Flamespitter

Elemental Gunslinger, Book 1

De: Jonathan Smidt

Narrado por: Ryan H. Reid, Andrea Parsneau, Jeff Hays

A gunslinger with four affinities is a myth.

It's the kind of story whispered in frontier saloons one drink before closing and around campfires in the dead of night. For the heroes and villains in those tales, that impossible power is a boon, a gift.

For Mr. Jones, it's a curse.

Of course, that's not his real name. He's had many.

Changing names is necessary when you possess a power that every lawman and outlaw would kill to obtain. To survive, you keep your head down, kill when you must, and never stay in one place too long. It's a life governed by rules and hard lessons, drilled into him from a young age after his parents were murdered because of his gift.

Since then, the trail of bodies has only grown longer.

But all that is about to change. After years of chasing two-bit bounties, honing his skills, and growing his core, he's finally caught the scent of the man he's been searching for the first of four bodies that will end this carnage once and for all.

Now, it's time to put his cursed powers to use.

It's time for revenge.

©2024 Portal Books (P)2024 Soundbooth Theater

Breath of fresh air

I enjoyed this one! It was a good twist on an old concept. It was classic western but with supernatural elements.

The only minor thing was that each chapter seemed to be built like an episode of a series. So often the same motivations and goals was repeated to remind listeners. Most times this was unnecessary I feel since I'm listening to it as a full book. It didn't make me take of any stars though.

The story is self contained but with a lead in to the next book in the series. No big cliffhanger witch I liked. I'm looking forward to the next one. Narration was ace and fit the story well.

Well that was som'min else!

Well that was som'min else. To me it wasn't quite on par with Jonathan Smidt's other books, but it's really good. And it goes ta' show ya how creative Jonathan Smidt really is. And how versatile gamelit can be when someone as skilled as Smidt is, when he wielding his craft... In this book a young man goin by the name Jones is motivated by vengeance. His plan is to not only stop the men that killed his mentor but to end them and their ilk. Things seriously go pear-shaped.
But you're gonna hafta get the book to find out what happens! And I say be sure to grab the audiobook! Because Soundbooth Theater Productions are simply AwesomeSauce. No matter which narrators they choose, you always get a top notch performance.

Western and cultivation, not western cultivation

This is a great fun read. It feels like a wild west gunslinger story first and foremost. The magic elements are not exactly shoehorned in but they seem to be limited to combat. Otherwise I suspect the tone of the book would have gone total fantasy + guns.

It's worth a try if you want a break from the typical LitRPG book. The MC is still OP through an accident of birth but there is a measured pace to his growth. The scope of the story looks pretty limited to a revenge plot line but the author has dropped enough hints that show he could step on to a world apocalypse scale stage.

Magic bullets in the Old West, love it!

A fun imagining of what the old west would be like if guns used mana-produced bullets. Great framework and background set up for future adventures while still completing a crucial story line. LOVE the voice acting! Did a wonderful job of keeping me in universe and added a lot to the experience.

Great new world

I love Weird West storytelling, and this is an excellent example of the genre. The action is great, the character grows as the adventure progresses, and new wrinkles are added in a well paced manner. The author is already one of my favorites, and this new world only reinforces that. I can not wait to see what book 2 and onward bring.

Arthur?

Great story and it makes me think of a magical Arthur Morgan minus the tuberculosis

Perfect balance between a western and cultivation

This was a fantastic book. The writing was rich, authentic, and detailed while never committing the cardinal sin of being boring. The magic system starts out simple and develops in complexity in interesting ways that are meaningful to the story.

I highly recommend it.

Beginning of a good series

I’m looking forward to the next book to learn what our heroes do next, and see the larger mystery unfold.

excellent listen

I enjoyed the development of the characters and the pacing of the story. I was surprised by recommendation from Audible

Better than it should be

3.5 stars with a bullet.

A weird-west, cultivation, gunslinger progression fantasy isn't a thing I had thought about reading. But it turned out to be pretty entertaining.

The book has its problems: the writing, especially internal dialogue, is rather clunky. The first-person narrative is a bit distracting. and the audiobook narration has issues that occasionally took me out of the story.

The plot is decent: the mentor of the protagonist is killed by a group of criminals when the protagonist is in his teens and that protagonist swears out revenge on the whole group. This book covers the hunt for the first of those criminals. (Regrettably, the mentor is not named Johnny Diamond and the protagonist isn't Alan Bourdillion Traherne.)

The book is set in a post-Civil-War US West where the guns shoot magic bullets and the gunslingers are elemental cultivators. The MC, unsurprisingly, has a special talent for magic, but the inciting death interrupted his training, which drives a significant part of the story. The magic system hangs together pretty well and makes the story more interesting.

Being a first-person narrative, we get the most detail about the protagonist, who has anger issues (perhaps exacerbated by his elemental affinity). For most of the book, he is portrayed largely as personified vengeance. But toward the end, we start to get bits and pieces that hint of the a larger story.

The villains are caricatured and mostly disposable, though there is one character is obviously intended to be recurring. The supporting characters are better realized, but they tend toward one trick each. (And two of them fill very similar niches.)

The narration is multi-person, but not full cast, which I didn't much like, and some of the sound effects seemed gratuitous. I like all of the narrators, but together they were weaker than their individual skills would suggest.

All of which might suggest that I didn't like the book. But the unique subject and the writing kept my attention in a way that I find a bit surprising. There's currently only one book out, but I'm looking forward to book 2 in the series.