Richard N Chalfant

Enjoyable story. Still a bit repetitive with word choices.

Revisado: 11-29-23

It’s an enjoyable story. Noting absolutely amazing or surprising. There’s not really any suspense. Things pretty much always work out for the main protagonist.


Oh, and pet peeve of mine:
Please for the love of god, look up the definition of the word “keening”.

It bothers me every time you use it to describe the axe. “It was keening with savagery”. “It was keening in anticipation”.

What does that even mean? I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure keening is a mournful or grief ridden sound.

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Enjoyable story. Still needs an editor.

Revisado: 08-16-23

I am enjoying the story overall. If the author could find a competent editor to clean up their sometimes jarring word choice, then I would happily give it 5 stars across the board.

Paraphrasing the wording slightly:
“They silently sat and watched the stars in silence.”

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An enjoyable story that needs better quality control.

Revisado: 08-03-23

I have been enjoying this series overall, but some of the writing itself sounds off. I don’t begrudge a book the occasional typo or awkwardly worded sentence, but this is just ridiculous.

There are way too many instances of the author overusing the same word of phrase, sometimes in rapid succession.

For instance, now every single being that is moderately stronger than Zach is referred to as an “old monster”. It’s become more like a title instead of being a description.

And as I said, sometimes the same word is used in rapid succession.
An extreme example is when he used the word “hand” 15-20 times in about 2 minutes of audio at 1X speed.

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Interested to see where this goes. Very very slow start to the book.

Revisado: 07-11-23

Overall I quite enjoyed this book and I was interested enough in it’s potential to get through it’s incredibly slow start.

Some might consider the critiques I’m about to talk about as soft spoilers, so feel free to stop reading here. (No plot points, talked about. But you could make a few predictions on pacing.)

Last chance to stop reading.

Ok, so the entire first 12 hours of this book should have been severely edited. A lot of scenes could have been shortened or cut out all together. It basically can be summed up as “man alone in a demon infested island almost dies but actually gets stronger over and over with no one to talk to but his own internal dialog.”

I’m not exaggerating when I say that I can only think of 1 relatively short dialog exchange that the main character has in the entire first 12 hours. (Not counting the brief one sided explanations that the System provides) It actually became a game where I would guess when the book would finally get around to introducing a second character.

That being said, I generally enjoyed the second half of the book. The pacing was still a little slow at times, but it was much better overall.

As I said at the start of my review; this book felt like it has promise, so I powered through the slow start. Having finished it, I am excited to start the second book.

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Change of pace

Revisado: 05-01-23

I enjoyed this book. It’s a bit slower paced than the past 3, but I believe that contrast is important to a story.
If everything is constant action and excitement, then it becomes predictable and stale.
That’s not to say that this book was boring, it just focused more on the character building side of things.
It is probably a necessary foundational building block to the story at large.

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One of the best stories I’ve listened to in a while.

Revisado: 04-05-23

There’s a special joy you feel when you stumble across a new series that you really enjoy. That joy is even better when you realize the book is almost 30 hours long. Then there’s the delight you feel when you discover that the author is already up to book 9. :)

This book is great. The characters are enjoyable, the author skips over implied scenes that would be tedious to flush out, and the overall pacing is good.

Additionally, this book easily holds the record for the most times a book has made me laugh out loud. Many of these humorous moments are a mix of being witty, clever, and catch me off guard.

10/10 one of my favorites books to date. I can’t wait to start book 2!

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Story lacked a core conflict.

Revisado: 02-22-23

This book felt like it lacked a core conflict to resolve. I love the characters, but they really need some kind of obstacle to overcome.

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Better narration than the last book

Revisado: 01-04-23

I love this series.
That’s part of why the narrator change in the previous book annoyed me so much. The voice he used for Artorian sounded like an imperialistic grandfather who was devoid of love.
In this book, he changed the voice of Artorian to more closely resemble that of an academic, which honestly fits his character. I still miss the previous narrator, but at least the current voice acting is no longer unacceptable.
(Although he still struggles with female voices.)

A small note and very minor SPOILER WARNING:

Second warning. I’m about to mention the absence of a character from this book.

Ok. If you’re still reading, you have been sufficiently warned.
In the previous book, the voice he gave Halcyon was horrible. She does not have any lines of dialogue in this book, so I am not sure if the narrator plans to change her voice too. I really hope he does change her voice.

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New narrator makes me sad.

Revisado: 12-09-22

The new narrator is decently good at imitating some of the voices the previous narrator used. Unfortunately, his voice for Artorian lacks any hint of love. Artorian went from a lovable old grandpa to an imperialistic grandfather who seems to lack compassion. In one scene, a character is making a lot of noise while Artorian is having a good time. Old Artorian: “Oh be quiet over there!”
New Artorian: “BE QUIET!!!”

Also, his voice for Halcyon is unacceptable.

A lot of time it also felt like he was simply reading the book to us instead of acting out the scenes.

Fingers crossed that his performance improves in the next book. I was also angry when the Completionist Chronicles changed narrators, but that new narrator definitely improved after a book or two.

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Love the book, disappointed by the new voice actor.

Revisado: 09-30-19

I loved this series and Jackson was one of my favorite characters. When I saw there was a new voice actor, I was sad, but decided to give it a shot.

Unfortunately every character’s voice has changed so dramatically that they feel like completely new characters now.
Jackson went from a lovably creepy guy, to sounding like a rich aristocrat.
And it will be a shame if the few lines Joe and Bard had are indicative of what I can expect in the future.

In addition, the voice actor seems to have only 2 different voices: Jackson, and literally almost every other character.

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