Trial by Fire: A LitRPG Dragonrider Adventure

Archemi Online Chronicles, Book 2

By: James Osiris Baldwin

Narrated by: Justin Thomas James, Jeff Hays, Laurie Catherine Winkel

Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

One man. One game. One adorable baby dragon.

Two weeks ago, Hector Park cheated death by uploading his mind to the ultra-immersive fantasy RPG game, Archemi. After exposing the rotten heart of an order of dragon knights, he’s now on the run with a young queen dragon who could one day become the most powerful mount in the game. 

To get strong enough to face their enemies, they need a quest - a big one. Fortunately, trouble has a way of finding Hector, and it does - in the form of a series of brutally murdered priests, a king in desperate need of a hero, and a beautiful, fiery berserker. The risk? Huge. The payoff? More gold than a dragon’s hoard.

There's only one problem - Archemi is haunted by the ghost of a mad developer bent on making the game his personal playground. And now that the world outside has vanished in a storm of nuclear fire, there's no one left to stop him.

Or at least, that’s what he thinks. Because Hector isn't the kind of man to take this shit lying down.

©2018 James Baldwin (P)2018 James Baldwin

Great performance, decent writing

The audio performance made by the studio and the performers are excellent enhancing the words of the book greatly.

However, the plot and the writing becomes frustrating with the main character showing falling for the tricks of the antagonist over and over again with the same tricks. The author attempts to bring political intrigue and conflict for the main cast to wade its way through, but the antagonist is so simple and incompetent that he is forced to bring down the intelligence of the main cast to make it dramatic. The greatest frustration is having a competent character from the first book not learning anything from his previous experiences and suddenly taking an extra dose of stupidity.

***Spoilers***


The main antagonist of the story is a usurper of the throne in a country bound by honour. A medieval city where the honor or at least the pretense of honour is important and the main antagonist humiliated the rightful ruler with what is essentially a recorded porno. The main cast are introduced to the evil ruler as a benign and rude but slowly the readers learn that he is dishonorable, will mouth that he is honorable, but acts in bad faith. I say the readers learn, because the characters say that they know this man is unreliable and deceitful but still trust him anyways. They know that he sacrifices loyal honorable men that are loyal to the throne but willingly walks into the same traps over and over again.

They learn he's a racist. Okay that's fine, racism is an issue that many medieval cities had.

They learn he had an honorable older brother that killed himself. Okay here's the hook

They learn the story of how the honorable older brother was kicked out of the family under suspicious circumstances.

They find the older brother who reveals clearly that the younger is evil, in a cult, has no honor. They decide, maybe this guy is not too good

They get wrongfully arrested by the younger brother and receive a mission to complete for the return of his dragon. The main character learns this mission was a trap. The main character completes the mission and returns to the ruler and expects him to behave honorably and receives the escort of a high ranking member of his court to retrieve the dragon. At this point, we saw the ruler stake a high ranking member of his court with no explanation given to the main cast. Why would the main character believe that retrieving his dragon would not be a trap?

I had to stop listening at this point. I love the main cast, but by partnering an incompetent villain, the author has to bring down the competency of the rest of the cast making it difficult to listen to.

okay I guess

I'm pretty sure a 13yo helped write this book. I cuss like a sailor but the cussing in this story seems like it was added in to make things seem more colorful or something when in reality it caused me to roll my eyes over and over.

I really wish authors would leave out the sexual references and parts of the story. the ending had a part that was completely ridiculous and unnecessary.

the narration was annoying but the story was just interesting enough for me to struggle though finishing all while wondering "will this be over soon?"

Thought it would be better

The story is very predictable, with juvenile protagonist who acts more like a high school child that a harden veteran. The love interest is typical anime character with big boobs. The dragon was the only one that was endearing and you wanted to win in her struggles. I don’t think I will be getting the next book.

Amazing from start to finish!

By far the best LitRPG book I've ever read. The performance is amazing, it truly draws you into the characters. Another amazing book by Baldwin. Can't wait to read the next one!

loved the story and interplay between characters

I absolutely loved this book from the interactions between characters to the plot twists. there was only one spot I found I didnt really care for near the end of the book but I dont want to say to much about it because some people might enjoy twist and I dont want to ruin it for them. 100 percent worth getting this book though.

Loved it.

This book was truly amazing. I absolutely loved the story, it was engaging and kept me enthralled from start to finish. The characters were also very well written, and the voice actors did a fantastic job bringing them to life for me. I just started this series and I cannot wait for book three to come out.

Great continuation of the story

The story continues on with this book. New characters are introduced while old ones lurk in the behind the scene. Bonds are created and weather through several trails. The narrative is spot on with just enough sound effects to be distracting. I highly recommend this series to anyone look for a great epic story

Sorry but crap book.

Lite RPG? Nope. stats don't matter. When the author decided that the MC needs new skill he just invents BS. Stats don't matter. Another book that claims Lit RPG but is just fake. What a waste of time. O look the class and stats from the first book don't work. So I will just reset all lvls and skill because story!!!! Then the story sucks.... sorry this book is just garbage. Not going to read the rest of this drivel. If you stared this book you just are perpetuating crappy lit RPGS...

Actually a gold standard for the genre IMO

This book and the last one are on the list for some of my favorites from the LITRPG genre. This book is right up my alley. First of all, it feels like it's written by an adult, for an adult. The MC is actually a mature adult man (relatively speaking of course, he's a huge goofball too). He wrestles with moral decisions, he builds ACTUAL believable relationships with others; with actual real chemistry. The plot is deep, the world; awesome and well built, the progression; compelling!!!
The MC's relationship with his dragon feels deep and grows deeper; the exploration of the maturing mind of the dragon is super cool. My god this book just checks all the goddamn boxes!!! Aerial combat on dragons!!!!! Please give me more....

Pretty good but diverts a bit from the first book.

This one was less of a LitRPG adventure and more of a mystery/thriller with a little magic and fairly small nod to the RPG aspects of the previous book. It was entertaining and interesting but much more of a self-contained story than any kind of epic or adventurous tale.

Justin Thomas James was the same as usual... Over all he did a decent job, but his standard flaws were still present. I.e. he repeatedly mispronounced words that are easily google searchable. At the level that Soundbooth Theater operates these days this is pretty inexcusable. Jeff Hayes needs to pull JTJ aside and tell him that if he’s not familiar with a word then the least he can do is to spend the 2 seconds it takes to look up the word in a google search. It’s just a matter of professionalism at this point.

LCW did her standard thing which is OK, but in my very subjective opinion some of her voices often come across as irritatingly high pitched and over enthusiastic to the point of caricature. If you like her style then she did the same good job she always does.

Also, as is the trend with SBT these days there was a bunch of jarring music and sound effects. Not only did the music sound like it was made with the standard patches on a Casio piano with built-in speakers, but it just pulls you out of the story and fails to add anything to the experience. I appreciate that they’re ambitious and trying to further their craft, but in my opinion the music is a little too “canned” and even if it were written and recorded by John Williams it would still be superfluous to the experience of listening to an audiobook.

Overall it was worth the credit, but I hope the next book heads back towards a broader and more expansive story.

sound effects

unfortunately this book has sound effects which make it hard to enjoy otherwise the story is very good and would be a five star review

A great follow up to the first

I really enjoyed the first book, and while looking forward to this story, I was worried that the first chunk would move away from the action and adventure, and would necessitate a man caring for a baby dragon. The worries were completely unfounded, the story moved forward and straight back to busines, which was great.

Like the first, the performances in the audiobook were impressive. Clear, believable and varied. However, the music in book 2 added an extra polish to the story. Much like classic video games, the music kicked in when there was appropriate action and disappeared when unnecessary. It felt really retro and set the action nicely.

building off the foundation.

a great read, SBT and James Osiris Baldwin have brought a story of dragon raising and political intrigue, with twists and turns throughout I'm eager to see where this goes.

the story is a direct continuation picking up a few weeks after the first book left off. glossing over a few weeks of survival, quickly moving to a while new continent and a quest that acts as the main focus of this books plot. New characters are all very well written, the author knows how to make you love or hate a character.

The audio is on point with the vocals bringing the characters to like. Kuralti's voice in particular just leans to an adorable tone giving many funny and heartfelt moments.

4 star story, 5 performance, 4 overall

There is a reason why stories that are following the same LitRPG story main points are popular even if most of them are similar, we enjoy the idea of getting stronger and see the difference between then and now, difference in strength.

The first book was better.

This story makes it a bit hard to get in the MC's skin, and I can feel the need of some day to day side story to get more close to the main characters with some comedy and no fight against overwhelming forces. Just light leveling. As it is, looks like the MC is always fighting with forces too strong for him, and can't find the pleasure when it's keep repeating.

Its good to see the story going forward, but I feel like its a bit rushed (with a lot of things that are not going forward how you would think it would, it remebers me of Game of Thrones and Eragon movie).

While there are a lot of people who like this kind of thing, due to not being able to get close to the characters I can't enjoy it to the full extent. As it is, I would prefer to be able to guess the end of mission and something unexpected to happen after that, than during the mission and blowing your mind away waking you up from the story line.

The characters are very good highlited, easy to distinguish due to the perfect voice performance.

I've read other stories with LitRPG with a lot of details about personal skills, statuses, descriptions etc, and I liked how this story doesn't put you to listen the same things over and over again every 2-3 CHAPTERS.


I wouldn't probably continue to the second book if the book didn't have sound effects. Oh yeah, the sound effects are amazing. Good job!



POSSIBLE SPOILER



I don't like how the characters don't get any information about the real world, it's like you're hungry and eat rotten food while 2 metres away is good food waiting for you.

All of this probably because the story is rushed. It could've be so much more.

We are kept in the blind, but If this is close to Game of Thrones, then somewhere close to the end of the story Hector's brother will appear from nowhere saving him in the last moment before he is killed by the mad programmer. This would be Hector's last life as the corrupt data would take his whole body and dissappear forever.

A great improvement

I enjoyed the first book but the 2nd works even better as we get to see all of Hectors relationships change and a bit of good interaction between politics, action and a bit of sexual tension. The story flows along well and the narration by SBT is spot on as usual which makes this a big bonus using multiple narrators.

loved it

great second book love the series and excellent narration as always from soundbooth theater .carnt wait for the next one