Overall:4
Performance: 5
Story: 3.5
Mythian Chronicles of Ethan, Book 1 by John L. Monk is my first foray into Mr. Monk’s writing. I was offered a code for the Audible version by a fan of his, and she was more than excited for the release. She’s a devourer of LitRPG and I’d never seen her activity advertising for an author or series, so I eagerly accepted. It was a short listen I could do between working with my son and the drive home at five and a half hours, so I listened to it over the course of a few days and decided it was only fair to do a review. Here it is. I wasn’t a big fan of the story, but it wasn’t terrible. It was solidly written, and the narrator was excellent on all accounts. He had the right kind of gravelly voice I would expect from an older character. If anything, I think he heightened my enjoyment of the piece quite a bit more than reading it would have.
As a short review of the story, I had a lot of issues with how the first story was handled. Some things required more suspension of disbelief than others, and the ending was abrupt to say the least. I had fun all the way up to the end, so it made me feel as though he split book one up to expand it from a duology since there was no real resolution of any plot point. Up to that point, I was invested and let smaller issues slip by. In no particular order, I was able to ignore things like the interaction of the lives system between wards, The Give Up system that implied horrible things could happen to you in the afterlife if you tried to endure dangerous situations, or the virtue stat.
One of the largest suspensions of all came with the goblins. I tried to ignore how truly dangerous they could be with their poisons. They could knock out a player, block their magic for two hours, and lower their strength. How did they ever lose the war? How had we not met a single poison based individual (minus the brief spider fight) in all the story except for the supposedly weakest mob at the appropriate time. All those things build the world up, but no matter how many small things I could overlook, the ending just soured things a bit for me.
Unlike many stories, all three (I believe three) are already finished and slated for release soon, so there shouldn’t be a long wait between parts of the story. It’s by no means a bad story, but for me the first story left a bad taste in my mouth. I may continue the series, I may not, but I wish Mr. Monk well in his work.