What was that sound?

Both the story and narrating are great in this. It is definitely one of the few titles to make really good use of multiple narrators to cover the entire cast, and honestly I only know of two narrators who could’ve done the entire thing themselves, and I’ve listened to a few hundred audio books myself, with a couple more or so added to that list most weeks. Although certain aspects of the story aren’t that new Jonathan does do a good job of taking them in a new direction and doing things with them I haven’t encountered before, which is the point, isn’t it? Ryan may be the technical MC of the story, but it is Blake who is the true focus of the story. And yes, Blake is given an overpowered ability, but unlike other settings that struggle with making a ‘broken’ character without breaking the setting Blake’s ability isn’t unique to him, just extremely rare. Furthermore, there are some limitations on his ability that help to keep him from being too setting breaking without having to break the entire setting so that he has something to struggle against to create a story. It is a great story and I’m diving into the next part as soon as possible.

Now for the bad news. What is up with those sound effects? Seriously, did the person responsible for editing them in even read/listen to the story first? Although all of them are close to what is being described in the book most aren’t quite right, or the timing is off just enough to break the flow of the story. Too be Hammer Blunt, the audio book would’ve been better without them. In my opinion this is unacceptable as soundbooth theater is a professional sound recording studio and has been well respected in this field for quite a few years now. How something with such a small, yet significant, flaw got past their quality checks is beyond me, and I really hope they do better with the remaining books. Overall, if you have the time and inclination to read the ebook instead I’d have to recommend that version to the audio book, just because of these sound effects problems as they seem to be at their worst in the most heavily action scenes, where you want disruptions to the immersion the least.