LitRPG Audiobook Podcast 073 - CivCEO, Cole Blooded, The Forgotten Faithful You can read the full reviews and show notes if you visit us at: https://litrpgpodcast.com/litrpg-audiobook-podcast-073 “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: ” CivCEO - Accidental Champion Series, Book 1 (2:44) Score: 8 out of 10 https://amzn.to/3qNIgZt Cole Blooded - Cole Blooded, Book 1 (16:31) Score: 7.5 out of 10 https://amzn.to/2NnISXh The Forgotten Faithful - UnderVerse Series, Book 2 (32:25) Score: 8 out of 10 https://amzn.to/3od6wmg ------------------------ CivCEO Accidental Champion Series, Book 1 By: Andrew Karevik Narrated by: Neil Hellegers Series: Accidental Champion, Book 1 Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins Pause CivCeo is a rare book, insofar as it has a compelling story with minimal battle included. What the book is about is an 80 year old man accidentally gets snagged and taken to a fantasy world. He was standing beside the person who was meant to be the hero of a god. The old man, who had just retired as the head of a company after turning 80, finds himself discarded by the god in a new world. Thankfully, he now has a body in the prime of his life, and an attitude of getting things done. He’s taken in by a village to be their champion and it becomes his responsibility to grow the village, increase its prosperity, and protect it from outside forces. That said, the book will sound dull when I tell you it has a lot of economic lessons and focuses mainly on town building. That’s it. IN fact, there are really few other things you normally get in a book, such as a love interest, or a main bad guy/antagonist. Here the opposition is a group called the tradesmen who have a strangle hold over who can buy and sell, and they decide what they pay for goods and how much they get paid. It is up to Charles Morris, the protag, to break their stranglehold. Here's the deal, in spite of major players on the side of the opposition, in spite of the fact that Charles really doesn’t get to know a lot of people deeply, and despite the dearth of armed conflict this book really kept my attention. It shows that you don’t need in depth relationships or swordfights to tell a story. You just need to tell a story well. You get to know Charles’s attitude towards others, and the only thing I found a little less than believable was the fact that Charles wasn’t greedy or ruthless. He cared about his village, their lives, etc and everything he did was for their betterment. I don’t believe there is a CEO like that in the world. Philanthropy is good press, but it doesn’t get you a golden toilet. I do want to point out that Charles does build some relationships along the way, that I think will be explored and expounded upon later. The book holds your attention, and it is the way Charles makes deals or copes with the people around him that makes it fun. Neil Hellegers, whom you have probably heard me rave about for the job that he does on the good guy and bad guys series has the narration reigns firmly in hand as he tells this tale. If you’ve heard Neil before then you know he is one of the best out there and that continues with this book. What I love about him the most is that he has a strong and distinctive voice that once you hear him speak you will never forget it. Final score: 8 Stars. The book has fantastic and clean narration, and a well-told tale with a likable character. The only real drawback for me was the lack of real conflict. I don’t mean bloodshed, I mean that when Charles walks into a situation he has it well in hand before he realizes that he does. I would have liked to have seen a stumble or trip as he went along, maybe not everything working out as well as it did, then it would have been more believable. Still, there is a book 2, and I will be getting it in spite of my low funds at the moment. As tightly as I grip onto my audible credits I will spend on one the next book. -------------------- Cole Blooded Cole Blooded, Book 1 By: Blaise Corvin, Outspan Foster Narrated by: Ryan Burke Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins Pause It’s funny. I can remember listening to Cole Blooded prior to a service, listening to it on the car ride back, and then it was over. The book flew by, but it is also short being just over 6 hours long. I am a big Ludus fan, and I cheer for Dolos more than I do the heroes most of the time, so I was down with checking out a book n which he decides to try out something different from the standard Dolos orbs. Here he grabs a group of people who were destined to die and saves them, powers them up, and then tells them they only have so long to get to point on the island they are on to escape. Oh, and only one of them can escape. And they are going to be burning energy and...
