave it 4/5 stars because it’s really not a bad book. It’s just a book that could have been better if a bit more work was put into it.

love the book

If you like to read books about fire-breathing giant creatures, dark elves reigned absolute and unchallenged, the money-grubbing dwarfs and powerful dragons–all of them you will meet at the pages of Transformation.

The familiar world collapsed overnight. As the Transformation progressed, disasters occurred throughout the Earth. Materials changed their properties, new species of flora and fauna appeared. The Game converted our world into a huge dungeon, completely replacing the previous civilization.
However, the alien plans for Earth began to go awry from the very beginning. The conversion was less successful than expected. An ordinary young man stole the bonus for the first gaming action, depriving the invaders of their perk.
How can he manage the situation? Which of the aliens will become his ally? Which ones are his enemy? Dare they rebel against the all-powerful invaders, regain their land and even create a new world?

Pretty disappointing

Basically nothing in this story makes any sense. Locations seem to be fluid. MC doesn't ask obvious questions like "what are stay points", And for some reason he has thousands of stat points, that he doesn't (or can't? It's not really clear) use.

it's almost good... but none of it really makes any sense. and the MC doesn't make sense either.

story was bad

narration was great.

the story never explained anything fully and there was no tension. every inconvenience he had just awarded him rediculous rewards.

narration was really flat

low effort audiobook? even as a Russian translation there is simply no inflection when there clearly should be. Also it seems like the translation in the first place was poor. getting a refund

great story

the story is great only issue is that you would need to understand how Russian litrature flows to understand how the novel flows once you understand some of the methods it's a great book takes a bit to fully get the flow

Not the best

One of the weaker Sound Booth Theater productions. Even Justin couldn't completely negate the BS story and writing. Still, acceptable, but only because of the style Justin chooses for narration. With a weaker narrator, I would have turned the book off and asked for a refund.

The story is what happens when you go too far into Mary Sue or rather create a story where everything just falls into the main character's lap with little to no challenge. Somehow the main character was able to gain first kill achievement twice, out of all of the conflict and people fighting in the conflict, even through there was someone prepared to take the achievement.

The book draws heavily on telling, instead of showing. Why is the main character a bad ass? Because the book can't wait to make the main character OP AF, because that will be fun, right? It often is, but the combination creates low stakes which caused annoyances.

The story isn't all bad since it's style also lends towards fast pace. No time for character development when there are achievements to gain and bad guys to destroy easily.

I would compare it to Conan The Barbarian, except I am almost certain that series has character development and tension. This book is more like an action movie. Fun, but lacks substance.

Cool magic system, storyline sucks

Liked the magic system, its different and opens up lots of possibilities with character development.

Storyline is all over the place and is constantly jumping to different places. Feels like the author is Just having a lot of ideas and trying to merge them all in to one plot or storyline, unfortunately it made for a hard listen and Just Hard to get a sense of.

Main character is annoying, arrogant and not relatable.

Overall I liked the universe and the magic system but the fast pace and sudden changes is disorintating and tiresome.

Would like to hear more but Just with a little bit more Base and better explained plot/storyline + final goal and motive for actions, sorry for a bad reveiw but it is how it is.

awesome book

I am loving the first book of this series,
I cant wait til book 2 comes to audiobook.
if you enjoy post apocalyptic litrpg type books you will love this one, the main character learns fast and gets the job done.
this book is in my top 15 litrpg books.