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Adonis Rebirth #1
The Monster Spawn
Nathan Attis wakes up with no idea where he is, how he got there, or why his memories of the last few days are gone. He’s more than a little perturbed to discover that he is dead, but it’s not the end of the world.
Due to him being in the army, he gets a 2nd chance at existence in a fantasy VR game called Adonis Rebirth. There, Nathan will get to live another life, one filled with heroic quests and epic adventures. A land packed with legend and glory, where anyone can be a hero.
But there’s a problem with his transition into the game. His consciousness isn’t loaded into a player character, but instead is transplanted into a beast who lives in the bowels of a mountain. Even worse, he finds out he is the end monster in a new limited-edition quest, where the 1st to complete it wins a unique prize.
Soon, hero players are going to come and kill him. He needs to find a way to survive the hero onslaught, all the while trying to discover how to reverse what happened to him. He needs allies, but it’s hard to make them when you look like Nosferatu's ugly brother. Nathan will have to master his skills and learn how to play as the monster - his 2nd life depends on it.
Due to him being in the army, he gets a 2nd chance at existence in a fantasy VR game called Adonis Rebirth. There, Nathan will get to live another life, one filled with heroic quests and epic adventures. A land packed with legend and glory, where anyone can be a hero.
But there’s a problem with his transition into the game. His consciousness isn’t loaded into a player character, but instead is transplanted into a beast who lives in the bowels of a mountain. Even worse, he finds out he is the end monster in a new limited-edition quest, where the 1st to complete it wins a unique prize.
Soon, hero players are going to come and kill him. He needs to find a way to survive the hero onslaught, all the while trying to discover how to reverse what happened to him. He needs allies, but it’s hard to make them when you look like Nosferatu's ugly brother. Nathan will have to master his skills and learn how to play as the monster - his 2nd life depends on it.
- GenresFantasy
245 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 14, 2017
118 people are currently reading
52 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
July 14, 2018
Oh, so disappointed.
It was not horrible nor unbearable and I mulled over for the longest time which way of 2.5* this should go. Usually, I round the rating up, for various reasons. This time I couldn't.
I checked myself against the rating hints of Goodreads and Audible. They state the following:
In all fairness, I cannot say that I liked the book nor that it was a pretty good one.
That settled it. But why the "It was OK" rating?
Both the story and the narration flopped.
Yeah, what was I thinking? No 3* here.
Everything is so convenient. Logical jumps are all over the place and correct conclusions were omnipresent. Press A to win.
There was never a doubt, or even a risk, of the wrong choice. Not even for a player who's sucked into this fantasy world for the first time in his life. Also, he's not really a player but got tricked into spawning as a monster. And somehow everything came naturally. "I must dig through these caves to find gems to upgrade my monster skills". What gems? What skills?
For most of the book the main character was level 2 and not only he almost unlocked all of the available powers but he also managed to upgrade them multiple times. It was like witnessing the creation of an alpha version for a bad B-movie script.
Inconsistency bothered me much as well. It was present everywhere. A good example would be the monster's energy.
When it got low, it would be an alarming concern. But after a good night's sleep, it was restored. Great, now we know that it should last roughly 24 hours. Right?
Wrong!
1. Energy is full.
2. Let's walk to these people and talk to them.
3. Oh, it's a dramatic talk! Heavy words get thrown around.
4. Time for a retreat! But don't run too fast so we're not drained as our energy is suddenly at 75%!
So, so, soooooo annoying! Little things like this were grossly overlooked all the time. What's the point of even knowing that the energy was exactly 20 out of 120 yesterday? Yesterday, after a good effort, it dropped to 10 and it was time to rest.
It felt like learning how the game mechanics work. Expecting how much can be accomplished in a certain period of time. Perhaps even estimating things and trying to think ahead.
Well, screw you and your expectations. The energy was 120/120. After a brief conversation, it is now 90/120 and it's time to panic. Let's advance our plot this way and create artificial circumstances to instill a sense of urgency.
If it was so important for the character to not have full energy, why not just "bump in the dark" and make him wake before he's fully rested?
Pissed. Me. Off.
Story consistency was also horrible. As if just knowing that the upgrade of his claws increased his damage from 39 to 69 wasn't enough. It was never used in any calculation/formula. Ever. Same with health points, mana, casting time. No, it was just arbitrarily thrown in there as, well, you have to have those things in RPGs, right?
Back to the story. Let me give you an example of a horrible transgression.
You figure out you spawned as a monster and that groups of players got a quest to horribly murder you. It's inevitable - they are coming. Of course, this knowledge was obtained in the most convenient way possible, but let's put it aside. Do you keep wasting your time and doing almost nothing useful to prepare yourself? Of course you do.
Suddenly, shock and horror, the raiding party you've been expecting all this time is right at your door! "OMG! Let's start mining for orbs so we can get upgrades!" Wait, what?!
Sure, let's waste hours doing the most illogical thing imaginable. Perhaps dancing to please the Gods would make more sense.
Anyway, the mining expedition is finally done and the upgrade orbs are available. Apparently, we mined too many of them. Great! Let's see what we can do to increase the defense level of our dungeon. I know! Fake walls! Yes, let's buy these upgrades and then run around distributing fake walls throughout the dungeon!
Oh, almost forgot! There was an unknown ancient entity in one of the rooms who could possibly give me a good buff, boost or even a skill. Let me go talk to him and solve his puzzles while there are angry raiders in my dungeon!
Finally, we are ready. "Adventurers! Go right in, we are ready for you now! So sorry to have kept you at the dungeon entrance for 6 hours! Come right in!" Gods damn it.
Do you want to know what happens next? The very, very next?
"They passed all our fake walls end are preparing to storm the central room!
Fuck my life. I'm a hero for making it to the end of the book.
Fights, for which the main character has been preparing for hours, are usually over in 3 slashes. Also, they don't make much sense.
*sigh*
None of this was even remotely helped by the horribly flat interpretation. The narrator used no pauses, or used them at the wrong time, no emotion, no inflection. Zero. It was like hearing someone reading a phonebook. A bad phonebook at that.
Can phonebooks even be bad? This one was.
Remember that "3* or 2*?" dilemma at the start? So crazy right now, huh?
Not a one star though. Davis wrote this one book, and Loving narrated 4 in total. I think they deserve a benefit of the doubt that things will get better in future.
The Monster Spawn (Adonis Rebirth #1)
by Deckhard Davis, David Loving (Narrator)
It was not horrible nor unbearable and I mulled over for the longest time which way of 2.5* this should go. Usually, I round the rating up, for various reasons. This time I couldn't.
I checked myself against the rating hints of Goodreads and Audible. They state the following:
3* - Liked it / Pretty good
2* - It was OK / It's okay
In all fairness, I cannot say that I liked the book nor that it was a pretty good one.
That settled it. But why the "It was OK" rating?
Both the story and the narration flopped.
Yeah, what was I thinking? No 3* here.
Everything is so convenient. Logical jumps are all over the place and correct conclusions were omnipresent. Press A to win.
There was never a doubt, or even a risk, of the wrong choice. Not even for a player who's sucked into this fantasy world for the first time in his life. Also, he's not really a player but got tricked into spawning as a monster. And somehow everything came naturally. "I must dig through these caves to find gems to upgrade my monster skills". What gems? What skills?
For most of the book the main character was level 2 and not only he almost unlocked all of the available powers but he also managed to upgrade them multiple times. It was like witnessing the creation of an alpha version for a bad B-movie script.
Inconsistency bothered me much as well. It was present everywhere. A good example would be the monster's energy.
When it got low, it would be an alarming concern. But after a good night's sleep, it was restored. Great, now we know that it should last roughly 24 hours. Right?
Wrong!
1. Energy is full.
2. Let's walk to these people and talk to them.
3. Oh, it's a dramatic talk! Heavy words get thrown around.
4. Time for a retreat! But don't run too fast so we're not drained as our energy is suddenly at 75%!
So, so, soooooo annoying! Little things like this were grossly overlooked all the time. What's the point of even knowing that the energy was exactly 20 out of 120 yesterday? Yesterday, after a good effort, it dropped to 10 and it was time to rest.
It felt like learning how the game mechanics work. Expecting how much can be accomplished in a certain period of time. Perhaps even estimating things and trying to think ahead.
Well, screw you and your expectations. The energy was 120/120. After a brief conversation, it is now 90/120 and it's time to panic. Let's advance our plot this way and create artificial circumstances to instill a sense of urgency.
If it was so important for the character to not have full energy, why not just "bump in the dark" and make him wake before he's fully rested?
Pissed. Me. Off.
Story consistency was also horrible. As if just knowing that the upgrade of his claws increased his damage from 39 to 69 wasn't enough. It was never used in any calculation/formula. Ever. Same with health points, mana, casting time. No, it was just arbitrarily thrown in there as, well, you have to have those things in RPGs, right?
Back to the story. Let me give you an example of a horrible transgression.
You figure out you spawned as a monster and that groups of players got a quest to horribly murder you. It's inevitable - they are coming. Of course, this knowledge was obtained in the most convenient way possible, but let's put it aside. Do you keep wasting your time and doing almost nothing useful to prepare yourself? Of course you do.
Suddenly, shock and horror, the raiding party you've been expecting all this time is right at your door! "OMG! Let's start mining for orbs so we can get upgrades!" Wait, what?!
Sure, let's waste hours doing the most illogical thing imaginable. Perhaps dancing to please the Gods would make more sense.
Anyway, the mining expedition is finally done and the upgrade orbs are available. Apparently, we mined too many of them. Great! Let's see what we can do to increase the defense level of our dungeon. I know! Fake walls! Yes, let's buy these upgrades and then run around distributing fake walls throughout the dungeon!
Oh, almost forgot! There was an unknown ancient entity in one of the rooms who could possibly give me a good buff, boost or even a skill. Let me go talk to him and solve his puzzles while there are angry raiders in my dungeon!
Finally, we are ready. "Adventurers! Go right in, we are ready for you now! So sorry to have kept you at the dungeon entrance for 6 hours! Come right in!" Gods damn it.
Do you want to know what happens next? The very, very next?
"They passed all our fake walls end are preparing to storm the central room!
Fuck my life. I'm a hero for making it to the end of the book.
Fights, for which the main character has been preparing for hours, are usually over in 3 slashes. Also, they don't make much sense.
*sigh*
None of this was even remotely helped by the horribly flat interpretation. The narrator used no pauses, or used them at the wrong time, no emotion, no inflection. Zero. It was like hearing someone reading a phonebook. A bad phonebook at that.
Can phonebooks even be bad? This one was.
Remember that "3* or 2*?" dilemma at the start? So crazy right now, huh?
Not a one star though. Davis wrote this one book, and Loving narrated 4 in total. I think they deserve a benefit of the doubt that things will get better in future.
The Monster Spawn (Adonis Rebirth #1)
by Deckhard Davis, David Loving (Narrator)
Verdict Things and words. Put together.
Runtime 04:40
Overall
Performance
Story
May 23, 2018
I listened to this as an audiobook and it feels cruel to say this, but the narrator was horrible and made the MC sound so... stupid? Arrogant? It didn't feel like a professional narrator at least. If this book wasn't so short I never would have managed to finish it. I think the story was OK or maybe good, but it is so hard to separate the story from the performance. The concept was good, but could have used being fleshed out.
June 28, 2017
Could have been a great book. Very graphic book.
The premise of the book is original and interesting. The writing of the book is well done and well edited.
The book is very graphic and has the hero give into his monstrous nature. It then tries to justify his actions as okay. The main character eats part of another character. He also mutalates bodies and performs blood sacrifices. These actions make the main character anything but a hero. So it earned a base rating of 1star.
It earned another star by being clean and NOT sexually exspicet.
It could have earned another star by not including any swearing. It does not include a lot of cursing, but even a little bit is too much.
The book earned 2 stars.
The premise of the book is original and interesting. The writing of the book is well done and well edited.
The book is very graphic and has the hero give into his monstrous nature. It then tries to justify his actions as okay. The main character eats part of another character. He also mutalates bodies and performs blood sacrifices. These actions make the main character anything but a hero. So it earned a base rating of 1star.
It earned another star by being clean and NOT sexually exspicet.
It could have earned another star by not including any swearing. It does not include a lot of cursing, but even a little bit is too much.
The book earned 2 stars.
March 22, 2018
The story was alright. It just seemed to me that the MC was a bit too dense at times and at others waaaaay too smart. You could see what was going to happen like 10 miles away with a blindfold facing backwards. The story is a tried and true story. Guy goes into game and things go haywire from the jump. Apparently he was in the military and died, but due to what he did, he ended up being able to get a second life in game. There is a MASSSIVE plot hole in this story hence the 3 stars. I'm not going to ruin it if you want to read this, but when you get to it, you're going to be like, WTF. Otherwise, it was a decent story. It mostly sets everything up for a book 2. Like I said, not bad, but not awesome either.
June 18, 2017
Neat concept, poor execution
The book is short and it's vocab is lacking; seriously, the main character "stumbles" so many times that I don't know why he bothers getting out of his flesh filled bed in the morning. Aside from the authors lack of a thesaurus, character interactions aren't believable; the main character, a soldier, refuses to kill digital rats because it's "wrong," the fight scenes are unrealisticly slow, the bad guys don't kill the good ones when they have ample opportunity... I like the idea enough to consider getting the next book, but I'm not looking forward to it.
The book is short and it's vocab is lacking; seriously, the main character "stumbles" so many times that I don't know why he bothers getting out of his flesh filled bed in the morning. Aside from the authors lack of a thesaurus, character interactions aren't believable; the main character, a soldier, refuses to kill digital rats because it's "wrong," the fight scenes are unrealisticly slow, the bad guys don't kill the good ones when they have ample opportunity... I like the idea enough to consider getting the next book, but I'm not looking forward to it.
July 6, 2018
Disclaimer.
I had requested and received audible version of this book for free from the narrator, in exchange for an unbiased review.
What I liked about the book -
Just the fact that it is in LitRPG genre.
What I disliked about the book -
The story is extremely simply with no complications / deep plot. No real conflicts or real adventure. The characters weren't interesting and I didn't care about where they were heading. I can't recommend this book.
Narration -
Narration by David Loving was the only saving grace of this book. All the characters were voiced distinctively and conveyed the emotions.
I had requested and received audible version of this book for free from the narrator, in exchange for an unbiased review.
What I liked about the book -
Just the fact that it is in LitRPG genre.
What I disliked about the book -
The story is extremely simply with no complications / deep plot. No real conflicts or real adventure. The characters weren't interesting and I didn't care about where they were heading. I can't recommend this book.
Narration -
Narration by David Loving was the only saving grace of this book. All the characters were voiced distinctively and conveyed the emotions.
May 29, 2018
It's like a low budget horror movie. The author lacks imagination so the whole book was in a cave with few characters. Thank goodness it was short.
June 18, 2017
Very short.
Characters weren't very well fleshed out.
MC loots just one body.
Not enough background to make you want to care about the MC.
I honestly can't recommend this book. It's a waste of time and money unless you're really bored.
The idea has promise, but needs to be fleshed out and given depth.
Characters weren't very well fleshed out.
MC loots just one body.
Not enough background to make you want to care about the MC.
I honestly can't recommend this book. It's a waste of time and money unless you're really bored.
The idea has promise, but needs to be fleshed out and given depth.
July 9, 2017
Short and boring.
Short and boring. That's it. Premise is complicated for no real reason. Trying to be cerebral and mysterious but ends up being flat and thin.
Short and boring. That's it. Premise is complicated for no real reason. Trying to be cerebral and mysterious but ends up being flat and thin.
November 30, 2017
Good book quick read
Book does a good job of balance of monster or human. Feels like a good prequel. Characters were lacking the female side of things. It'd be nice to see more and how Nat deals with memories and how to help job others, maybe find a romance. Can't wait for more!!
Book does a good job of balance of monster or human. Feels like a good prequel. Characters were lacking the female side of things. It'd be nice to see more and how Nat deals with memories and how to help job others, maybe find a romance. Can't wait for more!!
August 4, 2018
Interesting concept but not to my liking, likeable MC at times and a complete disappointment at others, he suffers the intelligent and competent' shift to useless moron quite to often. Deus Ex machina new best friend, and human hero is the bad guy excuse to make you stomach the MC eating humans.. and shenanigans.
March 4, 2019
Stupid, boring, short, interesting concept but not fleshed out, no back story for the MC so it was hard to care for him much and I was disappointed in the whole book being inside the mountain with no real world building or interesting surroundings. What a letdown. I did love the book cover, though.
July 3, 2017
Good first effort
Well done. Definitely the start of a series, and a little short but great first effort. Some of the other reviews questioned his choices but I thought they were well in line with his past, character constraints and goals.
Well done. Definitely the start of a series, and a little short but great first effort. Some of the other reviews questioned his choices but I thought they were well in line with his past, character constraints and goals.
June 11, 2018
I got like 30 minutes through the audiobook before I had to stop. This is the first time I have had to stop listening to an audiobook due to the narrator, and I have powered through the mechanical auto read thingy. So congrats on being a first, I guess?
June 20, 2017
Decent but short
The only reason this didn't get a 4 was because it was way too short. That leads to some problems with pacing but overall a fun read.
The only reason this didn't get a 4 was because it was way too short. That leads to some problems with pacing but overall a fun read.
June 25, 2017
Pretty good
Interesting concept and characters. The story seems a bit rushed but it is still very enjoyable. Would recommend to anyone interested in lit rpg
Interesting concept and characters. The story seems a bit rushed but it is still very enjoyable. Would recommend to anyone interested in lit rpg
July 4, 2017
Missing pages
It is not a horrible story but the main problem that i had with this story is that it seems to be missing pages
It is not a horrible story but the main problem that i had with this story is that it seems to be missing pages
August 15, 2017
LitRpg fun
Very enjoyable book and the first of this type I have tried, nothing too complicated just a nice easy read and a fun story. Looking forward to book 2.
Very enjoyable book and the first of this type I have tried, nothing too complicated just a nice easy read and a fun story. Looking forward to book 2.
September 17, 2017
So far quite good!
Very interesting premise having the monster bee the good guy. I enjoyed the book and I'm looking forward to reading the next in the series!
Very interesting premise having the monster bee the good guy. I enjoyed the book and I'm looking forward to reading the next in the series!
February 3, 2018
Good book!!!
I love this type of book where the main character is a monster !!! I really liked this book and hope their will be another!!!
I love this type of book where the main character is a monster !!! I really liked this book and hope their will be another!!!
March 18, 2018
An interesting concept, and while it's been done before, I found this book to be interesting enough to want to read more about the main character in future adventures.
June 1, 2018
Fun
This was a fun fast read. I recommend it as a starter or summer fare. I think you’ll enjoy it.
This was a fun fast read. I recommend it as a starter or summer fare. I think you’ll enjoy it.
August 23, 2018
Was a good book but Im still waiting on book 2 :(
September 22, 2018
Great book
A short read, but full of action and world-building, hopefully the second one comes soon, I can't wait to see what Deck has in store for Adonis.
A short read, but full of action and world-building, hopefully the second one comes soon, I can't wait to see what Deck has in store for Adonis.
December 7, 2018
Ugh
So boring just don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t ugh ugh ugh seriously omg
So boring just don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t ugh ugh ugh seriously omg
December 16, 2017
Good Read.
A LitRPG story. A interesting story and premise of being the boss creature. The story seemed off to me. I did enjoy the story.
A LitRPG story. A interesting story and premise of being the boss creature. The story seemed off to me. I did enjoy the story.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews