Village of Hawkshead

The Abduction Cycles, Book 1

By: John Elijah Cressman

Narrated by: J.S. Arquin

Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

Interesting start but not the payoff Expected

As an interesting start but the payoff is not as great as you might thinkAs an interesting start but the payoff is not as great as you might think Is a standard pay fine numbers you could tell what's going to happen sort of book

Great book

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

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

awesome litrpg!

loved this so much had to get book 2 on kindle. I don't do that often.

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.

Frustrating

I wanted to like this book, but there were a few big problems that made it hard for me to do so.

First, the narrator. He was totally fine save for one inexplicable choice. I have no idea why, but he chose to make Ethan speak like he was constantly constipated while talking. I think he was trying to effect a nerdy, shy, introvert voice, but not only did it not pan out, the words he's saying don't match the tone he went with. It's incredibly frustrating and hard to listen to.

Another issue is the numerous plot holes that could only come about from a lack of thought put into the writing. These aren't pedantic plot holes either, but glaring ones that stick out like a sore thumb. One example is when t they're jumped by four bandits in a alleyway and Ethan is simultaneously worried his fire magic would obviously out him as a wizard while also affirming the group would kill them all...

Is he concerned a corpse would tell everyone he's a Wizard...?

There are several scenes like this that could have easily been fixed with a slight tweak, but are just ignored, that make me point to a lack of thought...

Finally, by the end I was really getting over Ethan's constant pontificating on whether they're in a simulation when it literally makes no difference. He's CONSTANTLY going on about this to no effect and it's maddening. His assertions that 'this' couldn't be reality because there's magic and a HUD are so hilariously brain-dead, especially given the alternative is even MORE fantastical, that I'd probably find it funny if it wasn't played completely seriously...

I'm not sure I'll continue. As you can see by this rant, I found this book incredibly frustrating...

I did finish it though...

Nothing makes this stand out.

If I was to pick a very bad LitRPG and a very good LitRPG this one would fall right in the middle it’s writing is OK but there’s really not much to it. Every element in this story has been done in another story of this type and usually done better. I honestly find myself not wanting to read anymore in the series

Awesome and Captivating!!

An exciting read from start to finish!! So captivating I could not put this book down! The detailed creative imagery described felt like I was actually there watching in remote view! Fantastic storyline! Looking forward to reading the next book in series!