Sanctuary

Seeking Asylum Book 1

By: SM Olivier

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

I was once an average college student with dreams of the Olympics. A better future had been within my grasp. I was weeks away from graduating from college, and I had just received my invitation to the National Team. Sure, I was still nursing a broken heart and coming to terms with the betrayal delivered to me at the hands of people I once trusted and loved dearly. However, things were finally looking up. Or so I thought. The news began to report disturbing stories about a new virus. This virus was turning people. The infected became violent and attacking anybody and everybody. My plans for a relaxing weekend with my friends and family turned into a nightmare. We were told to evacuate to Sanctuary. On our journey to safety, I run into old friends and find myself becoming attracted to them and their friends. I realized that even in the most harrowing of times, I could find solace and affection. This may be a whole new world and life wasn’t going to return to normal anytime soon, if ever, but at least I had five men at my side to face it with. *** Sanctuary is a contemporary, post-apocalyptic reverse harem, why choose series. This book contains some triggering content that may be sensitive to some readers. ***

AI narration bad!

I wish I had known it was AI narration before I bought all the audiobooks! Any time there was a dash “-“ anywhere in the book (and there are A LOT) the AI read “minus” which totally threw me out of the story.

Excellent Story

Though people may complain it's an AI read book and there are a few mistakes the amazing story more then makes up for it. The missing 5th star is for the error in AI reading and the over abundance of children in the Apocalypse.

great story. can't stand AI

I love this series, and if read it more than once. I couldn't wait for it to be on audible. im Disappointed by the use of virtual voice. The virtual voice is pleasant enough to listen to but doesn't "understand" what its reading. For example, the dash symbol is read as "minus" and when the character's name of Avery is shortened to Ave it's read as "Avenue". There also very little emotional inflection in the voice and no changes in voice between characters.

AI Narrator is horrible

Loved the story but the AI narrator was horrible. AI keep repeating the word minus throughout the story randomly. All characters had the same voice, there were no the ne changes like with real people. would have been so much better with real people narrating

Please stop with AI

This is one of my favorite series. The story is really good, plot, pacing etc is AWESOME but then you hear the AI virtual voice and it sounds like those weird videos from FB. The intonation is wrong, the voices all sound the same, the sentences are just over weirdly AND I don’t even know how but there are so many mispronounced words. The FMC is name Avery and is called Ave… sometimes the AI calls her Avenue. An infant is named Isa but is called Eye-sa, Ay-sa and another variation that slips my brain at the moment. Overall the AI doesn’t do a bad enough job to make me stop listening but I’m not going to lie, there were a few times I wanted to bang my head on a wall

Favorite series

My only complaint is I wish it was an actual voice actor and not virtual. I’ve reread this series over 5 times and can’t wait for bk 5!

AI needs a lot of tweaking

This just the tip of this iceberg. In some ways, it’s fairly predictable, but overall fast moving plot with a lot of pieces, complex backstory. There’s a multitude of characters, at times it’s hard to keep track of them all. RH is loosely set but not truly developed.
AI seems to be an unavoidable experiment but it can be very distracting, this author has a style consisting of - / ( ) which confuses AI, tone and annunciations establish a rhythm not found in AI. On the flip side it enables a person access to something they wouldn’t otherwise have

Great book

The storyline was great and realistic. My only issue was the narration. For being narrated by AI it wasn't bad. But the audiobook would be so much better with an actual narrator. All the people talking in the same voice and the occasional mistake were irritating but handleable.

Didn’t mind the AI Voice

Honestly the AI voice isn’t that bad, and I get the author not having the funds to hire voice actors (they’re super expensive). As stated in other reviews there’s a problem with dashes, but I also have the Kindle version and the author uses the wrong dash in the wrong way so it’s not the program’s fault for reading it as “minus” since it is a minus.

Full disclosure, I didn’t pay for this audio since it’s included in my membership but I would expect it to be cheap since the narration—while surprisingly good for an AI—is still experimental and isn’t quite there yet.

So, I recommend it to anyone that doesn’t need an emotional performance. The AI depends on the quality of the script and the book needs heavy editing—particularly in punctuation—and it messes with the cadence, so keep that in mind.

AI production

AI takes work from artists. An author who knowingly choose AI to create her audiobooks is a red flag.