Solidly "meh"

Engaging enough to listen to while your focus is on something else. As soon as you start to pay close attention however everything starts to fall apart. The main character has very little personality and comes across as something of a blank slate and while the plot itself isn't uninteresting the world surrounding it feels very shallow and its parts don't really connect in believable ways.

To give an example without spoiling too much of the story; the main character comes across a thousand years old battlefield fairly early on that still sports a trail of overturned trees where a dragon was shot down. There's a curse on the battlefield that causes anyone to lose 2 points of health per second so, naturally, there are still valuable dragon scales, dragon bones and rusted equipment to be found.
Only, later we find out that there are high level characters around with hitpoints in the thousands in a major city not one day away on foot with access to powerful healing spells and magical potions.
And yet there's somehow still valuable loot just lying around on their doorstep after a thousand years? It's not even as if that battlefield was hidden. There's an old stone road going literally straight through the place.

There are many smaller instances where the author didn't follow his ideas to their logical conclusion but this is the one that stuck with me because that battlefield comes up again and again and each time I'm getting closer and closer to claw my own eyes out in sheer frustration at the stupidity of it all.

Just as little thought went into the development of the RPG system. The actual impact of stats on a person's power is very unclear and somehow there are low level spells that pretty much anyone could buy and learn in a matter of minutes and instantly kill even high level people and monsters but somehow there aren't entire formations of "boom"-mages. The only drawback of said spell seems to be that it sometimes fizzles but that's as much reason to not use it as it would be to not use firearms because sometimes they miss.
Overall the system feels too much like something ripped straight out of an RPG and slapped onto a story with little thought given to how such a system would impact the people of a living and breathing world.

In "The Wandering Inn" the underlying system mechanics are not well understood by the world's inhabitants because the system is very vague with the information it provides which gives the author a lot more freedom for writing stories as well as a large margin of error when it comes to introducing new "mechanics" without them retroactively ruining previous parts of the story.
In "He Who Fights With Monsters" the system provides a lot of information to the world's inhabitants and the underlying mechanics are generally well understood by the population to the point where people can plan their futures with a reasonable degree of accuracy despite an intrinsic randomness in the process of unlocking skills. There are government-funded schools and private tutoring for nobles with the specific purpose of providing people with well-researched progression paths. However, the acquisition of skills is either dangerous or costly so most people just live their lives normally without special powers.
Battleborne somehow combines the sparsity of information of "The Wandering Inn" with the high level of detail of "HWFWM" and it unsurprisingly doesn't work. With all the prompts and the ease with which personal information can be accessed for each individual there's no reason for professional soldiers to be around level 15 after potentially decades of service when the main character gets there literally within a week of his arrival. The MC wasn't even trying. Unless he is acting on some kind of ill-defined instinct or in the spur of the moment he's simply reacting to his surroundings. For that degree of disparity native people of this world would have to actively go out of their way to avoid progression judging by how the MC just sort of saunters from one quest objective to the next and bob's your uncle he out-levels centuries old dwarves. Even the most lazily written among most other LitRPG adventures at least make some sort of token effort to explain why and how the main character progresses faster than other but here I get the feeling the author just sort of forgot or never really thought of what that kind of rapid progression of the main character would mean if put in context with a world that doesn't revolve solely around one person.
In the end it doesn't feel like the MC was put into an already existing world but has new "content" continually created around him as he goes.

I don't really have anything bad to gripe about regarding the narration other than a somewhat middling recording quality but I don't really have anything particularly good to praise either. The narration is competent and having a male and female narrator to give voice to their respective gender does inject some much needed life into the story.

TL;DR a decent enough first publication if a little clumsy and cringy in places but it in no way deserves the level of praise it has garnered in the majority of reviews. For that there simply wasn't put enough thought into keeping the whole thing logically coherent.

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Good story, entretaining

A new concept, not a revolution, on how to enter a litrpg world.
Once there... The main Charakter raises to power a little to fast and is a little to emotional about loses of people he hardly knows.
However, the story is well paced and I will listen on.

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okay story, a bit dumb characters

I like the story and the world well enough. Sadly the professional soldier who's good enough to get noticed by valkyries makes a lot of pretty dumb mistakes.

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Very good and entertaining book.

This is the first book i have "read" from Dave Willmarth and im am really happy that i did. I usually dont write reviews but im planning to change that just so people like me, that enjoy Fantasy can find the good books easier.

Speaker: Everything Mountaindale Press released so far has amazing and captivating speakers. They did amazing job with this one aswell and its just fun to listen to the voice acting and how they portrai the characters with it.

Story: Fun Story and i hope it continues. I dont want to spoil anything but id recommend you read it. The 17h 14min are well worth your 9.99 or a credit :)

"Conclusion":
Its on the lighter end in terms of LitRPG´s (which is not bad in any way at all) You get the Stat sheets, the announcements and the snarky comments. Everything you want if you listen to a LitRPG is in there. I have listened to alot of LitRPG´s so far and can convidently say that if you like anything from: Dakota Krout , RyanDeBruyn, Dennis Vanderkerken, Shemer Kuznits, Turtle Me, Travis Bagwell, Luke Chmilenko, Neven Iliev..... You will most certainly enjoy this book aswell. (This is list of Authors who have really good LitRPG´s if you are Interested in LitRPG´s look them up they are all amazing)

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5 Leute fanden das hilfreich

Depends on what you are into

I am a bit torn about this book. The worldbuilding is okay and I am a sucker for good loot, gold and quest rewards in books, as well as "how to build a kingdom" storylines. If that's what you are into, and you allready finished everything else - then by all means, stop reading here and listen to the book.

Why I didn't like the book: Max is overpowered, has way too much luck and people go out of their way to shower him with favors. It's pretty black and white (bad guys aka Grey Dwarfs all deserve to die) and the behavior of a lot of characters is unlikely to say the least. Someone in the editing process should have spoken up. It's annoying because the story has so much potential.

Awesome job by the voice actors though, especially with the accents.

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1 Person fand das hilfreich

Awesome LitRPG

Absolutely great. Loved every minute of it. Introduced me to a whole new genre, can't wait to get more stories from Author

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LITRPG ALERT All fans of the genre report for duty

I highly recommend this Audiobook for every litrpgfan out there. It's a true reincarnation and transported to another realm litrpg story which I'm a big fan of.
The Audiobook has an interesting story and EXCELLENT voice acting.
To be honest I wasn't sure I'd like it when I bought it because the description didn't do a lot for me... I only bought it because I love both Daniel Wisniewski and Jessica Threet... But I was really surprised that I couldn't get enough of it and now I can't wait for the next one! There is just one this to say now my friends....
GNOMES RULE!!!

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6 Leute fanden das hilfreich

Entertaining but with a few drawbacks

I have listened to both books 1 and 2 and found them entertaining - meaning that you can hop on a 10-hour flight, listen to this and be kept entertained pleasantly.

I cannot give a higher praise to these books for 3 reasons (careful, the following details include minor spoilers):

- Most importantly, the MC progresses too rapidly: I enjoy some struggle to begin with and a writer who takes it slow, when it comes to going "from zero to hero": in this case, the MC reaches lvl 15 in about a week, which is the same level an adult person who is a professional soldier - this is way too quick and unrealistic for me; the same applies to gearing up, the MC receiving great weapons and armor too quickly, leaving no sense of real accomplishment

- Secondly, the hierarchy of ranks is not respected: at some point, the MC faces vs a boss with four minions at lvl 30, while he must be around lvl 22-23 (we don't even know the level of the boss but it must be even higher than lvl 30) and he crushes them like nothing - again, there is no feeling of great accomplishment when things are so easy.

- Lastly, the storyteller took a clear LITRPG angle, without giving the impression that he put in the effort of designing a solid and believable set of rules governing how this world operates: it is hard to understand how skill-ups impact the MC (beyond gaining attribute points - he does not seem to gain access to new skills, etc.), the magic system remains quite obscure (namely, the requirements to teach magic), etc. Also, the MC has an "instant kill" spell which makes enemies explode, and which seem to work on higher level bosses... without super long cool-down, very high mana cost, etc... this looks like "god mode" and remove part of the fun. A well built set of rules should involve "check and balances", not overpowered skills/spells.

None of the above are "deal-killers", making the story bad, but it makes them less enjoyable if you are someone with and RPG background (table-top or computer), because then the story looses a bit of consistence and believability.

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I really wanted to like it...

... but after 13h I just couldn't continue anymore. the beginning was great and had amazing potential, but unfortunately the author doesn't do much with, or rather does too much with it. it's like he can't decide what to do with the character and tries to do everything at once.
For example, the MC carries a bow, an axe, a hammer a halberd, a sword and can do magic. Rather then just concentrate and flesh out a powerset, he can do basically everything and is good at the things that are convenient for the current plot.
Same with the world, things just happen to the MC which don't really make sense and once you just accept it, the author jumps to another thing.
example (small spoiler):
I got a quest from a god to kill orcs, now I go to the dwarves to learn smithing, but then there suddenly is a war with other dwarves and then I'm king for some reason (well I accepted the, so you want to be king prompt)

The author has potential if he'd just focus on one thing and stops trying to cram everything that just came to his mind into the story.

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1 Person fand das hilfreich

speaker hurts the story

story is great but audio is lack luster.the quality is great but Jesus "the sky gegan to lighten" does not need to be spoken like the last line of indepance days speech. just read the GD book. actually going to stop after this book. the reader is just not my cup of tee. every stupid sentence is read like it's THE MOST important and when ever the mc talks it's like he has never been more sorry or involved before. it breaks you out of the story every time.

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