Couch Potato Chaos: Gamebound
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Couch Potato Chaos: Gamebound
Narrated by:
Sarah Sampino
Buy Now for £18.99
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Narrated by:
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Sarah Sampino
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By:
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Erik Rounds
About this listen
You know those times when you’re surrounded by a squadron of bloodthirsty ninjas, your back is to the wall, you’re down to your last heart container, and all hope seems lost? In situations like that, it’s important not to panic, to take a deep breath, and to remember that even if you do shuffle off this mortal coil, by the laws of Etheria you’ll shuffle right back on it again.
Meet Tasha, a couch potato with no accomplishments to her name. That all changes one fateful day when she gets sucked into the world of Etheria. Here, in this world of adventure, she can become the strong person she’s always wanted to be.
After rescuing a princess from ninjas, one thing leads to another, and before she knows it, she’s drawn into a massive quest to save Etheria. With friends by her side, Tasha must figure out who she really is.
This is a LitRPG/RPG Gamelit novel with stat progression, video game mechanics, and narrative spreadsheets. It features heavy satire and the kind of silly over-the-top situations you might expect in a 16-bit video game.
No velociraptors have been harmed in the production of this novel.
©2018 Erik Rounds (P)2019 Erik RoundsListeners also enjoyed...
I had no idea what to expect from this book, after all the title suggests a comedy story or parody and so I'll start by saying I was very pleasantly surprised.
The story follows Tasha, a down-on-her luck young woman working for an awful game development company and feeling stuck in a rut but, with the arrival of a game cartridge from her late father she finds herself dragged into the game in a wonderfully considered Jumanji/Tron style.
What I really liked with this book was the system was a brilliant mashup between Zelda and more advanced, later games which introduced skills and abilities. This led initially to simple slash combat but then added abilities and skills to expand on the combat but retained lots of recognisable items and abilities. Additionally, the fact she retains her phone adds a fun element to her couch-potato class and I found the NPCs' reactions to this very amusing and it really helped to flesh out the characters. And speaking of the characters, the story includes one big twisty-surprise midway which I did not see coming and really impressed me considering the impact it had on the 'party' dynamic.
Special kudos have to be paid to Sarah Sampino who, not only voices every single character in the book, does the #1 acting job for Slimon the Paladin who's 'raspberry' language was an absolute joy to behold. Aside from Slimon she did a wonderful job of making every character seem an individual and the accents she chose for them all suited their personalities absolutely perfectly (I absolutely adored Trista the fairy and really hope she returns in later books in the series).
So if you want a book full of excitement, comedy, memorable characters and some of the best voice acting ever heard this is the book for you. Thoroughly excited for book 2 :)
Fun story, full of loveable characters & adventure
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Enjoyable
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Vocal Quality:
The narrator went above and beyond in this one. Sarah Sampino was exemplary in bringing this world to life. Some pronounciations were a little sketchy in my honest opinion, but weighed against the passion brought to the rest of the book they were easily forgotten. It was never difficult to understand what was being said, and although the characters' voices themselves weren't very unique, you could enjoy the effort regardless.
Sounds / Effects:
On the whole, there were no digital enhancements (Jingles, sound cues, etc) other than onomatopoeic impressions (ie "Bing") that were written by the book itself. That being said, a special mention has to be given for vocalising the dialect of a slime.
Pace:
This story is not for a quick break. At 17 hours and 39 minutes, or over a thousand minutes, there is a lot to listen to. Personally, I found that the story started to wear a little thinner towards the end. Almost as though the author was struggling to weave together the strands to make a strong conclusion and was having difficulty and/or changing their mind. However, by that point I was strongly invested and it was by no means bad. I simply feel it had more potential than it seemed given. While I avoid spoilers as best I can, I have to include one minor point: The option to continue this book with a sequel seemed hastily made, as if the author was trying to decide which way to go with the ending. This is likely the cause of the book teetering off course. As such, the pacing felt a little unpolished, yet still above average.
As for the narrative pace, there were no unnecessary speed changes, the only times the narration felt slower were outside of conflict. This felt natural, and the only times I had any difficulty in following alongside the speaker were during lore segments. I had to repeat the odd sentence (less than a dozen times in over 17 hours) but that was likely due to me rather than the book itself. I became so invested in this story that I not only listened at night as I normally do, but I also had this playing in the daytime while going about my daily tasks. It was the equivalent of a book I couldn't put down - I just had to keep listening to this story.
Sidenote: There were very minorly repeated sentences in this book. Something that was described at the end of one chapter for example may be repeated at the start of the next in a slightly different way. I am unsure if this was an editing blunder or merely meant as a means to recap in case of breaks between reading/listening sessions. It was not to the point of being annoying, but I felt as far as pacing is concerned it should probably be mentioned.
Overall:
Considering that I listened to this 17 hour story over the course of 3 days, I certainly enjoyed it and highly recommend. The aforementioned points about the odd pronounciation hiccups and plot thinning aside, this has earned a place in my favourites. I have already looked for more audiobooks by the same author/narrator combination and I had the unfortunate realisation that as of this moment there are none. Erik Rounds seems to have only finished this single book and no others. When considering that this book released as written work in Oct 2018, audible in Jan 2019, I am hopeful that as it is currently Apr 2020 that there won't be too long a wait for more. That being said, writing is not something to be rushed. In the meantime, Sarah Sampino appears to have narrated a wide variety of genres. If they are anything close to how invested she appeared in this work then it may pass a little more time while waiting for news of this collaboration to unfurl.
Eagerly awaiting more work by this author
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The couchpotato class was really fun and the mechanics interesting, however I felt that by the end the specific class mechanics could be better used to bring some more "spunk" to the last quarter of the book.
With such an ending really hope the 2nd installment comes as soon as possible!
Never forgetting to mention a stellar narration by Sarah Sampino, hope to be earing her narration in more books of the genre (LitRPG, Fantasy, Sci-fi) and of course in the sequel.
Litrpg at its finest along with stellar narration.
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Listener received this title free
Narration was clear and reasonably well seperated by characters, no majorly annoying voices or other irritations, with fun accents and great "slime language".
the story goes along nicely and doesn't have too much issues, outside of the ending/"twist", which sadly ruins a lot of the build up of the book by making the choices of the characters and the whole "endfight" moot, hopefully this will get corrected in part 2.
A fun litrpg that doesn't take itself too serious.
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