Wild Wastes

By: Randi Darren

Narrated by: Andrea Parsneau

Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

Before World War II could reach its conclusion, the world suffered what could only be defined as a cataclysm.

Legend has it that an experiment failed. Catastrophically so. And when it failed, the center of the United States, from the Sierra Nevada to the Mississippi river, became "The Waste", where everything changed.

In The Waste, every fantasy creature, fairytale demon, or mythological monster exists. From orcs, to neriads, ogres, trolls, wraiths, elves, harpies, and even beastmen. They all exist, and all despise humankind.

In the ruins of the west and east coasts, new governments have arisen. With new jobs.

Vince is a Ranger, a profession whose sole job duty is surviving in the waste, and taking missions from the Ranger Guild. Be it courier services, escorts, or simply exploring tombs and cities.

Taking up an escort mission, Vince encounters a situation that will shape his life forever onward.

As well as the lives of everyone in North America.

Warning: This novel contains adult themes and moral ambiguities. The main character is written as a real person in an apocalypse, and will not make choices that line up with society and cultural norms.

©2017 Randi Darren (P)2017 Randi Darren

CREPUSCULAR

This book is male masturbation material. The main character has sex with various fairy tale type women. He has sex with an ogre, who is fit and muscular. Matter of fact they screw every night. He deflowers a dryad. She loses her virginity and orgasms all at the same time. He screws an ant woman with a sort of Data from Star Trek personality. She is over six feet tall. The Dryad is short and curvy with perfect breasts. At one point he has sex with nine women at the same time. He gets lots of blow jobs and he always ejaculates into their mouths. All of the males worship him and don't mind that he keeps all the women for himself. Some women are satisfied to just clean his cock with their tongues after he as sex with other women.

The narrator was fairly monotone and I feel she was not happy to have landed this job.

Like most erotica, this starts our pretty tame, but escalates into heavier and heavier sex scenes.

Sex happens and it is a big part of life and I wish more authors would recognize that, but I got to where I just hated the main character, as he went from a nice naïve guy to a sort of Harvey Weinstien.

A Waste of Time

I have to admire the tremendous amount of effort the author and narrator spent to bring this audiobook to the public. When someone takes that much time and care to produce something original, I want to support their work and I really want to enjoy it.

But I just can't do it with Wild Wastes. There are so many things wrong with this, I don't know where to begin. Seeing the avalanche of positive reviews, I don't know if it's even worth pointing out all the shortcomings of this story and narration.

One thing is obvious, fans of Monster Girl Harem Fantasies are loving this . Maybe this is the book that shows me I'm not meant for this genre.

But if a book is well written and the characters are compelling, I can overlook the strangeness of the tropes.

With the Wild Wastes audiobook, I could only get through half of it. And I think it was mainly due to the narrator.

She reads everything with a husky 'stakes couldn't be higher' tone, and finishes almost every sentence with a 'can you f--cking believe this??' intonation. The story takes place in America around a century in the future, yet the narrator has some characters using Cockney, upper-class British, Irish, Scottish, Southern belle and good ol' Brooklyn accents. Huh? I get the challenge of voicing so many disparate characters and having them all sound distinct, but her choices of accents are just ridiculous.

The worst thing in the whole book and what caused me to give up and just walk away, was her choice of voice for one of the main character's 'women'. This character is a soldier, austere, and humorless...fine. But how am I supposed to buy the budding romance between her and get into the sex scenes when she sounds like URKEL?

The lead character is ostensibly a hero, but last time I checked, he is bailed out of every skirmish and fight by one of his women. Then they pledge their (inexplicable) devotion to him. Queue another sex scene.

Speaking of, I was hoping at least the sex scenes would be good enough to save this novel from the trash bin. Nope. Sex has never been so uninteresting and uninspired. This book reads like something a teen age virgin would write for other teenage virgins.

I'm just not into the whole monster girl thing the way this author does it. I'm the minority, though. For fans of the genre who have calibrated their tastes to this level of storytelling, this will be an enjoyable read.

Fantasy Venture, Mythical Creatures; and One Stud

This is a good fantasy adventure story that has continuously evolved through the first three books.
There is plenty of action and surprises as the series develops and we follow the progression of Vince, who begins this adventure as a lone ranger in the “Wild Wastes.”
He’s not alone for long, however, and apparently doesn’t turn away any manner of female companionship, whether she has horns, tusks, or even insect legs; Vince is going to spread his seed and we hear every slurping, gurgling, explicitly wild detail; and let me tell you, he’s one busy stud.
Other than the graphic nature of these books, there is a good and interesting story line and I will continue to listen to the next book
As for the narrator; I thought Andrea Parsneau’s performance was outstanding.

Interesting with potential flat as week old Coke

Fantasy adventure with a harem of girls of a variety of unique fantasy races; Orc, Dryad, Soldier Ant, and Elves. Kinda post apocalypse. Main male character seems to have undergone some sort of genetic engineering as a child by his mother. It is only alluded and never elaborated upon. I really wanted to like it. It is not even close to as good as any of the Daniel Black books, The Selfless Hero Trilogy, or Good Intentions. The author should take notes on the main characters from those two series. I'm fine with graphic sex when it adds something to the story. The story could have been greatly improved upon with the character development of all the females. The females have so much potential but the writer basically treats them all like Dutch Wives. I honestly laughed a number of times as I could frankly imagine a sexually frustrated teenage boy trying to write a Fantasy Adventure story from the Harem subgenre and it turning into this. The series is certainly not beyond salvage. I hope the writer continues to grind away at the craft and takes the feedback from those of us that have invested in this first and hopefully not last book. In closing, the female narrator saved you book this time. The narrator's performance far outstripped the material she was given. I could easily give the narrator five stars with any other material. Truth is the material actually was bad enough that I had to keep that fifth star.

Finally a believable and smart main character.

It did take me a bit to get into the story. After so many poorly written or concieved plots points from other authors, it is a true marvel to have a Hero who is not stupid or being saved by a author's ham handed attempts at conflict resolution.
I believe I would have made many of the same decisions as he did. I found the author's world and concepts a novel idea and approach to making the conflicts and plot devices believable and engrossing.

Fantastic!

Nice ballance between erotica and story. Excellent character development, none of the characters are two dimensional or overly cliché. Both the author and narrator make you care about them all.

Looking forward to the next book.

Amazing narration to a great story

First let me say, though Andrea's voices for the characters didn't fit with what I'd imagined for them, they did fit the characters enough to grow on me. Please tell me she will be doing the whole series. It's always weird for me to listen to an audio book of one I've previously read since it can be quite jarring when the narrator 'miss voices' someone. Thankfully that didn't happen here.

As far as the story itself goes, it's your typical loner guy sets off on adventure, meets harem, danger, and fun times insue. The story is good, the characters are well written. The sex isn't overdone and fits the plotline, adding to the overall story. If that's not your thing, or it bothers you, give this book a skip, you probably won't like it. Otherwise I can't recommend it enough.

I plan to give more Andrea Parsneau books a listen while waiting for Randi to finish book two. She's really good at bringing a book to life.

Not what I expected

When I started listening to this book I expected the adult themes in the story. What I didn't expect was those themes to be used as filler.
Story could have been much better without them, or worked into the story better to further the plot.

I should have listened to the warning...

That warning is there for a reason. I didn’t listen because I thought that was the author being funny, like “haha people at the end of the world be crazy” and not “haha this author has a thesaurus for genitalia”

There is a pretty decent story underneath the interspecies erotica and the narrator did a fantastic job, I just wish half the book wasn’t the main character having weird sex.

Seriously.

This is like Warcraft porn written by someone with only passing knowledge of what sex is like because they read a bunch of books with Fabio on the cover.

Have you ever wondered how you would react to someone having sexy times with a giant ant?

Well you will.

Everything I Love in One Book

Fantasy, magic and sex? Amazing! I just loved this book. I guess this can be called erotic fantasy, but it really felt like it was much more than that. Amazing characters and character development and a great environment. I loved the take on the whole post-apocalyptic world mixed with magic. Eagerly waiting for the sequel!

Good read but very similar to his other books

If you could sum up Wild Wastes in three words, what would they be?

Adult fantasy pulp

Any additional comments?

If I didn't know that Randi Darren is a pseudonym of William D Arand I'd be thinking one of them had plagiarised the others book. I previously listened to "Super Sales on Super Heroes" which I really enjoyed, and searching out his other books thought I'd give this a try. The story lines of these two books are basically identical but placed in different settings i.e. (spoilers) a guy with some sort of power to 'read' and adapt other people starts buying up slaves to create an initial harem of powerful characters and then expands by buying up loads more to create his own army/commune.I felt it was a little lazy to essentially use the same storyline, but it's set in a more Tolkienesque fantasy world and with a very large smattering of adult content. However, taken for itself I found the book enjoyable and an easy listen, but it's more of a pulp read than anything deeper, but I doubt it was aimed as anything more than that. If I could only choose one I'd pick Super Sales, as I prefer it's dark humour but this has it's place for those that like a more fantasy style story and adult content, which at times is quite explicit, which didn't bother me but others may find difficult if not keen on that sort of content. Other than that, the narration is very good and pretty enjoyable.

Amazing

Loved how the narrator brought the characters to life. Can't wait to start book two!

simply brilliant

fantastic story, in depth characters, great narration. all in all a must read. couldn't recommend it enough

A wet dream of teenager

I never had big expectations of the harem/isekai-like stories, but this is below the average. Not much of the story, no real threats or challenges, just a band of brainwashed ladies pleasuring the main character. The acts are like 60-70% of the book and after the first few, I was bored - skipping them to find some plot. There is not much of it, usually rushed to another scene of shagging.

Amazing

An amazing story with excellent characters, looking forward to the next book. Great Narration, and story.

i love this book

my favourite thing is the characters i love them and i like the connections between them
. the story is good in my opinion

an r rated harem fantasy story

one of those stories with the poor protagonist getting a lot of wives, then money and then land with people to rule over. I really enjoyed it.

A great tale with real characters

Nothing to dislike
Life like characters, blended into a fantasy version of the USA
I would recommend it

Good Premise bit rough in patches

Not to the level of the author other work in Fostering Faust but It's from Randi Darren so of course it's gonna be good.

great

i very much enjoyed these books i just cant seem to put them down and always start the trilogy again when a new one is out or i start the entire series again the re read factor is amazing and you enjoy them as much the tenth time to the first great books and character great writing to tie them all in together just amazing