Dark age

by Kirk Warrington

DarkAge is a mature, fantasy fiction, podcast novel where Sword and Sorcery meets Medieval Fantasy.

A group of friends playing a fantasy role-playing game, DarkAge, become trapped inside the game as their characters. Many of their past gaming decisions will come back to haunt them. They must battle wizards, demons, knights, giants, and the undead but find their most deadly foe is each other. Will our heroes find their way back home? Will they want to go back home?

Come hangout at The Busted Skull Tavern, where the ale is cold and the wenches are hot.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction

35 pages, Podcast/podiobooks

First published October 8, 2008

Reviews

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book only gets three stars, but if I had it to do again I would still read this book. I liked the plot most of the time and didn't feel like I was reading a re-write of a plot I'd read a million times before. However, there are definitely things that could have/should have been done differently.

The Beginning - I had a hard time getting into this book right away because I've never played a role playing game so I couldn't picture exactly what was going on.

The Middle - it had some good action and adventure but I feel like there was a bit too much middle school age boy type writing going on. It needed less focus on the ladies that were apparently just roaming around everywhere waiting for a guy to wander up and proposition them. And that was apparently almost every single woman in the entire book?

The End - I'm not sure what Warrington had in mind here. Did he think this ending was a wrap up of the story? Did he want to leave it open for more books later on? The ending just wasn't really satisfying enough. If he wanted to leave it open ended enough for future books I feel like there could have been a better way to do; Either I should have wanted to read the next book in order to continue the adventure, or at least felt like the story I had just read had come to a definite conclusion.

Editing - The podcast/podiobook apparently came out first and I think a lack of editing probably explains some of the weird transitions I found. There were some places where certain things that had just happened were unnecessarily reexplained. This hindered the enjoyment of the book for me at times because the strangeness of it would interrupt my train of thought.

[Sift Book Reviews]

To put it simply, I didn’t enjoy the book however I would read anything else the author wrote in a heartbeat. The characters were unique, the dialogue was clever, and overall it was well written but I just couldn’t become engrossed in the original gaming premise (and as such was left dissatisfied with the ending).

To see the entire review: http://siftbookreviews.blogspot.com/2...

Review by: Erica of Sift Book Reviews
Sift Book Reviews received a free copy for review from the author. This has, in no way, affected the reviewer's opinion.

[David Watson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, lots of action and all the characters we're a lot of fun. I liked the idea of a Role playing game becoming real and the watching the characters turn into the characters they created for the game.

I did have some unanswered questions about this book but its such a fun read that I would still recommend it and want to read the sequel if there ever is one.

[Sonia · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was ok, but would have benefited from some editing. There were a number of places where the paragraph suddenly didn't make sense. I think it would also have worked better if the characters had either been referred to by their real world or DarkAge names, rather than just randomly cycling between them. I also found the ending disappointing, with no real outcome.

[Kate (Looking Glass Reads) · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I normally love books in this genre, this one was a DNF. There were a lot of characters that needed to be introduced. Adding in their role playing persona's made things even more confusing. In the end I simply couldn't get into this book and wound up putting it down. It's still on my kindle, though, and maybe one day I'll get back to it.

[Paul Steele · Rating 2 out of 5]

Almost didn't get to the better parts. Even then I wouldn't call it great. Very slow to get started and quite juvenile throughout. Disappointing because the idea had such possibility. I really wanted to like this oone but it just didn't happen.

[James Batchelor · Rating 1 out of 5]

An interesting (if unoriginal) idea let down by unfulfilled promises, a chaotically meandering plot and unnecessarily immature characters.