Barrow King: An Epic LitRPG/GameLit Adventure

The Realms, Book 1

By: C.M. Carney

Narrated by: Armen Taylor

Book 1 of the best-selling epic LitRPG series The Realms.

A betrayed spy turned noob hero.

Betrayed by those closest to him, Finn Caldwell thought he’d escaped his life of violence and deception. But when a frantic message from his estranged sister draws him into The Realms, the world’s most advanced holographic reality game, Finn is forced to embrace his deadly skills once more.

Armed with a mysterious artifact known as a Godhead, Finn becomes the warrior-mage Gryph. Yet, things are not as they seem and to save his sister, he must escape a sentient dungeon by defeating its master, the Barrow King.

The Realms will take you back to the days when Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and The Elder Scrolls were new. Feel the nostalgia!

WARNING: Welcome to your new favorite genre.

LitRPG/GameLit is genre that incorporates gaming elements from tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder with epic RPG video games like The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim and MMO’s like World of Warcraft and sets them in a fantasy or science fiction setting. It generally has leveling, stat tables, character sheets and skill progressions.

If you’re new to LitRPG or GameLit, then The Realms is the perfect place to start.

Prepare to lose sleep. You have been warned.

The Realms - an epic LitRPG/GameLit fantasy series. Suggested listening order:

• Barrow King
• The Lost City
• Killing Time
• Dead Must Die (a side quest)
• Scourge of Souls
• The Forsaken God
• Chaos Rising
• Ravaged Land (coming soon)

©2018 C.M. Carney (P)2018 C.M. Carney

Good book, bad narrator

Good book but the narrator reads so slowly I had to listen at 1.8 times speed.

Excitement in a book

This was a fresh take on a new generation of books. I look for a great sequel to continue this fun story.

Simple, Predictable, Entertaining

TLDR Version: Entertaining, action packed, comparable to a good action movie. I would classify this as an 'inbetweener' for when you are in need of a solid, good and high testosterone level book as a break from the longer/slower books.
Definitely worth it.

General:
A lot of people criticize this book because it is simple and predictable. The main character always wins and lady luck is his biggest fan. To me, this is not a bad thing. I read/listen to a lot of books, a lot! Just as with movies and tv-shows, you don't always need a moral guide woven into artful poetry. Sometimes, you just need a good action flick to get the blood pumping. This is just that. If you are looking for an epic fantasy/litrpg masterpiece, book 1 will not offer you that. In return though, it is very entertaining, and I wasn't bored for a moment.

Narration:
Armen Taylor gives a solid performance. His rough, cool, I don't give a fump voice suits the style of the main character and the book itself. I haven't listened to any of his previous work before but I know he narrated Viridian Gate, and his performance might push me over the edge to purchase the first book.

Characters: The main character, Finn, is a real bad-ass and it seems the other reviewers agree with me on this one. I like the way he was written, he might be new, but he's not stupid, brave up to the point of careless, but he gets the job done. Personally this kind of character is one of my favorites. I prefer the slightly arrogant, cool, but ultimately successful characters. Honestly, the other characters were mostly fillers as I have seem to have forgotten about them already.

Conclusion; Ignore the ranting and people criticizing the book for not being 'real' enough or complaining about the main character being too lucky etc. etc. .. It is a book, it does what it needs to do in this case, which is provide a high level of entertainment for it's readers.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Excellent series - one of the best LitRPGs

This review is for the first four books of The Realms series, as I waited till now to read all of the books at once.

This series is excellent. Great characters and a great story, along with the most complex game mechanics of any LitRPG out there. It does move along slowly at times, but always keeps your interest.

Warning: There are some very gruesome details and horrific descriptions of pain in this series, but that’s to be expected in the genre.

Many LitRPG series start out fast then slow down as though meandering through the plot. Not this series. It continues to build in each book, and after Book 4, I’m even more interested in what is goin on in this world than when it first started.

A must read if you’re a fan of LitRPGs.

Talented writing and narration. 10/10.

A wonderful litrpg!

Both the story and narrator are wonderful and I'd recommend this to anyone who's a fan of litrpg books!

amazing

this series easily took over as my fav litrpg. it is so well done. i hope everyone else enjoys it as much as i did.

I enjoyed it, but there were some issues.

I have a few standards by which to judge a book/audible.
1) Was it worth the money/credit and time invested into it?
2) Does it make me want to read/listen to more?

For the first book of this series that is a definite yes on both. That said, I had a few issues while listening to this audible.
While the author does a good job weaving chance and luck together, there was a heaviness of “plot-luck” that was jarring to me, and after a while became predictable. I’ll go into this later to avoid spoilers early on.

Tension. When your MC has the ability to “revive” it kills a lot of tension early on. Most of the story revolves around keeping his friends alive, so what little tension there is, comes from them.

Now, that aside, the author excelled in several areas I really have to commend them for. These are perhaps the best-written action scenes I’ve encountered in my journey through litRPGs. On top of that, these are probably some of my favorite characters from this journey through multiple books as well. While “Grif” isn’t anything phenomenal, in fact, he seems very down to earth, mature, and reliable in that homegrown sort of way (think boy scout who grew up to be a soldier and life roughed him up a bit but he’s still a good guy); he is not boring. He is not annoying and overly confident, sure of himself, or arrogant like so many other ML in the litRPG genre can be. Griff felt REAL in a way that made me root for him early on. A guy jumps into a world he knows nothing about to save his sister for crying out loud. Not a very high standard, sure, but still.

WARNING SPOILERS BELOW:

When it comes to “plot-luck” the fact that all the gear the MC obtains is “created” and “placed” in his path by the Barrow King, but then later comes into play to help him defeat the Barrow King, not to mention all the minion's Griff wallops, survives, and escapes because of these “gifts” is… mind-boggling.
Literally, a chest piece he got from a chest from the Barrow King becomes a tool used against its creator, because it's infused with some sort of light magic (why?) and the Barrow King (as usual, made of darkness) is weak to it. I just had to scratch my head at the convenience of it all. How short-sighted can what was supposed to be a pretty powerful character be? Once I got used to the fact that these "gifts" always came in handy defeating the BK minion's I wasn't really that surprised they also helped in this manner. I just got used to the continued "oh, how 'lucky' he had that" :/

My issue with Tension was that I was honestly never worried that anyone would die. Like…ever. And—well I really won’t spoil it for you, but I ended the story without being surprised.

END SPOILERS:

Now these two “issues” aside, did I enjoy the read? Again yes. Did it grip me? It was entertaining, but when you lack tension, it's hard to grip anything other than curiosity and the need to cure boredom.
Definitely worth the credit if you have it. And maybe one day I’ll get around to reading more of it because the writing is certainly worth diving into again. But I also have a couple of other books saved up in my library so I’ll be reading them first.

Intriguing Adventure!

Good story and narration!

A retired spook receives a message requesting his help from his estranged sister. A digital device that she left for him transports him into another world that is being disguised as a virtual reality game, where he must find a way to overthrow a pantheon. No pressure for a non-gamer who finds himself transported into a world that functions like a game.

Armen Taylor does a great job of narrating and bringing the characters in this story to life.

I enjoyed this one, and am looking forward to starting the next book in this series.

Very good

Started out a little slow, but picked up steam pretty quickly. I enjoyed it. I’ll be getting the next one.

Surprisingly excellent!

I've had this book in my audible library for almost a year before listening and now I'm kicking myself for not doing so sooner. I can say the book has definitely earned all of its high ratings. I have already bought the second one.