
The Savior's Champion
The Savior's Series, Book 1
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Buy Now for $33.99
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Narrated by:
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Nick Denton
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By:
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Jenna Moreci
About this listen
Tobias Kaya doesn't care about The Savior. He doesn't care that She's the ruler of the realm or that She purified the land, and he certainly doesn't care that She's of age to be married. But when competing for Her hand proves to be his last chance to save his family, he's forced to make The Savior his priority.
Now Tobias is thrown into the Sovereign's Tournament with nineteen other men, and each of them is fighting - and killing - for the chance to rule at The Savior's side. Instantly, his world is plagued with violence, treachery, and manipulation, revealing the hidden ugliness of his proud realm. And when his circumstances seem especially dire, he stumbles into an unexpected romance, one that opens him up to unimaginable dangers and darkness.
Trigger warnings: this book contains graphic violence, foul language, and sexual situations.
©2017 Jenna Moreci (P)2019 Jenna MoreciThis book is amazing
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My honest review
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Loved it!
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Very enjoyable, blood thirsty and passionate.
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Magnificent
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I've heard many bad reviews on this book, but I disagree.
without any spoilers I will say this:
If your into dark fantasy fiction with romance then that is what you will find. I would split this story into two things:
50% action featuring some of the best fight scenes I've ever read in my life.
50% believable romance.
There is a formidable amount of swearing but it suits the kind of characters the MC finds himself among, also, Flynn is giga Chad (You'll see).
A near perfect story.
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the characters were very compelling. very well written. great twists and fights. very creative challenges
Champion
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Nick Denton's performance was the cherry on top, with an impressive emotive performance that gave extra life to the characters.
What's not to love?
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brilliant
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1) Overly repetitive with few or no stakes
This story is set out like a action/romance, following a male lead who enters a gladiatorial competition for the money to support his family. It plays out like an obstacle course, with a series of challenges being put before the characters with little foreshadowing of what to expect, or the overall journey of the competition. Do you want to sleep with the Saviour? Great! Show up at this day and time, and we'll throw something new at you every day for two months until you all die. Each challenge is designed to test an attribute of the contestants (i.e. strength, focus, straight up brutality), but it feels like a "Monster of the Week" scenario, to borrow a term from TTRPGs. None of the challenges directly links to another, and the performance in any particular challenge had no effect on the story other than "the main character hasn't died yet, and the rest of the characters are worse than ever before". After the first 5 challenges (which is about one per chapter), I noticed that there was still 16+ hours left on this book, and it began to feel like a chore to even finish it.
2) The cast was too large
From the way some of the characters were portrayed, I couldn't help but feel like I was meant to care about them more than I did. There were particular moments were a character would have an input into a conversation, or be able to provide something to overcome a scenario, that were written as if there was more weight to it than i felt as a reader. Many of these characters had hints of large backstories, with skills and motivations that occasionally had the chance to shine, but much of this was not actually written in the book. With more than 20 named characters in every scene, and a high chance that one would die each chapter, it was hard to keep track of each person. Particular deaths or victories didn't feel earned because enough time hadn't been spent to flesh out a character. With such a large cast, and much of the writing dedicated to describing the challenges rather than the characters (beyond superficial tags such as "cute", "serious", "a fisherman"), it doesn't surprise me that I was unable to connect with the characters. I wish that I had been able to see the story as the author intended, because it was clear that some characters were meant to be more impactful than they came across in writing.
3) Every Supporting Male Character Was Horrible
As I mentioned, there is a large cast of 20 men seeking to win this competition. Like any event, these are a mix of brutes, privileged assholes, intelligent thinkers, homely dependable types, and lucky bastards. However. The majority of the interactions between these men can only be described as awful, awkward, far-fetched, and toxic to listen to. When describing this book to others, I've likened it to the trope where some male authors get ridiculed for being unable to write realistic female characters - but in reverse. The only thing the supporting cast ever discussed was murder, sex, and bravado, and this "locker-room talk" pervaded every moment that the characters weren't killing each other or running for their lives. I lost count of the amount of times the words "cunt" and "cock" were said, even when there was no reason for them to except as some method of adding atmosphere. I can agree that there is an argument to be made that every other male character is meant to be a horrible abomination of a man in comparison to the main character.
An entire half-chapter is dedicated to the male supporting cast ridiculing the main character for bothering to ask the female characters their names. It is portrayed as if the main character might be the only decent guy in the realm, because he thinks its right to ask a woman her name and care about her feelings. If this was the angle the author intended, the execution failed to drive this home, because instead it only proved to anger me that he felt the need to separate his behaviour from the men around him yet offered no commentary (internal or external) as to why it was important. It almost felt like a "I'm not like other men" trope.
With regards to atmosphere, the behaviour of the mean lead to some awkward scenes. At one stage, the main character wakes up to find one of his "tent-mates" and rivals masterbating in the bed across the room. The man realises the main character is awake, doesn't stop, and continues to stare him down until the main character finally gets dressed and leaves the tent. As far as I could tell, this scene has no other purpose than to make the reader feel uncomfortable. It succeeded, but not in the way I imagine it was intended. Rather than routing for the main character to defeat his rivals and prove to them what a real man looked like, I just wanted to put down the book.
In case its not clear, in my opinion the portrayal of men in this book reduces them to unthinking, sex-driven, misogynistic assholes, which I was unable to push through to finish this novel. The wholesomeness of the main character fails to alleviate this, and his passive experience of the entire competition leans itself to a lack of character depths rather than an endearing protagonist. Other male friends who have listened to excerpts of this agree that sections of this story are terribly unrealistic to actual male-male interactions, and only serve to paint a grim and unhealthy portrayal of men.
This book is a romance, but I didn't make it far enough to even start routing for the main character to "get the girl".
Didn't finish: Repetitive and Toxic
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