Servant of Steel

Chaos Awakens, Book 1

By: Heath Pfaff

Narrated by: Monkey Wraith

Having two of his fingers cut off at an early age hadn't done much to make Xandrith an agreeable fellow. Besides marking him as a pariah and having him shunned by even his own family, it had also hurt. A lot. Being stripped of a few of his fingers and cast out of the Order of Mages had left him bitter and angry, but if there was any consolation to be had it was that he was doing rather well in his new line of work. While perforating people for money might not have been the most noble of callings, it was quite lucrative. Well, it had been quite lucrative.

In a conspiracy of fate seemingly beyond his control, Xan soon finds himself facing a dilemma of conscience, and that isn't something he's familiar with. One dilemma leads to another, and before long the mage-turned-assassin finds himself performing more and more honorable deeds. Worse yet, without even attempting to do so he manages to acquire friends and to develop a sense of compassion.

As Xan struggles with his burgeoning humanity, a terrible darkness begins to wake in the world. The Order of Mages, once an overbearing power of control, seems to be losing its grip as a terrifying doom of their own creation rises in the north. As if that wasn't enough, the horror brought upon the world by the folly of the mages may only be the precursor to something far more sinister.

©2013 Heath Pfaff (P)2014 Heath Pfaff

Full of potential, but a bit underdeveloped.

The story had potential, but the author seemed to quit on the details and depth that really put the hooks in the audience. The characters were too thin to really care about. I believe there was more to them, but it felt like it was cut for brevity and left us with stereotypes.

Monkey Wraith narration was not especially poor, but it was flat and felt emotionless. Even the few cuss words were pasted in and did not have any real steel behind them.

All of that said, there were some genuinely interesting moments in the story and I will be reading more from Heath Pfaff to see what develops.

Servant of Steel: Chaos Awakens was a good story

What made the experience of listening to Servant of Steel the most enjoyable?

although nothing stands out as the most enjoyable ...an honest review of this book would be that it was a good book that very much needed a different narrator.

Who was your favorite character and why?

no favorite

How could the performance have been better?

the truth is I don't know how it could have been better . I just know that the voice did not match the story . but this is just my opinion .. everybody has one and they all stink.

it only sometimes distracted me from the story

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

i did not mind turning it off and coming back to it later .. but that don't mean i did not enjoy the story

Any additional comments?

i will probably get the next book in the series.

Fun book to read

Would you consider the audio edition of Servant of Steel to be better than the print version?

I enjoy reading actual print books but the convenience of audio books in my daily commute is just incredible. This was well read and easy to just relax and listen to. Without overly drawn out and complicated storylines like some authors do.

What did you like best about this story?

The magic system. I read a lot of these types of books and enjoy seeing how the authors handle magic. Present and useful without being over powerful nor abused. I like the balance in the world and the evil weapons are a nice touch. About to start book 2 now and looking forward to it.

Which scene was your favorite?

The fight scenes with the mechana in the library

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The encounter with his old friend early on the book.

Any additional comments?

The story flows very well making it easy to listen to and follow in audio format. Some books get overly wordy and complicated. The storyline moves along logically no crazy jumps, and the writing keeps a nice pace; slowing down a little when you need a little note detail and picking up for the exciting parts, but always flowing at a great pace to keep you interested without slamming you from one scene to the next. Again best description for me is a very enjoyable listen. I look forward to hearing the rest of the series.

A great idea with weak delivery

Pfaff writes a good magical world, full of intrigue and a clever magic system. The story itself here is great. I really liked the twists in it. I liked the magic system with its colour levels. I liked the depth of the world, with a deep history hinted at. The delivery of it was a bit lacking though.

Occasional clunky language was annoying. One that stuck in my mind was a sentence early on that read “It [his eye] was as artificial as the hand on the same side of his body”. Now that is fine, except that we have actually been told at this stage that his hand was artificial. Meaning that as far as we know both his hand and eye could be normal. The simile would still be correct, just really clunky. This was one example of many that just didn’t flow right or took me out of the story.

I enjoyed the characters, mostly. There are times when I didn’t find their actions believable; things such as a very secretive assassin pours out his life story to someone he just met and barely knows. Again, the back story to the character was great and interesting, but the way in which it was delivered was problematic. There are many instances of ‘awkward exposition’ in the book, like Pfaff has great ideas but couldn’t work out a more natural was for those ideas/history/world building to be expressed. Another example would be the constant moving around the world. Pfaff has a fully realised world, but then has to show it to us. He can’t just hint at it, or show us one place in detail but has to have the characters move constantly to show us broad brush strokes of the world. We get a little bit of everywhere rather than in depth in a few places. And I’m not sure that the constant travelling really serves the story. I think most of the story could have been done with less locations. The way it ended suggests the next book shall be more travelling.

Overall, I think the author has great potential, considering the world and characters he has created. Because of that I can (mostly) get past the occasional annoyance of the writing.

The narrator, Monkey Wraith, caused me more issues with the book. I think possibly if it had been a different narrator I wouldn’t have noticed the issues above as much. The narration is generally fairly bland, with little distinction for characters. This is especially problematic when one character talks physically into another’s head and its actually hard to tell which character it is. Is it the person thinking, or the psychic voice? One exception to this flat narration was at one point a chapter starts with a “highbrow” sort of sound when talking about Ylin Reach. It was a strange departure from the previous chapter’s narration, so I expected it was for a reason – change of character/scene type thing – but no, it was continuing with the same characters on their journey. Fairly quickly the ‘highbrow’ sounds faded back to the normal narration. Just seemed strange. In the end the narration was more of a hindrance than a help in getting into the book.

There were small issues with the sound production too. At least twice there is the start of a sentence, then a pause and then the sentence restarts. Obviously the narrator stopped and restarted and it wasn’t picked up in post productions.

Good story - terrible narration!

Monotone, monotone, monotone...
Every character has the same voice? C'mon Monkey Wraith! I read the book years ago and wanted to listen for a refresher, this guy ruined the story.