Awakening

Telindell, Book 1

By: Darren D. Lee

Narrated by: Nick Podehl

Welcome to the world of Zaneen, a world with a dark past and more secrets than answers. For Lian, a 12-year-old orphan, the world consists only of his remote village and the hazardous mountains surrounding it. He always questioned his existence and longed for meaning; Lian will soon get his answers.

After his birthday gets off to a rocky start, Zaneen's dark past erupts into the present with a violent fury. When that fury leaves Lian truly alone, with the exception of an unexpected companion, Lian must learn the secrets of his own past in order to save his world from a thousand-year-old conflict.

©2016 Darren D. Lee (P)2017 Podium Publishing

Disappointed

I really wanted to like this story, it had some great reviews, but, I found that I just didn't care. It was well written, I love the narrator, he is one of my favs, but come on! Let us know more about the people, what they care about, who they are, what they are thinking, etc. It was sort of discombobulated, it jumped around so much. He is a kid, finds his long-lost Mom, then you are with some evil dragon, terrorizing the lands, then, poof, he is an adult, and really, all you know is that he did some training all these years. I didn't care enough to finish listening.

excellent

excellent books by 4 what are the greatest stories I've I love the characters great book, I can't wait for book 2

Not my fav

I wanted to like this book, but found no depth in the characters and very little original thought. Cookie cutter fantasy, I apologize for the negative review because I applaud anyone strong and brace enough to write a book. I picked this one to read because I love nick podel as a narrator.

good narration, writing needs work

author gave information in poor ways that made no sense and it felt out of place

Meh, not bad just meh

While I know what I’m generally getting into with the typical boy hero book, kid appears weak gets bullied etc turns out to be some heir to awesomeness yadda yadda. Well this book does hit all the required points, but in a random rushed manner. The protagonist goes from 12 yr old lost kid to 18 yr old badda$$, between chapter 2 and 3. The all powerful evil dude decides to mill around doing nothing this whole time except send out one of his underlings to take over the one human kingdom ever mentioned (yes there is that one city in the desert) she does this in a kill everybody and trick king to marry her then kill him right after he named her, idk seems like the population would go hmmmm at this. There is an intriguing sub plot with the elves and a mini civil war but that whole thing lasts like 2 days. Then big battle with the evil queen lady, while the all powerful evil dude with a huge army watches and decides to not get involved even though the good guys are all beaten down. You can’t lose when your opponent does everything in their power to screw up. This makes it hard to find all powerful evil dude I mean “all powerful?” Idiot very compelling. Also and I know world building is complex and adds a lot of pages but this world comes across about the size of Kansas- so world not very compelling. There is some painful sex and rushed romance as well. In fact if it were not for some of the extreme violent descriptions , language and sex this would be YA all the way.
To sum it up generic hero , idiot antagonists, small world and a bunch of petty generic secondary characters and there is no moral ambiguity at all - the good guys are so obviously good and the bad guys so obviously bad it becomes a bit silly, all leads to a pretty meh story.
I’d recommend this to people needing to fill a lot of travel time and don’t mind missing a whole chapter while getting distracted.
If you like this trope go for Robert Jordan or Brandon Sanderson, or try Sufficiently advanced magic or name of the wind.

Soooo cheesy.

The story was really good, until the main character started to fall in love. Then the dialogue/ text was unbearable. So much cliche romance text and horrible comedy that left me cringing at times. The first 4 hours were great but after that, the only thing that kept me listening was nick podehl's epic voices.

A big "meh" for me

Was going to rate a 3 on a 5 star scale but apparently the rating scale has a 3 star as "great", this was not great... If you are concerned about spoilers dont read any further.

The first couple hours were alright, the story setup and threats had potential. The problem was that as time went on, there were more and more things that pulled me out of the story. Why is this happening? "I prefer not to talk about it". Biggest annoyance of all was probably Sarah. I understand the simple love interest angle, but its seemed (and I dont have any desire to listen again to verify) that she got more attention and speaking lines than most everyone else despite only being a love interest. I could have used some of that attention to detail when it came to the bad guy's reasoning or even the dragon fight (its small enough to score 3 claw marks across the chest but big enough to carry 4 adults and its "relationship" gets explained away in a single line???). I was barely paying attention by the time the story reached the final fight. The book ended and all I have are unanswered questions. How many gods are there and what are the rules of interference? If Lian was such a potential threat, why give him 6 years to hide and grow stronger instead of forcing him out in the open? Speaking of 6 years, why were the elves so utterly useless? They knew of the danger, heard rumors of a sorceress even though they knew humans couldn't perform magic, but kept hiding instead of doing proper recon? Can we decide on if this god is an utter pushover or if people are scared of her? *deep ragged breath* All I know is that I shouldn't be walking away thinking that Kane and Roxees were far and away the "best" characters...

Don't waste your time.

Huge plot holes no back story. I think the author just came up with an outline and published it. If Nick Podehl wasn't such a great narrator I wouldn't have been able to finish it. 1 star for the story, 1 star for the writing. Nick gets 5 stars.