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Shadow Sun Survival
- Shadow Sun, Book 1
- Narrated by: Will M. Watt, Jeff Hays, Andrea Parsneau, Annie Ellicott
- Series: Shadow Sun, Book 1
- Length: 15 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fantasy
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Summary
How well would you fare if the apocalypse fell upon you? Could you survive more than a few days? Would you be able to feed yourself? Find clean water? Safe shelter? Heal your wounds?
Allistor is a gamer geek who has spent most of his life indoors, playing virtual reality MMORPGS and reading classic LitRPG books. But when Earth is seized by an ancient race wielding incredibly advanced tech, who transport the entire planet to a new location with twin suns, he finds himself fighting to survive in real life. The human race is declared a contaminant, and the new overlords decree that 90 percent of us will be exterminated. Creatures out of myth and legend are sent to do the killing. Dragons, titans, alien creatures, big and small, all with a hunger for human flesh. Humans who survive the first year will be rewarded.
After seeing his family killed in the first week, Allistor leads a small group of survivors in their struggle to stay alive. Not satisfied with simple survival, he strives to make himself and his people stronger. The new "magic" RPG system that now governs the planet is something he can work with, and teach others to exploit. Thrust into a leadership position, and with vengeance in his heart, Allistor aims to establish a stronghold, then take the fight to the monsters who seek to enslave his people.
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What listeners say about Shadow Sun Survival
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Ben
- 08-09-19
Worth a go
I was happy with the story, the narrative and the overall experience. But, the sound effects and the music accompanying the fight scenes was far more distracting than helpful or beneficial and really needs to be left out of the future books.
8 people found this helpful
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- Chris
- 04-11-19
Overproduced
As others have said the story and voice acting in great but every time the narrative introduces any sort of tension some terrible background sound effects really distract from what is otherwise a very enjoyable audiobook.
4 people found this helpful
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- Zackattack
- 13-01-20
the story was fine...but the production wasn't
Watt was fine, his american accents were mediocre but the rest was acceptable. the background music and effects ruined everything.
it hit the wall of sound, causing a bad reverb effect of the narration. the sound levels were wrong so the narration was swallowed by music sometjmes, in the middle of a fight no less...basically, don't touch this one.
2 people found this helpful
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- MK
- 20-09-19
ruined by sound effects
shoot the editor because it just ruins the story which I didn't even listen to because of the sound effects.
refunded will make sure to check reviews more closely in future to avoid awfull production like this will also be avoiding sound booth theater I reccomend anyone who reads this does the same if you want to preserve your eardrums
5 people found this helpful
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- blip
- 05-04-20
Sound effects are brutal
I should of listened to the other reviews on this book. Barely made it 5 mins before returning it, just constant background rumbles and growls. You cant get into the story because the jarring noises ruin your immersion.
1 person found this helpful
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- Matt Roberts
- 29-10-19
Great take on the genre, overly noisy production
Title says it all really. Great take on the genre, some nice character arcs, some shocks in places.
I'm not certain multiple voice artists adds very much to the piece, but I'm certain the sound fx and music don't. They're far too generic to actually add anything significant and would seem to just add unnecessary cost and production time to the project. Music was often mixed much too loud. You could argue that in a full dramatisation occasionally obscured voices could add drama - I'd disagree, but I'd accept its a valid argument. In a straight audiobook... Nothing should get in the way of the text.
Definitely eager for the next book.
2 people found this helpful
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- Mr Andrew Scobie
- 13-01-22
Shadow son survival
I have listened to stuff from this author before and have been impressed In this book I enjoyed the story but I could have done without the music just my personal opinion
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- Paul Ransted
- 24-05-21
Very good but a little strange
The reading of this book is great. However feels strange with an Englishman saying American phrases.
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- Daniel
- 24-03-21
Effects are too distracting
I read the comments and decides to give it a go but the effects are so loud and useless that I couldn't get into the story so I ended up refunding it as well.
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- Dingo 883
- 15-03-21
Pretty good with a few flaws
It's no System Apocalypse, but this genre is fast becoming my favorite. The story starts out pretty solid with good characters. Whoever does the female characters for the forest ranger and others needs to fix her mic or EQ values. She literally sounds like she's phoning it in--like with a telephone. There's no bass, and it doesn't match the rest of the recording at all. It's a bit distracting. The MC, despite being a so-called gamer, is a bit of a dumbass. First, he gets a Barret .50 cal sniper rifle. He has a legit marine sniper in his group who'd love to have it and would actually know how to use it, but nope! That's his shiny toy. Much smarter to have the gamer nerd blast away blindly than give it to a professional. Then the MC picks up a shield spell. Great! He might actually be able to stop getting the crap kicked out of him every encounter. Nope! NEVER uses it before an engagement. Used it once AFTER nearly getting killed and cast it on his ranger gal pal once that saved her from being splattered. Still not enough to teach the so-called gamer to cast his buffs before jumping into a fight.
That being said, I signed up for Audible's free trial just so I could download books 2 and 3. Like I said, it's becoming my favorite audiobook LitRPG genre. Definitely worth a listen all complaints aside.
PS: Book 2 still has the bad female voiceover. Please fix your EQ.
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- Donovan
- 02-12-19
As an analytical reader I can't enjoy this
This book is a good attempt at the lit-rpg genre but like many of it's peers it falls short if you want a consistent world that makes sense. The stats system in this book are an issue since since base human stats are so low and people have gained stats to make themselves super human but never act like it.
The biggest issue I have with this book is the pandering to "gamers" in world as having more of a clue how things work. People heard a voice and got a message screen about Armageddon but no one spent time bunkering or even just reading since it seems to system seems to help.
The stats never seem to matter it feels more like basic apocalyptic fantasy than lit-rpg. Never does someone doubling their strength or intelligence ever actually change them making the choices very bland.
Heck it feels like everything just benefits the MC more than others or that the others couldn't be bothered to try harder to survive. These facts just made this book a choir that just got harder after every eye roll about how much like a game it is yet they explain why something's work the way they do
37 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 15-03-20
The worst parts of Chaos Seed and The System Apocalypse combine
I’m fairly certain this author read Tao Wong and Aleron Kong back to back and then tried to write another book with any original ideas.
Basically, this book has a great idea. It starts off gritty and intense, then tries to world-build, but ultimately falls flat. The MC is an entitled jerk that levels up every time he steps on a bug on the sidewalk (okay not literally but close enough).
Also, the inconsistencies are staggering. Dudes are dying and their friends are laughing and joking in the same moment. It’s like the author wanted to write a book and had little patience in the parts that matter and drew out the conversations in the parts that are eye-roll and cringey.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also, wasn’t too happy with the book being narrated by a British man when telling the story in America. Constantly kept taking me out of the story.
Hope you all enjoy it more than I did. Also, for the love of all that is holy... stop with the “Gnomes Rule!” bit. My gosh, it’s not funny. It has never been funny. You’re not cool nor apart of the cool kids. So stop it.
26 people found this helpful
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- Andrae Mitchell
- 27-12-19
Why do soilders suck in this?
ok story at best. tries hard to make the MC the problem solver. the soilders for instance shouldn't have had too much of a problem taking care of mobs with the firepower they had from the get go. you mean to tell me that soldiers stationed at a nuke silo were helpless until the MC shows up? its moments like this that ruin these stories. Everyone doesn't have any bright ideas until the MC shows up. No one has discovered how to make makeshift weapons because........? oh right, no one besides the MC can think. great Narrators but not even they can make this a 3 star story.
18 people found this helpful
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- Christopher
- 17-08-19
Another great book from Dave Willmarth...
...And a questionable production by the normally fantastic Soundbooth Theater.
First, this book falls into the sub-genre of post-apocalyptic RPG GameLit where after an outside force hijacks the planet, seeds it with horrible monsters and introduces an RPG style interface/stat system, the remaining humans must level up to survive.
So yes, this does have quite a few similarities to The System Apocalypse by Tao Wong among others. That said, though the circumstances might be similar, the characters are totally different. And Willmarth is telling such a compelling story that the similarities fall by the wayside. I think it would be shortsighted and petty to lower the number of stars given just because this book’s setup shares some of its primary features with another book that came before it.
Now on to the production. As I said up top, Soundbooth Theater has generally produced great audiobooks in my experience. There have been a few titles here and there that didn’t rock my world, but on the whole they’re great.
Here, for some unknown reason, they decided to add a bunch of totally unnecessary sound effects and tension building drums to all of the action sequences. I found it jarring, ham-handed, and lacking in any kind of subtlety. Worst of all, it repeatedly pulled me out of the story. I could compare it to watching a movie and every 20 minutes or so your TV would shoot out a cloud of the smell of whatever is happening...
Though it didn’t ruin the book, I didn’t ever get to the point where the sound effects and drums were ever more than a distraction. When the narrator tells you that a character shoots his rifle, you really don’t need to hear a canned sound effect of a gunshot two seconds later in order to understand that the rifle has been fired and what that shot sounds like.
In essence what Soundbooth Theater has done here is decided that our imaginations are not competent to recreate these things in our minds eye and therefore has decided to help us out by making a crunching noise every time one of the characters breaks a bone. What’s next... will they start including accompanying video files and flashing a picture of the car that the characters are driving every time it’s mentioned that they entered an automobile?
Though I applaud their enthusiasm and efforts to bring the art of the audiobook to a new level, the way they are going about it is just misguided.
That said, the narrator and most of the character voices were superb as usual. Regardless of the problems with the sound effects, this book is still a no-brainer when it comes to spending your credits.
62 people found this helpful
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- Andrius
- 14-12-19
Average and cringy.
Cringe dialog, slow narration just to pad out content, inconsistent story. One chapter he describes how he tied furniture to a truck in detail, next skips weeks in training. Using LitRPG for genre attraction only - stats are generic and useless, any skills skipped over and meak. Best spell of MC is ranged stun that is resisted half the time. Any characters are beyond basic, women are for sleeping and flirting with, men for dying. Inconsistent, boring and dumb MC character - "good guy" with terrible sense of humor, cringe personality in social setting, "ruthless" sociopath that brags about his pets eating another mans face in combat situations. Also whats with Brits and their obsession about sausage and onions.. just another thing that author repeats every second chapter. Anyway - would not recommend unless you have every other good book already.
7 people found this helpful
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- Jeff M
- 02-09-19
Love the story and narration
I could do without the sound effects during the fight scenes. To me it is just distracting. One of the reasons I like books over movies is that I can use my own imagination for visual and sound effects. If you are providing them it is taking away one of reasons books are better than movies.
7 people found this helpful
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- Ray Johnson
- 21-11-19
Shine on Shadow Sun
Someone needs to chain Dave Willmarth up and make him write post apocalyptic books all day long. Clearly the impetus of making oodles of money isn’t enough to spur him on or we’d be on Dark Elf 5 and Shadow Sun 7 by now.
The point is that Shadow Sun was not what I was expecting. To be frank, I had thought that it was going to be a story about a boy and his bear wandering through a decimated landscape, sort of like Grizzly Adams meets Slash Maraud (Show those pics here please). FYI Slash is a DC comics mini-series about aliens who take over the earth and slowly wipe out humanity as they convert earth via terraforming into a world not unlike their own. It is a series that was not well loved and did not become a cult classic that was secretly beloved years later, but I LOVED it.
No, what Master Willmarth has done is taken a concept of aliens taking over Earth and putting a new slant on it in which they literally steal earth. Earth is physically moved and given new ground rules for how life is going to be. The MC is a young fella, but he has a good head on his shoulders, and does the best he can whenever he finds himself in a bad situation. His attitude makes him become the leader of a group of refugees who have survived a giant monster attack; which sort of snowballs into bigger leadership roles later.
One thing I will say about Dave is that he isn’t afraid to kill people, which keeps you alert every time a crisis comes up. I will also say that I appreciate the way that A-holes are dealt with. It may not always be quick, but you just know that the jerk is going to get it in the end. As an example, if there is some guy that abused kids, and he was walking through the rain forest in one of Willmarth’s books, then he would most likely get slowly crushed and eaten by an anaconda. Jerk that shoot their mouths off tend to get shot in the mouth, you get the point. DW suffers no fools lightly, and under his pen they pay.
The story is utterly engrossing and sucks you in immediately, the leveling process, the process of converting currency into Klacks (alien dough) works well, and gaining abilities is pretty slick. I think I only had one moment of WTF and it involved a certain train wreck, but hey, ya gotta have something to take down void terrors and the like I suppose. I just enjoy WillMarth’s style and prose, but overall his characterizations are just on point. They feel genuine and real.
Damn, I have to say that Will Watt does an amazing job on this book. Yes, he is joined by not only Jeff hays and Annie Ellicot, but also Andrea parsnaue!!!! Yeah. As impressed as I am I almost feel bad for poor Will, because they brought in all their big guns, plus a ringer from next door to ensure the success of this book in its audible form. If I were him I would feel like I wasn’t trusted to carry a book this big! Ya know wat? He handles this book like he wrote it. I was incredibly impressed with his American accents,as I do believe that the computer helper is his own natural voice. Jeff, Annie, and Andrea really do have supporting roles, here but they all go for the Oscar too. Seriously, the sound, vocal talent, and effects were completely flawless. I applaud Will on his first outing, and give Kudos to the rest of them for keeping things so real and gritty.
My final score? Well, Dave inspired me to go out and get a pet bear myself, I call him cuddles (Add in my pic of the bear). He’sa good bear, yes he is! Back on track, The story was not what I was expecting, and I give props to DW for emulating the Grizzly Adams rescue and then turning it on its head. It was well paced, filled with action, good characters, and some “gods” from the past who sort of fluctuate between being honorable and then not so much. I don’t believe there was a slow moment in the book. Or me this is 8.6 stars all the way, from writing to narration it impressed.
6 people found this helpful
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- Daniel Moynihan
- 13-09-19
Poor Protagonist
I wanted to like this book. But the protagonist is just to inconsistent. He constantly says the new world is just like the RPGs his played all his life, while spending the entire book making rookie decisions. He admits that Earth guns don't do as much damage as other weapons or magic. Then for a while you think he's getting the hang of melee combat, but just goes back to shotguns. Battle after battle he just shoots his gun. He almost never uses magic. Even after he gains a class he doesn't use it's abilities.
6 people found this helpful
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- Patrick
- 29-08-19
Just okay….
Narration: The biggest adjustment you have to get used to is the use of a narrator from the U.K. and an A.I. from France (I assume that’s a French accent). It doesn’t make sense in a story that takes place in rural Colorado, U.S.A. You’re already using Soundbooth Theater for other vocals, or at least Jeff Hays and Annie who are vocal powerhouses and have monster vocal ranges, so why did the author go with a British Accent for all the narration, shifting back to American voices for characters? Sure, I appreciate a soothing British accent as much as the next person, but it was misplaced here, and the suspenseful parts were distracting because of it. I also didn’t care for the production as used here either. Drums, intense music, or victory sounds have been used before in other titles and were done so in a tasteful manner, here they’re used during vanilla fighting sequences. It’s not that suspenseful…it’s a rat. No need for Braveheart drums sequences. I also don’t need to hear every sound like a bear sniffing, somebody burping, whatever. Background noise when somebody walks into a tavern in other titles is well placed. What was done here was not.
Story: I have over 70 LitRPG titles in my library, so I’m pretty confident when I say there’s nothing new here, and while I enjoyed the majority of the book, I found myself skipping 2-3 minutes at a time with over-explanation of events. I don’t really feel like it’s necessary to explain somebody descended the stairs, step by step, flipped on the light switch, light filling the room, boards creaking beneath him, dust faintly swirling about, etc. etc. etc. I definitely want to be immersed in the environment, but telling us about each door, what’s behind each door, how many tables and chairs are in every room, what type of rug is on the floor, etc., at every new location the MC goes to is just overkill. Seemed like it dragged on in so many places. A simple “MC caught the rest of the people up on the system and how to distribute attribute points" is sufficient. No need to walk through every conversation among the characters. This is a very slow moving end of the world survival story with LitRPG elements. Much of it was entertaining; however, much of it was just boring as it was entertaining. The author could’ve either made the book shorter, or lessened the over explanation of things and added more action into the story. Either would’ve been fine.
LitRPG: Where art thou? There’s almost no stat building. Seriously, he levels up and then they say nothing about where he chooses to place his stat points. The magic system is barely explored, no talk about how much mana is used when he casts spells, no concept about how hard something hits, just “Runs in, attacks, gets bit, health level is XX%, kills MOB, eats food and drinks water (no explanation of statistical effects), then heals.” Why wouldn’t you sell a bunch of stuff, buy alien technology, and own everything in the area? I mean a car can be traded for enough funds to purchase superior weaponry to Earth’s, so…. I don’t know…just seems to be a survival story that the author went back through and added a couple of LitRPG elements into, not really being well versed in MMORPG’s (as pointed out by another review here).
I’d say it’s worth the free credit if you also don’t mind purchasing credits to obtain books you enjoy, but if you rely on the one free credit every month to obtain a new novel you otherwise couldn’t afford, then perhaps look into some of the better LitRPG’s. I’m hoping the following installments will have corrected some issues I found in this one, otherwise the next book will be where I move onto something else in my wishlist. Hope that helps some that might be on the fence.
27 people found this helpful
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- Uria
- 23-08-19
soso story
characters do not seem to act in a convincing fashion. main character loses both his parents and his young sister and he's fine and joke with people hours later.
8 people found this helpful