LitRPG Audiobook Podcast 071 - The Wandering Inn Volume 2, The One-Armed Warlock: Book One, Battleborne You can read the full reviews and show notes if you visit us at: https://litrpgpodcast.com/litrpg-audiobook-podcast-071 “Hello everyone. Welcome to the LitRPG Audiobook Podcast. I’m Ray. I’ll be reviewing some recent and classic LitRPG Audiobooks for you. I’ll begin with: ” Battleborne (01:35) Score: 8.5 out of 10 https://amzn.to/3rPp4fk The Wandering Inn Volume 2 (09:36) Score: 8 out of 10 https://amzn.to/2KPcNHe The One-Armed Warlock: Book One (22:27) Score: 7 out of 10 https://amzn.to/2X9H0mN ------------------------ Battleborne By: Dave Willmarth Narrated by: Daniel Wisniewski, Jessica Threet Length: 17 hrs and 14 mins Release date: 09-19-20 I have been a Willmarth fan since the Graystone Guild first came about. I am sorry to see that series and, and the Undying land series go the way of the dinosaur, but Shadow Sun has been a rocking my world until battle born came along, and now my world is rocking so hard I can barely stand. The book is about a soldier whose squad is blown to pieces as they try to avoid getting killed in horrible ways. The leader of the squad is offered a second chance at life in a new world as what is known as a Battle Born. Those are worthy warriors who are given a second chance at a new life in a fantasy world. The MC, Max, opts to become a Chimera character, which means he is a blend of several races including monsters ones. He gets some Valkyries who wanna smash him so hard that they hook him up with some cool things before he even steps forth into the new world. From there, things look up for our former merc/soldier. He hooks up with some dwarves and befriends some goblins, and gets on a kill list by some orcs. The book is a basic progression of Max going from a noob to a badgrass mofo. One thing I will say. Willmarth has a certain style that sucks you in and in the end leaves you wanting more, so if you have enjoyed any of his earlier works you will love this. For me, Shadow Sun is still my favorite, but this is a very close second. The vocal stylings of Daniel Wisniewski and Jessica Threet are absolutely phenomenal. Daniel does some vocals that are riffs that are stunning, and Threet absolutely does a smashing job as the female half of the duo. You can feel their joy, grief, and anger (not their emotional range limitations by any means) firmly. I enjoyed them as much as Willmarth’s writing. The work is fun, exciting, and full o fighting. 8.5 stars easily some of his best stuff to date, and with a bone crushing tag team of narrators this book is a beast! ------------------------- The Wandering Inn, Volume 2 By: pirate aba Narrated by: Andrea Parsneau Length: 61 hrs and 4 mins This book is basically 18 hours longer than book one. You don’t know how impressive and yet scary that is, because once you start in you won’t want to stop. There were a few things that sort of took me out of my immersion, and I’m going to talk about that first. There is a part of the book that seems to come out just so the author can espouse their political views on events as they were happening. Basically part of it was about the muslim ban that Trump instituted. Now, I have no problem with authors whose political views align or don’t align with my own viewpoints. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and belief system, but when I listen to a book, particularly a fantasy book I do so to escape the mundane everyday things like politics. I don’t even care that you do it, IF you cover it up, like the Star trek episode “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”, where two people hate each other, even though they are both black and white, split vertically down their center. The issue is that one is white on the right side and the other if white on the left. Subtle, since you never see them on screen together until the final shots. So, you can do commentary, you just have to disguise it. So, I still hate the runner, Rioka. And if you didn’t like Erin the first time around you won’t like her, as neither has changed all that much. I would have expected some character growth, but, no. Not so much. Erin is still ditzy and Rioka is still arrogant. My biggest issue is that unlike book one there really isn’t any major story that would require the book to be so long. It could have been trimmed down and broken into more chewable parts. That’s the bad. If you liked book one, and don’t mind the infusion of real world issues into your tales then you will adore book two. Personally, it had a lot going for it, but even I got winded towards the end. I didn’t take a break, but I listened to a few hours a day. I couldn’t do a nonstop run through like I did for book one. Other than that Andrea Parsnau proves that no only is she highly talented, but that she ...
