Phylomancer: The Complete Series

A LitRPG Progression Fantasy Adventure Series

By: Jack Bryce

Narrated by: Erin Bateman

Oram's journey from average Joe to hero begins when he's transported into his favorite game. Lucky for him, he still has access to his early backer class, the Phylomancer, a mage class that learns spells and abilities by binding others to him.

To become a master of the fantasy world of Aerda, Oram will need to embrace his role as a Phylomancer. Along the way, he will forge powerful bonds with his companions, a beautiful elven ranger, a fierce priestess of the icy North, and a deadly and seductive demon assassin.

This box set contains the complete Aerda Online series, consisting of books one through three (Phylomancer, Demon Tamer, and Clanfather).

Note: This LitRPG fantasy adventure contains unconventional relationships. Also contains lots of crunchy stats and system messages.

©2023 Jack Bryce (P)2023 Royal Guard Publishing LLC

A fun little adventure.

I don’t usually like trilogies but I like the storyline and the mechanics of the Phylomancer. And Erin Bateman has a wide range of character voices to enjoy. Especially her ability to create some fun Eastern Europe accents.
I don’t have a lot to say for this one. Kind of similar with several other harem fantasy stories since it is a short one. It seems to take four or more books to really become something more unique from what I have seen.

The only slight issue I have is the DnD dive checks mechanic. It’s interesting and a throwback but I’m not a fan of the whole luck of the roll or a matter of chance. Training, skill, will and endurance doesn’t allow for such an arbitrary aspect to hold such power in the way it is displayed in the story. But I can mostly ignore it since it isn’t over done too much.
However, I can see myself coming back to relisten to this series later on for the simple fun of it.

I like to thank Royal Guard for the code for this boxset and all I had to do was give an honest review.

The story

I liked the level progression, and how he was not op. I would like to hear or read about the world and the characters.

pretty good

the story itself was great, even though there were a few parts that kind of just dragged seemingly for the sake of filling a chapter, but over all, I loved it. Also... Finally a freaking epilogue from one of these that takes place after some real time has passed instead of 30 seconds after the chapter ended. I appreciate that it shows a least a snippet of how life is after a significant amount of time has passed. yeah, it's nit picky. but to me it matters

Not my jam

It was an OK book. It’s not really my jam. So the story starts out as the main character invest in a kick starter for a game and is waiting to play it. So when it starts he gets sucked into the game world. When he gets there he gets an exclusive class because he was an early investor into the project. He’s basically a maids class that has to bond sexually with other creatures in the world to get spells. And obviously the creatures are beautiful women. That throw themselves at him.
This is an erotic book. I would’ve wish for more scenes but it wasn’t too bad. My only issue is this is a complete series but each book is quite short so there’s not a lot of room to get to know the girls before he has sex with them. It’s more of he walks into a room him and his girl lock eyes and all of a sudden they want to be together forever. It just seems weird to me
So there are gods in this book and each God has a shard. One of the dark guy is trying to collect the shards and destroy the world basically. My issue is the main character meets other humans from his world that got sucked into the game and none of them really care. They all just want to sit back and relax and not die. If this really happened I feel like there should be a horde of players trying to stop this God not just the main character. As well as the main character is not overpowered he’s usually under leveled for every fight he’s in and somehow survives. Don’t get me wrong he does die once in the very beginning of the book. And when you die there are consequences. Every time you die you lose one stat each attribute so when your attributes go down to zero you die permanently.
It just is unbelievable to me. I played DND and you can get some pretty lucky rolls but the damage output still depends on the spell. And the dude throws a crap ton of spells and everybody almost dies every time. I just don’t feel any urgency to the fights like oh my God he might die this time.
The book was kind of a slog to get through. I listen to it when I was at work most the time and if you like these kinds of books you might really fall in love with it but for me it wasn’t as good as I was hoping it would be.

Pretty Good

Had some moments I groaned or rolled my eyes but generally pretty good, could have been shortened with the stats but that's it.

A really fun take on established themes!

I was not familiar with this author before I picked up this box set, but I'm glad that I did! The world that the books take place in is based much more on the traditional dice rolling and skill check style RPG than most books in this genre are. I found this very refreshing and really enjoyed that no matter how powerful the MC becomes he can still roll badly and fail to accomplish an attack, etc. I also enjoyed the rather unique character class that the MC chooses and it's a shame that this series is complete. I would like to see classes like this explored more often by authors.

Erin Bateman did her usually fantastic job of bringing the books characters to life. I have only recently started listening to books she narrates so this is a real treat. Her narrations always keep me interested and I feels like she had a lot of fun with this unusually take on an RPG / Isekai mashup!

LIT RPG with a dab of degeneracy

Phylomancer is an interesting twist on the trapped in a video game trope. Our Main character thinks he's playing a game but realizes he's been trapped and has to figure a way out. Along the way, however, our Main character meets some ladies that end up changing his mind about leaving. One of my favorite things about this book is the Main character's abilities, his class revolves around borrowing abilities from others thus creating a unique hodgepodge on top of his built-in skills. Erin Baitman does an excellent job of bringing each character to life and telling an excellent story as well.

One amazing story all in one

This story just grabbed me right from the beginning and never let go until the very end and I just enjoyed the characters and the game realism it’s worth listening over and over again

The narrator was awesome

Erin has now become one of my preferred narrators. Having listened to more than a thousand audio titles, she has become one of my top ten favorite narrators to listen to.
As to the story, while this is another of the game become life story types, there is some good ideas and an interesting take or three. The way the characters progressed and behaved was believable.
If you're looking for a fun adventure story, this would be a good option in my opinion.

Book1 good, book2 passable, book3 very poor

in book three characters who overthink even small things (in earlier books) just take obtuse info from unreable source as un questionable fact, then base major decisions on it. Bad logic, bad reasoning that no real person (sane) would do.

it's just bad writing, not backing things up for the reader