First and foremost: I enjoyed this book. I was always engaged, even if I was muttering about issues I had. It was very easy to finish. If you enjoy Lit RPG books, read this one. But I emphasize READ.
David Stifel does not do a good job of performing this job. I hesitate to say he does an awful job, but its accurate. His tone is robotic and often sounds like forces out a sentence without enough breath. it sounds disjointed and often without emotion. Character voices are okay, but the narration is painful to listen to.
I struggled with my listen due to the narration. I realized a few hours in that I recognized the performance. It sounded exactly like sitting on basements during High School, listening to the cheesy narration by my D&D Dungeon Masters. It was excusable then: they weren’t professional.
Which leads me to my final issue. The story itself is enjoyable. I was impressed with the character development, and the title quickly became relevant.
However, there were two problems.
Mainly, every negative relationship Jason has can be boiled down to, “Rich people are so mean to me because I’m poor!” The line “… used his considerable wealth to…” was thrown around several times. The theme is more than a little hamfisted, the author swings the villainous upper crust like an entire rotten hog, bludgeoning the reader over the face repeatedly.
Secondly, Jason has access to overpowered abilities. The powers themselves would be questionably brooen, however he seems to be able to use his spells from half a mile away, seeing intricate details that you would miss from a dozen feet. He summons zombies from across a field in the dead of night, because his Night Vision lets him see 1,200 feet easily? It became a little too much.
I will continue the series. But I will buy the physical book instead of doing so in audio book form.