Underdog

Hackers of Artem, Part I

By: Lars Machmüller

Narrated by: Pavi Proczko, Rebecca Woods

Start from behind? Cheat the system!

Out of credits, with trash-tier mods and no hope, Bowdoin Katamari resides at the bottom of the pile in the city of Artem. A place where megacorporations, merc guilds, and inner-city pricks live like royalty while the rest suffer.

In spite of his poor prospects, this self-taught hacker does have a few things left. A seething hatred for the upper castes, a mind bursting with plots, and a like-minded crew determined to get ahead.

Down with the corpos—let the towers burn!

©2023 Lars Machmüller (P)2023 Podium Audio

Solid Story

As far as Cyberpunk and Science Fantasy goes, this book fits neatly into the genre. The author makes a point to emphasize certain statistics of the main characters which are arbitrary, never come up, and ultimately make no difference and the act structure is a bit odd.

That said, the characters are all fantastic and I found this an enjoyable listen. The world building is solid and I found myself easily sucked in.


The performance is top tier. I have usually enjoy Podium productions but some of their productions come out better than others. This is one of the truly good ones. Great Work.

a different fun chapter to the Artemis universe

Lars has clearly shown his strength in balancing out an awesome cast of characters. this story was fun, engaging and full of adventure. A different view point to the Artem universe and is certainly worth checking out.

This artem sieries is really cool.

Its been a while since i had a craving for some decent sci-fi with progression and litrpg. Modded up street kids going corpo honestly im gonna have to check all these artem sieries books out. Its just crazy fenominal how good a multi author sieries like this one is. Im kindda supprised these not more people in on this. This series is great.

A great story from a hacker’s perspective

I enjoyed the team aspect and the way the world was approached. Artem is a wonderful and brutal city. The narration is also top notch.

good book

good book. . . good narrator. . . will get the next book in the series.

Enjoyed it enough to buy part 2

Enjoyed the world building and the characters. Pretty standard cyberpunk stuff, but that is what I came for. As I said in the title I want to hear more, so bought part 2. That is a big endorsement in my opinion.

Small empire grows within Artem

A small group of friends pull together their meager resources to start building themselves into a force to be reckoned with. After avoiding being permanently put under the thumb of local gangsters, they're eventually recruited into an independent intelligence organization.

This is a long, but enjoyable story that lies between the steampunk sci-fi and LitRPG genres. Well-narrated by both R. Woods and P. Proczko.

Cyberpunk!!!

This new world is amazing. I've bought the books in the series! I can't believe more people aren't talking about it!!

Paint by number cyberpunk

This reads like someone decided to write a book based on their roleplaying group's narrative. It seems like it would be a pretty fun roleplay group too, but the fact that it seems artificial made it extremely predictable for me. Additionally, the progression was slim and spread over the group - which made it feel thinner so it fails to check the boxes for the genre it's marketed towards while still making us listen to menu narration.

Not Terrible.

I’ll admit I found myself zoning out a few times. The story is good, but it’s really hard to understand where it’s going. There was basically three story arcs in one book, but nothing major happens regarding the overall story of “Street Gang versus the Corporations” plot as advertised. I’m interested enough to see where the author will take this; however, only enough to dip one toe in. We’ll see when Part II comes out. Pavi and Rebecca did great as always.