Endless Fantasy Online: The Phoenix Kingdom

A LitRPG Adventure, Book 1

By: Devin Auspland

Narrated by: David Neilsen

Lucas "Luke" Patterson, an ordinary geeky college student, gets a summer job at Vortex Industries. His summer job is to test a new virtual reality game using the Vortex Capsule, a machine capable of fully immersing you into virtual reality.

His first session is life-changing, and he quickly becomes engrossed in a new fantasy world. Things are going great until a rogue hacking group attacks the servers that host the game, trapping all the players inside. Things get even worse when a dark force gains power and have sinister plans for Endless Fantasy Online.

Can Luke and his new friends survive the dark forces that are on the rise? Will he, and the other players, be able to cope with the fact that they can't return to Earth? Will Vortex Industries find the hacking group responsible and save the players?

Find answers to all of this and more in Endless Fantasy Online: The Phoenix Kingdom!

©2019 Devin Auspland (P)2019 Devin Auspland

A pretty good book

Full disclosure I was given a credit to listen the book with the expectations that I would leave a review.

Overall I did enjoy the book I have been stuck in this genre of story for the last few months and felt it made perfect sense to listen to this one seeing how I just finished awaken online. The story was pretty good and most of the characters were likable. There were a few characters that were strictly fluff and not very believable. I also felt that the review of the player stats was way too long and usually fast forward a few minutes just to get through it. Some of the challenges that the characters go through Were expected and there was not a lot of mystery on how it would turn out. And I’ve heard that hiring a good narrator is incredibly expensive but I did not like this one some of the voices were grading and not believable. With all that said when the next book comes out I will probably get it to see where the story goes

First time author does a really good job!

This is Devin Auspland’s first litrpg book. I am a new author myself, so I know that exciting yet nerve-racking feeling of how the book will be reviewed. I was fortunate enough to receive a code from the author in exchange for an honest review and I appreciate that a great deal.

EFO is a very slice of life stuck in a VRMMORPG story. You follow Luke as he goes on quests, levels, and gains new abilities. He does party up with other “travelers” and there are good dialogue and banter between them. There is a good amount of humor that I enjoyed as well. If you are looking for a story with a big plot, this isn’t the novel for you. That is fine with me. I enjoy slice of life novels. Some people don’t. Devin does a great job of giving the reader/listener the experience of playing an MMO. A lot of books will advertise MMO, but in actuality, they just feel like a person playing Skyrim or Oblivion. This book actually feels like an MMO. The novel doesn’t really break any new ground or do things in a special way. This is fine. This is the way this genre works. When reading this story you dive into Devin’s game HE created – EFO. There are a lot of litrpg elements here, notifications, leveling, skills, abilities, loot, dungeon exploration, etc. It checks most of the boxes for what a litrpg fan looks for. This would be a great book to read for a person completely new to the genre.

I have never listened to a David Nielsen book before. He only has 3 or 4 books on Audible which I found odd because he is an amazing narrator. I was surprised at how good he was. However, there is one immersion-breaking hiccup in chapter 18 or 19 where he appears to be prepping for the chapter and he repeats words over and over and makes these loud mouth noises. It is kind of like when folks do the "testing, testing, 123 testing" thing. I am not sure how audible works in comparison to the way kindle works. If I find an error in an e-book, I can fix it and re-upload the new manuscript. I am not sure if that is possible with Audible. If it is, I would strongly recommend fixing that. Other than that hiccup, Mr. Nielsen knocks this audiobook out of the park.

***AUTHOR HAS CONTACTED NARRATOR TO FIX ISSUE***

I give Endless Fantasy Online a 7.75 out of 10. If you enjoy slice of life litrpgs, I recommend this book to you. While it doesn’t break any new ground, the book is very competent and well written. Devin does well with what he sets out to do. I will definitely check out book two.

Good listen

This book is relatively a very good listen, especially the last great battle scene, which I believe makes this book worth the buy. The only major issue I have with this book is that you usually have one main character that falls into these scenarios where he or she tries to save the online world. However, that’s not necessarily the case in this book. In this story, the writer has a group of characters from the real world to help save this online world. Still, the listener doesn’t get any feelings for those characters because the writer focuses on the one character so much it is like the other characters don’t exist. Even with that said, I still believe the listener will enjoy this book.

honest review

Just a heads up I received a code to do a honest review and I plan to do just that.

first this was a unknown narrator to me who I found out very quickly had a lot of emotion and drive in what he does I loved the energy and laughter that came with him tellinf this story. I believe some of the voices could be better. (women tones or different ages of more men).

Now to the story I found it to be very inpressive it made me laugh or chuckle at a good number of times. while others made me hate a enemy for inflicting pain on certain characters. it made the world seem great and a game i would very much love to play myself.

It had good mechanics and skill progression I am very excited to see more of in the second book.

Now there some slight things that I kept thinking of that brought me out of the moment but i was swept back in soon enough overall 9.0/10

Awesome listen

Very well written and listener grasping. Love the way the MC grows and author makes you wish for more. Can’t wait for book 2!

Fun Book

I really enjoyed this one. It is a true LITRPG It's going to be a fun series I can't wait for the next one. Keep them Coming Devin.

WOW

I was looking for a really good LitRPG that I could read with my kid, and I’m so happy to have found this one. 5 stars. Highly recommended for fans of litrpg.

Don't overthink it

The narration is pretty well done and pleasant. The reasoning behind everything is a bit odd from my perspective but the overall mechanics of the game world are enough to keep interest. The other characters are what really make it shine though with their sense of humor. overall it's here for a fun time.
I received a free copy for review

Something new

Taking a bit of a new look on LitRPG. the plot was interesting and did see some hints of the manga culture. most of my Audibles have been LitRPG, of which I enjoy immensely, this seems a different approach from the usual getting into a pod and playing to prove yourself or isekaied.
In short, it's a fun and interesting listen and something you give a chance

simply awesome

can't wait for the next one! left it with just enough of a cliffhanger that you really want more.