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Into the Light
- Axe Druid, Book 1
- Narrated by: B. J. Harrison
- Series: Axe Druid, Book 1
- Length: 16 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Classics
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Publisher's Summary
A tight-knit group of buddy gamers. A relentless galactic conqueror. One big ol' ax and a whole bag of magic.
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Warning: This book contains profanity.
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What listeners say about Into the Light
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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- Ben
- 09-25-19
Rambling, fun, party LitRPG
Into the Light is a hefty read, and packs a lot of story in. It's got some pulp (stats) to it, but I never felt it was drowning me in numbers the way some LitRPGs do. The main allure of the book is the characters and their brotherly interactions. At times, their mannerisms felt pretty strange, and the way they used Earth colloquialisms nonstop around people who had no clue of their meaning felt weird and not the way real people would act. But overall, their interactions had a fun vibe and some easygoing humor.
The plot rambles, and felt a bit off-the-cuff rather than planned, but I did enjoy the arc of it overall. There is time devoted to "sidequests" for powering up, which I appreciated, as many LitRPGs can't seem to write a side quest without fumbling to find a way to tie it into the world quest and make everything that happens super important. The story ended very abruptly, with a pretty big cliffhanger, which is never cool, but I didn't feel so invested in the characters that it broke my heart the way it might have with a smaller cast. I think that might be the downside of having ~6+ main characters. At times I got the feeling the writer was writing about his real life friends, and their personalities didn't get much explanation or background because in his mind they were already established.
I look forward to the next book, and hope to see more development for each of the main characters...or honestly, a death or two to trim the roster wouldn't be so horrible. I frequently forgot James was a character and could never keep the other characters straight except for Yosuke. Despite my complaints, it was good clean fun (other than some torture), and I'd like to listen to more.
41 people found this helpful
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Performance
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Story
- Brandon C. Vola
- 06-27-19
Implausible
I read/listen to a lot of LitRPG and fantasy. I’m a fan of the genre but I had a number of problems with this one. I only made it through about 4 hours and returned it. I found the main character’s reactions to just about everything completely unnatural, unbelievable and unrelatable. When your mentor asks you to kill them because they’re being corrupted by a source you’re aware of, you don’t just respond with “ok”. You go to the source of the corruption and try to save them... or you AT LEAST argue about it first. And then when you do kill them, you don’t take their skin and go make armor out of it!! Also the liberal use of “bro” “broseph” “broski” etc was a general turn off for me. Just the general banter between characters was annoying to me.
76 people found this helpful
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Performance
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Story
- Margaret Stempson
- 06-10-19
Underwhelming
I don't like leaving a negative review without giving my reasons doing so. So I guess here is where I am at for my reasons saying that I was not very interested by this book.
1) I constantly found it incredibly difficult to keep my attention. I was drifting and on several occasions fell asleep and had to backtrack. The combat situations move very quickly and its easy to get lost as to exactly what is happening. I found that I had to backtrack a lot and sometimes I just missed parts because I couldn't keep track of what was going on.
2) Support characters - there are a number of the main characters IRL friends that get ported into the world with him. I felt that they were incredibly hollow and lacked depth. The author didn't really set them up well or go in depth into who they are plus I felt the names weren't easy to keep track of who is who. It doesn't help that all of them come in at the same time and there is kind of no character building of them in my opinion. I felt that they had very bland personalities and they really just kind of melded in as other people with him.
3) Boring Main Character - normally speaking you want the main character to stand out. From what I saw it seemed like he had no real advantages over his friends and in a lot of cases he seemed weaker or the same as his friends. It doesn't help that all of his friends seemed to have the same mentalities and personality as the main character. I just found the support characters to be like..... duplicate copies of the main character with different classes but all of which were equal in terms of power. In a lot of books you get a main character that distinguishes themselves due to an ability, unique class, unique ability, intelligence or something. I found that the main character probably could have been any of them and it probably wouldn't have changed anything in this book.
4) Combat - When they would get into combat sometimes it was fine and I could track what was going on but at times it was just a cluster of me not knowing what they were fighting and or what was happening. Extended combat seemed like the worst on this front.
Ultimately, I found several points a bit underwhelming and I am not even sure if I plan to finish. I am writing this review half way through the book and I don't know if I have intention to finish. If I do, I guess I will update this review if I find reason to do so.
67 people found this helpful
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- James S.
- 08-20-19
Great story once you get into it.
For me it was a rough start getting through the introduction of characters. However, once the story transitioned the main plotline was very enjoyable and the narrator did an excellent job. I enjoy the military influence in the author's writing and hope he continues writing fantasy books. Looking forward to getting into the sulfurous book 2.
13 people found this helpful
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- Vance E. Williamson
- 08-30-19
Not a bad book, but not a great one either.
it took me awhile to figure out why I didn't really enjoy this story, and maybe it is just me. The entire story felt, in a word, rushed. I felt like I was listening to a brief recap of someone's D&D campaign where the teller forgot the details and forgot to put actual character to the characters. For me the characters just weren't believable and there was no sense of danger towards any of them. I would have liked to see some character growth in the story but everything is pretty much handed to them on a silver platter with nothing that seemed to me to be a challenge. I wish the author the best for the future but sadly I dont think I'll be following this series.
12 people found this helpful
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- Angela Montague
- 10-07-19
It takes extremely long to get good, but it does
edit: The highlight of the series is book 2 is about as good as the end of this book. but afterwards it goes down hill from there. I haven't yet been able to finish book 3. It is much harder to finish than the poor quality of the first half of book 1.
I would rate book 1 as overall 4, performance 4, story jumps up to a 5 at the end. But I lowered this book to a 3 for overall and story since it is just the opener for the series and the story goes downhill afterwards dragging you along with not much development.
original review:
It takes about half the book for it to get good.
The second ~half of the book is really good and
The last quarter of the book more than makes up for the unengaging first half.
the first half of the book suffers in tone and exposition. The main character don't take things seriously until almost half way through the book, which makes the tone hard to engage with. He introduces too many of his friends all at once (making it hard to keep track of who is who), also the first few chapters violate "Show don't Tell" telling us his friend's personality instead of showing it (obviously eventually it gets shown too).
The tone affected by the characters not taking things seriously causes the beginning to be a bit unengaging, which is obviously not good.
The narrators slow languished pace does not help things. He intially reads it like an neutral observer which when combined with the characters attitudes creates the tone as if it is all just a game--until things jappen that make them reevaluate and they stop treating a real world as such. Narrator's tone does improve near end of book, he may have been reading the same tone into the main character's attitude as the narrator's tone combined with that attitude portray's.
Clearly the author started off relatively new at fiction writing and then improved as he wrote the book, but for whatever reason couldn't bring himself to or didn't think to re-write the beginning of the book. I am going to go buy the next book now.
Still worth the listen.
My suggestion, once it gets past exposition, speed the book up to 1.5x or however fast you can listen to, until the book starts getting good.
I found x1.25 to be a good pace to listen to the narrator at, as he has a naturally slow enunciation speeding it up improves the action feel of the book.
Last thing worth mentioning: book has strong language a lot of cursing. All of the curses. It may be realistic, but it really doesn't do anything positive for the book, the main characters all curse so much that there isn't any impact to any of it.
My note to author: maybe turn it down. When the dial is always at 11, 11 is just the new 1.
20 people found this helpful
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- CDM860
- 05-28-20
Nothing special
I had doubts early on, but somehow I made it almost all the way to the end.
I fell asleep at some point and didn't feel any need to go back, cuz it didn't feel like I missed anything important. In truth, nothing in this book feels important.
The writing isn't unforgivable, but nothing in the story really jumps out to hold your interest.
It's like 16 hours of background noise.
2 people found this helpful
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- Rojo
- 11-19-19
A pleasant surprise
The story begins with Chris and his friends telling each other that they have been hearing voices for help in their dreams. The night after they have this talk at the gym, the group finally answer the call thinking that this was just a dream. The crew is pulled to Brindolla, a fantasy world with some mechanics that you would find in modern role-playing games. This is any gamers dream... or is it the crews new reality? Eventually, we find out the Brindollan Gods are using a majority of their power to hold off a relentless galactic/dimensional conqueror, War. The gods hope this will give Chris and company long enough to amass enough power to fight of War's generals already present in the world as spies and saboteurs. This is what the tight-knit group of buddy gamers were summoned for. But what really drives the group is that if they cant get rid of War’s vanguard of minions and generals, War will eventually set his sights on Earth itself.
I have to admit, I went into this book thinking this would just be a book to pass the time while I waited on releases from my favorites. I actually am not interested in druid type classes at all, which is Zeke's (Chris' "in-game" name) class. I could never get into druids for long in games and I always prefered Shaman type characters. However, following Zeke felt new and refreshing from the characters I am used to in my LitRPG's.
The book started pretty simple with a little bit of backstory on each character in their real lives. Even into the "virtual" reality things were pretty simple to follow. It was not until the characters finished some preliminary training and conquered a tough challenge in the form of a dark and twisted community did the story begin to throw in some real depth and severity into what the characters were dealing with. It was then that I really enjoyed Christopher Johns form of build up and realized that he was holding back. Even thinking back to the brief backstory part of the book I am reminded that these guys have people they love in their world. I went from thinking this was a filler book between releases to consuming 3 audiobooks in less then a week.
Some of my favorite parts involve learning about each party members class and abilities, ALL THE DWARVES, and meeting the fey Queen of Ice and Darkness. Another favorite thing about this book is the comradery of the party and how, as a veteran myself, at home I felt with the characters. Each time I was away from the book I couldn't wait to get back to what felt like friends.
I'll also point out that B. J. Harrison did a pretty good job here as far as narration. Could use a little more work on female voices but even that was pretty good. Having listened to all 3 audiobooks I can say he does improve.
2 people found this helpful
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- Andrew
- 09-02-19
An inspiring performance to innovative story
It's not often i've seen stories written from the druids perspective, let alone druids that weren't human to begin with. Now that could be a lack of diversity on my part, or perhaps they just don't exist in sufficient numbers. However B.J. Harrison Makes sure to give voice to the story in ways that truly fits with what i felt when i originally read it. I felt he put the emotions in the right places and in the right amounts. Let me Axe you a question, are you looking for a LitRPG with Animal Companions, ALL THE LOOT, and a strong sense of friendship? Then look no further, cause Axe Druid is the story for you and B.J. Harrison has done a wonderful job of narrating the story.
4 people found this helpful
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- Al
- 10-31-20
Good story although slightly scattered
I thought Axe Druid was an interesting read, even refreshing in places and it kept the story moving on. This is less of a plot driven book than a character driven book, which I think might be part of the problem.
For the first 80% of the book the main character (MC) doesn't appear to be the main character of the book. Instead, all his friends from one moment to the other seem to be the MC. It felt off to me, almost as if the first 80% should have been told from one of his friend's viewpoints instead of Zeke's. The last 20% are a different story almost, and although I don't want to give spoilers I will say that it seems to happen too easily, changing a character who is negative into one who is happy and light. I know it's a fantasy book, but I struggled with how quickly the change occurred.
There is also a distinct lack of grittiness until the last battle. I never felt any of the characters were in danger during a single fight, despite their levels being relatively low (under level 20 until the end.) The last battle was different slightly, more epic in nature but still never left it in doubt as to who would win.
The litRPG mechanics were fine while they were there. As has been mentioned in other reviews, the LitRPG mechanics disappear from the 67% mark until the very end. It's the authors choice to do this of course, but as a reader I felt it took me away from the developing story and into something that while helpful, ultimately didn't need to occur in order to propel the story forward.
That brings us to how I think the story becomes scattered. Within the main plotline (and the LItRPG elements) the story is progressing well with clear targets. When the change comes about 2/3rd of the way through the book, it becomes a fantasy story that throws all the tropes we know at us, one after another. It was at that point that I felt the book lost its focus, the plot line diverting from one thing to another until we were finally back on track at the end of the book.
I'll finish by saying that I probably will buy book 2, but ultimately I was disappointed with book 1 despite it's promise and the backing of Mountaindale press.
1 person found this helpful
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- MR D W SMITH
- 08-28-21
Lacklustre
Lacklustre narration and story this made it hard to get to end of the book.
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- Jake Lucas
- 01-28-21
okay, but somewhat hollow
it's an okay time filler, but description was patchy throughout and it just never quite got me invested
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- C. Rowlands
- 10-11-20
Solid world-building to start this series
This book begins a series with a solid foundation of some interesting characters, well-thought out mechanics and an entertaining overall premise for the series, the author brings these elements together to deliver a strong first book in the series that manages to be a good read while also doing the world-building needed to support the subsequent books in the series.
On the whole the main character and his friends are well-realised and serve to draw the listener into the book, but at times some of the dialogue and inner monologue felt a little forced, trying a bit too hard to sell us on them being gamers, this didn't detract too much overall.
The performance of the narrator was a strong one, helping to bring the characters and world to life with a distinctive range of voices for the main cast.
Overall, an entertaining start to the series and a good listen in it's own right.
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- Anonymous User
- 11-24-19
why isn't it longer?
Eventhough the book is already 16 houres long, it didn't bother me.
I would love to play this game. Ok I would probably die, like in the first few chapters but still.
You get to really know the characters and their love for games and playstyles. They guide the decisionmaking troughout the story.
The narration was very clear and consistent in the story.
So read it, you won't regret it.
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- Anonymous User
- 10-26-19
Simply loved it
Great story, great narration. I was so immersed in the story I could only think "f**k no!" when it ended.
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- Maks
- 06-09-19
Not my kind of book.
This book was somewhere between “good” and “meh” on my book judging spectrum. My main problem with this book was that it was filled with goody goody characters. The story presents everything as either black or white and it gets really tiring after some point. This kind of approach just isn’t for me and I am not likely to read the second book. But if you are a reader who likes all the talk about the chosen ones and saving the world from big bad than this book should be right up your alley.
The narrator was a big redeeming quality and the reason I gave this book 4 stars instead of 3. He has a large spectrum of voices and is overall pleasant to listen to.
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- G T.
- 06-16-19
worth a listen
was a little unsure of the narrator at first, as I had never listened to him before, a few chapters in I realised my worry was unfounded.
story was excellent, cant wait for further audio in the series