Soulblade

Sybil, Book 2

By: Azrie

Narrated by: Tina Wolstencroft

The Grand Checkpoint has fallen.

Having just gained her freedom and started her journey, Sybil faces the looming threat of Soulblade; both an infamous criminal organization and an ancient relic. Meanwhile, Armag Hollow, the land she resides in, is in peril.

With the Grand Checkpoint gone, the Beasts of the Dark Hollow threaten to infest the land, all while old machinations come to life and insanity pervades the land. Plans of old are set in motion to achieve upheaval; all to kill the Mayor, the sickness that plagues the land once in for all.

And once that is done, a new era for Armag Hollow will soon follow. Will Sybil be able to rise above the tides of fate, or will she drown within them?

©2023 Azrie (P)2024 Tantor

Good but forced romance

So while the story and MC are still just as great and watching the MC grow and get to experience more is awesome.

Sadly though the series is falling into the trap of replacing quality story and progression with shoe horned in distracting romance.

Got this lost puppy obsessive character constantly trying to hold the MCs hand and drag her along. They are just the worst.

There is plenty of quality story to explore, dont ruin it by making a progression story turn 40% into romance talking about exploring her feeling and doing everything to worry about the love interest.

MC was much better as an asexual uncaring for other people murder machine with daddy issues.

Suprisingly enjoyable and cute

It is overall a solid piece of entertainment. Not everything works, but Sara and Sybil relationship was suprisingly cute and I was rooting for them all the way. Fun action and world building that makes me excited to see more.

decent book

the plot was solid enough. no major plot holes. while it may not go on my trophies shelf of stories to relisten to over and over, it was a decent listen non the less. solid 3/5 for me. lots of morally grey characters and none that are truly white knights. narrator will be on my watch list for future tales.

the Journey

I love all of it, Sybil and Sarah are great friends and I love how they have a connection

Not good

Characters constantly 180 their motivations and personality. The world makes very little sense. The skill and magic system is random and uninteresting.

The narrator comes across as very winy. Sounds like she is pouting about everything. A lot of takes have dry smacking lips sound. Very hard to get through the lack of consistent characters, fractured plot and poor world building.

Better than last book but…

Hated the narrator in the first book. Same person here but I think she did much better in this book. Still not perfect and perhaps I’ve just gotten used to her but either way I wasn’t listening with a frown the entire time like the first one.

The story is also much more interesting now that she’s not stuck in a cave for 20 hours. Unfortunately it looks like this series fell into the annoying trope of a forced romance that was completely unnecessary and took away from any interesting developments. I don’t know why every litRPG author does the exact same formulaic romance but it turns me off a series every time. I knew as soon as the character was introduced it was going to happen. Please authors everywhere stop. At least give it a couple books to be less obvious. That’s my rant over. Aside from that there is a lot more story here than the last book which was basically just a combat log so great job there. The world is more fleshed out and interesting and the RPG character stuff isn’t overly complex like in a lot of other series which I appreciate. I’m not sure if it’s the author or the narrator but please use contractions more. It sounds robotic and strange without any. It may sound like a small complaint but you’ll know what I mean if you listen to this.

Basically if you like this genre you’ll like this book but it’s not anything amazingly distinct. The series has potential and after not liking the first book that much I think it has come a long way as far as story goes.

I’m just a shmuck who doesn’t know anything though

Story’s decent narrator not so much.

The narrator couldn’t narrate their way out the wet paper bag. If she had a partner to manage the male roles as you see with some series the problem wouldn’t be nearly so pronounced but unfortunately it’s a problem.

Also I don’t think the author knows what “without hesitation” means as she(?) describes a character hesitate then they says they acted without it. In addition to the general over use of the phrase.

I’ll be reading the reviews of the next book carefully before I buy it unless I can find it for an insane discount.