Village of Hawkshead

The Abduction Cycles, Book 1

By: John Elijah Cressman

Narrated by: J.S. Arquin

Imagine waking up in a world where magic is real!

One minute Ethan Gower was an average computer technician, playing online games with his friends. Now he’s been abducted and dropped into a strange world with others who have been taken from their homes. And magic and monsters are real.

Now, Ethan is a wizard and must convince his new companions to band together in order to survive in this strange new world as they level up, gain abilities and try to unravel the mystery of why they were abducted and how to find a way home.

But things are never easy and soon he and his friends find themselves in the middle of a conflict that could spell disaster to their new home.

Oh, and there might be something murdering wizards and sucking out their brains.

Could things get any worse?

©2021 John Elijah Cressman (P)2021 J.S. Arquin

Very good!

This is a very unique story, good character build up, can’t wait for the next one.

Review

This audiobook wasn’t too bad. The main character is a typical nerdy hemorrhoid type. He’s surrounded by female characters. Luckily the author didn’t use sex to sell the story!. Overall it’s a decent audiobook.

Great book

I enjoyed this book and look forward to more in the series. I had a great time listening to it.

Meh…

Okay, I listened to all of them. All 6. What I’ll say is just stop at book 3. Now don’t get me wrong, a dude with the possible lineage of Merlin? What?! Then after book 2, that’s where it falls apart. After the second book it literally turns into “he does some magic, oh no! He has no mana!” This theme made sense during the beginning stages, after the MC finds out he can bang his gf to “fill his mana”, that’s when the story starts to deteriorate. I’m not sure how many times it happens, but I’m sure you can make a drinking game with how many times the narrator has to say “then the two left to ‘recharge his mana 😉’”. This got old fast.

Then after they find the grail (spoilers) every two seconds they replenish their stats. I thought the fairly nominal gains during levels was fitting, it was refreshing to not hear the MC becoming a beast in four steps of their new world.

The last thing that DROVE ME NUTS! Was the narrators inability to pronounce the word “attribute”. I have no idea how to write how he says it, you’ll hear it though. No only that but the narrator gave the MC the squeakiest and whinny voice possible.

All in all: fun for 2 books. After book two the “sex for stats” thing gets super old super fast. How the he has the wherewithal or the ability in these absolute life and death scenarios, to then proceed in a sexual act in the middle of a perilous encounter. Yeah okay. “Hey I know there’s literal death being thrown at us, but I’m out of mana and we need to bang… now!” Yeah no. It was funny the first time and completely excessive immediately after.

Entertaining

This book really seems to go more off of a pathfinder game than traditional mmo.

Pro:
1. Narrator did a great job
2. Entertaining story
3. Fun references