War Aeternus: The Beginning

By: Joshua Swayne, Charles Dean

Narrated by: Jeff Hays Soundbooth Theater

Length: 13 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's Summary

Lee is a quiet and unassuming office worker who leads a life of solitude, comfort, and routine. Day in and day out, he shuts off his brain, keeps his head down, and goes about doing his job and minding his own business. That is, he does until a drunken god shows up randomly one day and whisks him off into another world, demanding that Lee serve as his pawn in a game between the gods. Now, trapped in a completely different world full of danger, magic, and creatures he's never imagined outside of fairy tales and video games, Lee has to figure out how to stay alive long enough to make it back home.

Soundbooth Theater dives into another instant RPG Gamelit classic in War Aeturnus. With this piece of reverent comedy and philosophy about the role of belief in our modern times, Charles Dean has filled a void in the world of Gamelit by creating a Candide for the genre. Not only will Lee's exploits with his psychotic sidekick, Miller, make listeners laugh and spit out their Mountain Dew, it may even convince them to get off the couch for a little while and explore the world outside of video games and fantasy.

The Soundbooth Theater team for this production:

• Jeff Hays - Narration, Characters, Production Supervision
• Dalton Lynne - Proofing
• Alex Tate - Production, Editing, Mastering

©2017 Charles Dean (P)2018 Charles Dean

For Beginners.

TL;DR It is a decent LitRPG. Chapter 8 and 9 are likely the highlights in my opinion.
Edit : Second book is much better and is full of interesting character development and an unraveling plot. If you like series, then this wouldn't be bad if you can get through the first book.

Problem 1: The Main Character - The first hour or so is indeed hard to get through. Lee, the main character, knows nothing. I suppose it is appropriate that someone would be disoriented after being plucked from their life, but it is exaggerated a bit too much for my taste. If you consider that he is an avid gamer, every gamers dream is to be in an actual game at least once, they should at least be able to cope or recognize the signs quicker.

I suppose the intro is the way it is for the purpose of explaining things to readers who have never touched a game before, but then why would they get this book?

Problem 2 : Narrator - Jeff Hays is a mastermind in voice acting. I love his voice range and control. My problem lies more with the fact that he mixes up the voices. He has a voice for narrating surroundings and actions and one for the main character. The issue is that when the character thinks or has an inner monologue, Jeff Hays swaps between the narrator voice and the MC voice. This presents the problem of not knowing the context of the information provided; If the character is talking out loud or just thinking.

It is more difficult to put these words on paper than to actually experience it. If the narration isnt something that you are avid about or are not a nitpicker, this will likely not bother you.

It is very generic in the sense of being whisked away to a different world, being trapped there, and having to survive or die for real. Nevertheless, after having completed ongoing series like "The Land", "Dungeon Lord", "Life Reset", "Unbound Deathlord", my standards are extremely high and this book is a place holder while I wait for the next book in one of said series. If you like this, check the others, I guarantee you will enjoy them.

fast forward to an amazing story

the author does something rather amazing he allows people to make a choice do you want to listen to the character sheet if no fast forward and in doing this he gives the people choice of listening to his amazing story in two ways if you're the hardcore gamer who likes to listen to the character sheets go ahead do so otherwise skip the next chapter something else is by doing this we get to really get into what's like for mpc's show me how some people treat them as second-class Citizens While others treat them as equals and the effect that has on gameplay

The Best performed audio book I've heard.

I have over 300 audible titles and I have to say that the narration and performance of this book is one of the best I've heard. It's a compelling universe with a great story and awesome characters. I can't wait for a sequel.

amazing imagination and theological insight

War Aeternus takes on the everyman imagination when it comes to how gods work. From the mind of Charles Dean comes a hilarious account of a god looking out for its offspring by taking him from his dull world into a game like world to break his mind free from living like a drone. depending on how religious you are, you may take offence but I spoke with Charles before reading this and I knew that his intent was not to offend. when someone thinks their thoughts are crazy and another friend tells them it's normal.... this is that friend in the form of a book. hilarious. entertaining. and down to earth. very much worth your time. recommended snacks while reading. bacon and blueberry waffles. and beer. lots of beer.

Don't recommend this one

Really struggled to get into the story. The story really never seems to get anywhere fast. It dragged too much and i got quite bored with the story.

Not a single likable character.

This book starts with a full chapter long prolog because the author is apparently super proud of his cliche framing device. It then proceeds to introduce the main character as a spineless lackwit. That's when I stopped listening because, honestly, why would I want to listen to that?

infuriating characters

Miller ruins this story for me. His ridiculous OTT zealotry gets grating really fast. It really doesn't help that his voice is modelled after Schwarzenegger, making it all the more irritating.

Lee is a terrible protagonist and doesn't help matters either. Him continuing to let Miller run his mouth is almost as infuriating. I found myself yelling at my phone like a mad man countless times: 'Shut him up!' 'Say something and stop internal monologuing!' etc

Finally, the RPG elements are super minor and inconsequential. This is a regular fantasy story that very lightly sprinkles on LitRPG elements - not at all what I'm looking for.

Performance Issues

The voice actor is not consistent between the narrator's voice and the main character's inner thoughts, which throws quite a few portions off balance. Fortunately, I did not find this to be an issue in the sequels, which significantly increased my enjoyment of the series as a whole.

a very interesting story

a well written take on the reluctant protagonist, good game design and a nice premise on the world itself

Annoying characters

Both the mc is weak and soft. Miller has to be the most annoying dumb as a shoe character I have ever read of.

Maybe my least liked LitRPG

Where to begin? The main and secondary characters are the worst ever. The MC is supposed to be a lifelong gamer but he goes through the world as if he's never even heard of MMOs before much less played one. The average NPC/player has an intelligence of 1 or 2. By level 10 the MC's is over 60. He's 60 times more intelligent that an average person, yet instead of having a god-like, precog-level brain he runs around acting kind of stupid. He's a wussy little wiener who gives off some serious rapey, future serial killer vibes (we're talking full on Buffalo Bill) whose only skill is making animated clay mice.

The secondary character is even worse. He's voiced as Arnold Schwarzenegger made extra stupid. He starts off as a wannabe knight whose all about fair play and chivalry. Within 2 chapters he gloms into this religion and becomes a zealot so twisted and bloodthirsty Torquemada would lose his lunch. I'm talking about ripping out people's collar bones and jamming them into their eyes.

I never thought I would give Sound Booth Theater anything short of 4 stars and even that would be weird for me. I've come to think of them as the best in the business. Not this time. Don't get me wrong, from a technical standpoint they were as awesome as ever, but the voices... I already talked about Arnie's retarded, inbred little brother. This is about the narration. For the first half of the book I couldn't keep track of the MC's inner monologue and the narrator's voice because I don't think the narrator could either. That aside, they (I'm assuming at the behest of the author) went with a narrator voice that made me yearn for Dukes of Hazzard and Grizzly Adams. It would have been a great voice for a western, but having a Sam Elliott impersonator doing fantasy just didn't sound right.

Now let's trash the story. Meh. Kid gets taken by a demented pseudo god and tossed into a game-like world where he has to spread his religion. The constant religious references made me feel like I was in a debate hall between the mormons and the Scientologists. It grew boring real fast.

So, yeah, I won't be listening to the rest.

The voice acting was insufferable and off putting

The voice acting was insufferable and off putting but the story was OK I stopped listening about 30min in

GOOD BOOK

I have over 300 audible titles and I have to say that the narration and performance of this book is one of the best I've heard. It's a compelling universe with a great story and awesome characters

what a great book

I couldn't put it down listen to the whole thing in one fantastic book and great story

Good Start

Great Audio from Dean with some good progression and characters you can follow quite easily .
The concept is interesting although i doubt in the first to think we are all being played by Gods as part of a game , this is the first i have came across where it becomes an arbitrary set of rules as part of the Virtual games in LitRPG however.
Narration by Hays is as you would expect so top marks for that.
I would listen to more of these as they are quite easy to follow and become engrossed in.
I requested this audio and have decided to leave my thoughts on this.