Vesik

The Dufris Years

By: Eric Asher

Narrated by: William Dufris

Length: 75 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's Summary

A crashed wedding. A scorned vampire. A necromancer's fury...Damian Vesik is no hero. At least, not according to the magical community that turns a blind eye to his battles against evil. So he chalks it up as one more thankless mission when he’s forced to stop his vampire sister from murdering her ex’s entire bridal party....

Infiltrating the ceremony to protect the innocent, Damian uncovers something more sinister than a massacre. With the help of his berserker fairy friend, he'll need to prevent an unholy alliance between ancient demons and an undead horde before one hell of an afterparty dooms the world.

Dedicated to the memory of William Dufris. This collection includes all eight of the Vesik novels recorded by William Dufris. At the end of this set, you'll find thoughts from Eric R. Asher and an interview with Erin Moon, narrator of The Books of the Dead. 

Titles included:
Days Gone Bad
Wolves and the River of Stone
Winter's Demon
This Broken World
Destroyer Rising
Rattle the Bones
Witch Queen's War
Forgotten Ghosts

©2020 Eric R. Asher (P)2020 Eric R. Asher

Fantastic

What more could you ask for? Your favorite series with the absolute best narrative all rolled into one download. I never imagined I'd have such a fantastic tribute to the late William Dufris in one spot.
Vesik is like coming home to a group of your best friends. We'll maybe not quite as every story seems to have some giant disaster but the friend part is true. No matter the circumstances they pull through, together.
Monsters? you want Monsters? Vesik has some monumentally Earth ending monster's, and sometimes they are friendly.
Asher has always done a wonderful job balancing horor with humor and I am tickled to get to have this audiobook marathon of one of my favorite series to enjoy.

What a great box set and tribute to the narrator!

What a wonderful way to honor the body of work narrated by William Dufris. He did such a wonderful job bringing the author's words to life! The interview between Eric Asher and Erin Moon, the newest Vesik series narrator, at the end was absolutely worth the listen. I will enjoy listening to this series for many years to come. This urban fantasy series is a superb piece of work.

Absolutely amazing!

If you are a big fan the syfy world, these books are right up you're alley!! Eric Asher is an absolute genius when writing and getting you to feel like to are living you're own world and are standing right in the middle of this new world he has created. William Dufris was a genius at narration. you of the best narrators I have heard in a long time! he has the uncanny ability to project the story onto you like you are there! An absolute amazing series! I will read and listen to this again and again

A good read/listen

A well written and narrated book series. I enjoyed the characters and the stories. My only problem was the cliffhanger ending and the sudden change of perspective of the story. I would recommend the series to others to read and/or listen to.

get this series if you like urban fantasy!

loved it. Get this series if you like urban fantasy It is worth the price they are asking for for over 75 hours of quality audio books. Not many book series can get me to laugh out loud and then follow it up with feeling fear for the characters from one moment to the next

Scattershot and shallow - with random dead ends

The good: “the sane part of me told me not to poke the bear with the paw on the nuclear button.”
Phenomenal narration and a great urban fantasy premise following a necromancer, the black sheep profession of the magical world. 75 hrs of listening time for 1 credit.

The bad: “You learn to laugh or you paint the walls with your brain.”
This series is about quantity over quality.
The plot meanders aimlessly, adding a dizzying array of characters drawn from a mishmash of myths. There are demons & gods with biblical names, Egyptian gods & Greek creatures, dragons & treelike Ents. This is kitchen sink UF.

The series has more dead-end plot threads than the GoT show. For example, in book 2, Zola is taken. Why? No real reason. In book three, Damian’s mom is kidnapped. Why? Never explained.
Characters disappear from storylines (what ever happens to Frank?). Good guys are suddenly bad guys. The motivation for bad-guy actions often makes no sense.

The tone is all over the place, On the one hand, the only backstories for all the centuries-old characters are ones of torture and pillaging… and the red shirt death occurs in the millions with talk of crucifixions and disemboweling. The series is set in current times, yet technology and guns are scarce until needed for clunky plot progression. On the other hand, there’s a ghost panda and a pirate parrot, not to mention running gags about chimichangas, lovable, slobbery monster Kuseths, and a fairy king who goes by Glen. Then there’s F 💣 and awkward adult scenes having a water witch going down on Damian.

The ugly:
“The soldier fought the compulsion for a time, but in the end, the dead obeyed their lord. To be continued.” Book 8 stops mid-battle, with cliffhangers big and small And another plot about a trio taken and held for execution fades to a non-ending. Even with the 75 hr value, the cliffhanger chapped my undies.

Better series in urban fantasy include:
Alex Verus (12 book series with much better characters and story depth)
Charming (odd title, but it works, trust me, this 5 book series is fresh and snarky)
Quincy Harker (if you can handle the MF mouth- omnibus contains Years One-Three & can stand alone,
but you can then get Salvation for Year Four to complete the full arc)

Simply amazing

The series is not only fun but enthralling. There was never a point I willingly hit pause because I just wanted to keep listening. The narrator tells us the story in a wonderful fashion

Don't bother

I am about 7 hours into Vesik and while I didn't immediately return it, it is honestly not great, leaning towards bad. I'm not even invested enough to put much effort into reviewing it. I listen to it to kill time on my daily commute because it's 60 hours long and I have weird affinity for terribly campy books and movies.

A constant 1 to 11 tone shift.

My main complaint is the excessive laughter, hollering, smirking, grinning, joking scenes. Main Character is often at times okay, but often at times there's a lot of joviality despite the urgency of a situation. For example, oh, MC has to do this otherwise some bad things are going to happen in the world, and it's going to suck. MC just does his own thing for awhile, until it's nearly or too late. Then there's the constant tone shifts that are so bizarre. There will be the aforementioned joking and wholesome(?) moments, then suddenly an antagonist, henchmen or whatever will bust through the door, have a five minute whacky fight that seems too high tensioned or fast paced, and they run away. That's been most of the first book.

Not to mention, as some reviews won't say, the constant eyebrow movement the book will say. Not to mention the constant "She laughed, I laughed, we all laughed" or something akin to it. I'm sure perhaps the other books are fine? But the first one is too much of a slog for me. I'm being fed vague information on the world, and character backgrounds I have no context unless I get a flashback, and yet I feel like I'm supposed to care more than I should for some characters, or know what they're talking about. Maybe it's just me? Just take heed going into this.

Narrator did a good job though.

Don’t waste your credit- even for nearly 50 hours

I made it through the first book. I’m still unsure if I’ll continue. Not likely since I have credits to spend.

There’s not much of a storyline. There is, however, excessive eyebrow movement. After the 10th or so time the author mentions eyebrow movement I thought- I should have counted the eyebrow thing. Little did I know it had only just begun and would be a recurring theme throughout the book. There is also a lot of what seems like filler dialogue that isn’t very interesting. The dialogue includes a lot of hard laughter. Like ‘laughing so hard he literally fell off the chair’ kind of thing. And the dialogue might warrant a chuckle at best. It’s just not a great listen with the poor dialogue, under developed story, lackluster humor, and excessive talk of eyebrows.

This is a wonderful tribute to William Dufris

if you love urban fantasy with added humor then you will love the Vesik series, this collection of the first 8 books is a great tribute to the late William Dufris whos narration brought the characters to life and keeps the listener engaged throughout the books. I would highly recommend this series.