Dark and Gripping

There is a lot of action with some romance. It's a fun listen, highly recommend giving it a go.

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Great narration and story!

This was a great audiobook! The narrator did amazing with each voice, and he gave Aiden such depth and emotion. I really enjoyed the story and message too. The romance had some cliche lines and moments, but otherwise, it was a meaningful and exciting book. I love that it teaches anyone can choose good or evil and that no one is too ffar gone for God to love and want.

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High-stakes romance and dark, thrilling fantasy!

“Assassin” takes you on a heart-pounding journey into loyalty, love, and redemption! Aidan’s struggle between duty and conscience had me riveted, with every twist pulling me deeper into his world. Brandon J. Peterson’s narration brings an intensity that perfectly matches the story’s grit—definitely a must-listen for fans of high-stakes romance and dark, thrilling fantasy!

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Confusing and Violent

This is the second audiobook I've listened to or read in The Valiant series. For whatever reason, the author chose to offer Book 1 and Book 4 at a book review site but not the others in between. So I listened to the first book and then this one, and I'll admit it was a bit confusing when I started this book, as it didn't seem to relate at all to the first book (no overlapping characters, locations, or even realms). So, I went back and looked at the intervening books in the series, but it seems as though they actually ARE disconnected (or at least the first book didn’t flow directly into the second book … and so on for each book of the series) … though the epilogue of this book has me questioning the connection between Book 1 and Book 4.

As you may guess from a book entitled Assassin, this story is exceedingly violent at times. I know from the first book that these stories are supposed to be Christian allegories, and the level of violence in these books seems extreme in general, but particularly so for stories that are supposed to allude to biblical stories and people. Parts of this book are, frankly, hard to listen to, including more than a half-hour-long gruesome description of various types of torture of one man guilty of the crime of loving a highborn woman, her father’s retribution for such “treason.”

Early parts of the book felt confusing beyond what I've already stated, as it wasn't really clear who the good guys and bad guys were supposed to be. From reading the first book, I knew it would not be as simple as “the assassin is the bad guy.” It didn't help that names were similar, and the narrator used a similarly growly voice for many of the powerful men. This book was a bit of a hard slog at times for multiple reasons, and ultimately the time spent with this book didn't feel as though it was worth it. Things end up so tragically at the end with the hero, the woman he loved, and their child. If I had known this book would not have a positive ending—or at least a “happy for now” if not a “happily ever after”—but rather a depressingly negative and sad one on too many levels (death, abandonment, etc.), frankly, I would not have bothered to listen.

Then the epilogue was weird as well. It seemed to actually go back to Book 1, somehow, but enough intervening weeks have gone by between my listening to that book and this one … that I couldn't make sense of it all and how these two stories were supposed to relate to each other. Was Book 4 actually a prequel to Book 1, somehow? Seriously, authors should not confuse their readers so much, as it makes us not want to trust them for another book.

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