Oathbreaker: An Epic Fantasy LitRPG

Realm Online, Book 1

By: Stuart Thaman

Narrated by: J. Scott Bennett

From the international best-selling author of Killstreak, The Goblin Wars, The Umbral Blade, and many others...

Steve's just an accountant with a serious MMO addiction.

In the game, the people of Tamernil live under the harsh rule of a vile bureaucrat, and Bokta - an outcast blood witch practicing forbidden magic - has a bold plan to save them all. She'll need to summon a powerful demon, one she's been watching through a scrying mirror for years.

There's just one hitch: the mighty demon she's been watching isn't real. He's a character in Realm of Crafted War, and the man behind the keyboard is a far cry from a savior.

Violently dragged into the world of Realm Online, Steve will have to learn how the hell he's going to survive, all while masquerading as Maxkrannar, the demon Oathbreaker he's supposed to be.

Stuart Thaman writes best-selling epic fantasy and LitRPG with plenty of adventure, lots of action, and characters you'll love. Check out more at stuartthamanbooks.com.

©2019 Stuart Thaman (P)2019 Stuart Thaman

its an ok book not really litrpg just fantasy

its ok but one thing that bugs me is how the author tries to explain the same spoken language written 2 different ways ... sorry you need every sound to speak it properly so how can you omit characters as you stated in the book? just wondering it’s kind of offensive that you would try to pass that off as something intelligent

Painful

I think this was written by an individual who is sexually delayed. The profanity took away from the reading/listening. I served 40 years in the military and thought the amount was ridiculous.
The protagonist is supposedly graduated from college/university and working. Yet the reasoning and general thought processes belong to a child.
I stopped listening to the book as it became too much of the same fixation on a woman’s body, too many expletives with no reason, and the story line was not progressing.
Unfortunately, a credit with Audible gone and unrecoverable.
Two stars because it could be a decent book if an editor cleaned it up, removed the gratuitous and ridiculous fixations on sex, and moved the story.

“Amazing”

Pathetic, repetitive, horrible, 4hrs. In and there’s no real development, plot, progression or anything resembling a story arc. The MC sorta just gets dragged along by the author because he wants to keep typing out his word vomit. Perhaps I’m just not the target audience for this author. Idk. Hoping for a refund

Unusual mix of reality and game world

The story premise was interesting, a game character summoning a person into their realm/game because they think they are the battle demon the person plays in an online game, but what the summoner gets is an overweight accountant with no combat skills at all. The story is quite slow in the beginning and really doesn’t get near to being LitRPG until well into the story. The main character is not very likable and he definitely makes some morally questionable decisions, but despite this I did find the story entertaining. I liked the humour and sarcasm the author slipped in, the “real world’ twists and I especially liked the cats. The narration in the audiobook was great, he made the story entertaining and his pace was just right. I will be interested to see how this story plays out in the next audiobook.

Oathbreaker bk1

A fun romp through a realm where life is gamelike.Our hero doesnt know how to be.His friends aren't all that friendly.Even his cats spell doom in a way.It's fun and fantasy,with real life crap tossed in. J. Scott Bennet does a fine job with narration. I was given this book by the narrator,author or publisher free for an honest review.

meh

the writing and performance are good. the main characters very douchy. It's a villain story.

Fun and entertaining!

I like LitRPG books, and this one was very entertaining! Cheeky and fun. The story flows nicely and the narration is well done. I look forward to listening to the rest of the series to see where the story goes from here.


I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

An Good LitRPG That Avoids Many LitRPG Clichés.

Oathbreaker is a LitRPG story about a serious gamer named Steve, who is summoned into an online game by Bakta, a blood witch from the game. Using her magical abilities, Bakta had, somehow, been watching Steve's adventures while he was online in his gaming persona. Through her observations, she had determined Steve was a demon she could subjugate. Her goal was to have Steve help defeat a tyrannical ruler. Bakta performed a summoning ritual that somehow sucked Steve from actual reality and landed him in the online game. Only, Steve comes through as himself and not as his super powered, highly leveled up, player persona. Because of this, Steve is just an ordinary guy trying to survive in a world filled with fantasy characters that wield great power.

Oathbreaker does suffer from its pace in my opinion. After the summoning, the story spends a little too much time doing nothing exciting. On the other hand, Oathbreaker also avoids the harem cliché even though the story quickly presents us with two beautiful, sexy female characters. Instead, author, Stuart Thaman decides to add some depth to what could have been a more simplistic story. He really does a good job of not taking the easy way out. Also, narrator, J. Scott Bennett does his usual excellent job. In all honesty, I don't particularly like Mr. Bennett's voice, but I have to admit he is such a good narrator that I eventually get past my dislike.

The bottom line. "Oathbreaker" is a good story that manages to tell its tale without some of the usual LitRPG tropes we have come to expect from the genre. Finally, this free, review copy audiobook was given to me at my request and I have voluntarily left this review.

I was really looking forward to this book.

First the good, The Narrator was great, he really did a great job & look forward to hearing more of his narrations.
The book was also written well & I believe the author did a great job with it.
I hated the main character, he was very unlikable, & it made it hard to listen because I was hoping he would just die.
That's the only bad thing I can say about it, I simply did not like the main character.

Keep your promises!

I’ve really thought about this one for a while, and debated back and forth on my thoughts with this book. There were several things that I liked, some that I didn’t, and others that really didn’t thrill me one way or the other.

The first thing I’m getting out of the way is that in spite of what you see on the cover, this is not in any way a harem book. I didn’t think that it was, but I know how people are, you see two women and your mind automatically goes into harem mode. This is not remotely the case, so if you were wondering, now you know.

Secondly, I like the whole sucked into the game via a summoning spell aspect. That was fun, and happens right away so no spoilers, but it set me up for some expectations, and I found the book slowed down right after the big entrance. I mean it slowed down a lot. I think a lot of it was the whole no class not lit stuff for a while, hell just leveling takes like 2/3rds of the book I think. That said I think there are reasons that necessitate the lack of lit elements for awhile so it’s a tough call.

Thirdly, I do like how the MC, Steve, isn’t perfect morally or physically. He’s not a gung ho hero nor is he built like Charles Atlas. He’s more like Charles Alas. So, Steve is not readily likable, although I must say that my son found the cats funny. Of course, he’s just a few bad grades from identifying as a cat lady.

One thing I thought was funny was that even though it isn’t a harem Steve spoke incessantly about how sweetly hot and sassy his ladies were. Still there was no action. I think the biggest issues were that there were times that Steve was a D-bag, and the lit elements didn’t pop up until too late in the story.

J. Scott Bennett narrates, and I have said for the longest time that I think he is one of the bestest narrators out there. He is a fave of mine. He can have real fun with the right story. He does his utmost to keep this tale going but even he couldn’t get it to pick up the pace of the story. He does individualize each character, but again, he can’t make you like a character if their actions put you off. Bennett does a great job and doesn’t let the story spiral like a lesser narrator could have.

Final Score? 7 stars, its pacing was too slow and it lacked some much needed litrpg aspects earlier in the story. Still, there is world building that does go on and will probably make the next book run a little smoother.