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  • Warlords of the Circle Sea Box Set: Books 1 to 3

  • A 4X LitRPG City Building Epic
  • By: Ember Lane
  • Narrated by: Pavi Proczko
  • Length: 75 hrs and 59 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (12 ratings)

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Warlords of the Circle Sea Box Set: Books 1 to 3 cover art

Warlords of the Circle Sea Box Set: Books 1 to 3

By: Ember Lane
Narrated by: Pavi Proczko
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Publisher's Summary

Series complete! Get the first three books here!

Dragged through a portal to a fantasy land brimming with monsters, Connor has to hit the ground running just to survive. Worse, he has to get settlement-building to defend himself against 99 other lords, all of whom are out for his blood!

Warlords of the Circle Sea is a LitRPG town-building adventure packed full of monster battles, shady elves, an unhelpful wiki called Borg, and a smoking-hot goddess named Xandaphrey.

But Connor is not alone. Others have been dragged from Earth. He must enlist them to help him build an empire, or else he will fail. If he does, only death awaits. 

Follow Connor as he builds his team, his town, and his new country of Devon. He expected to die when the car smashed into him; now he’s been reincarnated in a new land, plunged butt-naked into a strange 4X game-world with only 30 days to build a strong and defensible kingdom, and with only one advantage - he has his gamer instincts. Will that be enough, or will he need some luck?

Finding himself at the bottom of the leaderboard, he’ll need to complete dangerous side quests to catch up if he’s to have any hope of winning the contest. Can Connor and his crew battle their way to victory? 

Warlords of the Circle Sea Box Set includes books one through three. That’s Dragon’s Mist, Dragon’s Born, and Dragon’s Realm and a huge listen. Pick up Dragon’s Knight and Dragon’s End, and you’ve got the whole story! 

If you like empire-building, action-packed sequences, detailed progression stats, and fantasy worlds, then you’ll love Ember Lane’s merciless countdown. Buy Warlords of the Circle Sea Box Set to plug in and conquer today! 

Warlords of the Circle Sea is a LitRPG adventure fantasy packed full of monster hunting and town building. Plenty of cussing. No harem. Yeah, big weapons and stats abound!

©2022 Ian Thompson (P)2022 Ian Thompson

What listeners say about Warlords of the Circle Sea Box Set: Books 1 to 3

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Epic LitRPG, Though it has it's Problems

I've got mixed feelings about this box set, but I'm giving it 5 stars anyway because by litRPG standards it's still good, and at almost 80 hours long I feel it deserves it. There's absolutely no way I could ever say that I didn't get value for money.

TLDR:
Most of the good stuff in this book revolves around exceptional attention to detail. Most of the bad stuff revolves around the prose being wordy and purple. If you can deal with the bad, you'll like the good. The three books are somewhat different to each other in terms of content - I enjoyed the first book a lot, but started to get tired by the end of the series.

Now, onto the review proper. Let's start with a brief description and then go onto good and bad points, as I see them.

Description:
An ordinary guy dies and wakes up in a fantasy land where he discovers he's one of 100 contestants that have been roped into a competition where only one can be victorious. Each of these 100 players have 6 offsiders who've also been dragged from their world to be on their team. The ultimate goal of the competition is to wipe out all other players by building the biggest, baddest army.

Book 1 deals with the MC battling monsters as he searches for and rescues his six offsiders. Book 2 is more about the citybuilding, with some dungeon delving. Book 3 sees the MC competing against other players. Another way to put it - book 1 is a nice easy intro with lots of action. Book 2 really feels like where the 4X in the title starts and book 3 expands the scope to firmly cement the series as 'epic' fantasy.

The boxset makes a nice arc but doesn't closeout the series, and the story is a nice mix of action, town building and battle tactics. If you like what you listen to, there's plenty more boxsets to come.

The Good Stuff

You want it, this book has it: Town building? check. Monster fighting? check. Cultivation? check. Lore & backstory? check. Accurate military tactics and battles? check.

The 4X in the book's title kinda confused me, and I had to go to wikipedia for an answer: "Emphasis is placed upon economic and technological development, as well as a range of military and non-military routes to supremacy." That pretty accurately sums up the book! The series isn't just all monster fighting (though a large part of book 1 is). Army building, international relations, peace treaties, dragon taming, trade, intimidation, guilds and more are used to achieve the MC's goals. It's a good thing, in that progress and accomplishments feel very realistic for the fantasy setting.

Absolutely everything feels researched and well thought out. Battle tactics for example are intricate and detailed. If you're the type of person that wants to know how ancient hoplites would differ from peltasts in battle, this the book for you. I was left many times wondering if the author has a history degree, and honestly I still wonder.

There is so much worldbuilding in this book that I feel compelled to compare it to Tolkien - not a comparison to story or narrative, to be clear, but rather in the author's in-depth knowledge of every single facet of multiple continents, as evidenced with the level of depth and detail that goes into even the main character walking through a town. I missed having a map as I listened to the story, which might be a minor negative to listening to this as an audio book.

The Bad Stuff:

This book reads sloooow. And I'm not just saying that because it's 80 hours long. The author's writing style is highly descriptive, which is helpful sometimes but sleep-inducing at others. This is never more apparent than with action scenes. There are plenty of them, but the action itself just isn't particularly exciting. It's described with too many words, and honestly, I often just kind of tuned out of, coming back in 20 seconds later to find nothing much had changed and I could still follow what was happening in the fight.

There are a lot of stats in this book. On one level, they're pretty easy to tune out. On another, while I know they're all most likely meticulously calculated, they meant nothing me. I *could* tune them out. And then there were all the terms. Elixir, power, steps... Having now finished the box set, I honestly can't tell you what the difference between each is.

Deaths of important characters do occasionally happen but they are usually quite meaningless. There are no heroics involved in their passing - something bad just happens to them and life moves on. I'm the first to admit this is probably realistic in the scheme of things, but I'm putting it on the bad side for myself, as it's not very satisfying for the story.

And finally, the author's prose often feels very, very purple. Descriptions are often flowery and ornate - something that would be amazing in a short story, but just made my head swim in a novel of this length. They particularly like their metaphors and similes. For example:

- She was a wave's foaming top. A seahorse riding on a crest of assassins.
- The poisonous wasps of his resolve.
- It radiated power like a fire gives out heat... It severed the body in two, cutting as if it were a laser, cauterising her like meat on a red hot grill.
- Like tumbling from a precipice, he'd plunged into love
- It snuck into his mind like a cold wind through a winter coat

The writing is absolutely beautiful, but... also too much. My head just kind of twisted trying to get around it all.

So, to summarize, like I said at the start most of the good stuff in this book revolves around exceptional attention to detail. Most of the bad stuff revolves around the prose being both wordy and excessively purple. If you can deal with the bad, you'll like the good.

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    4 out of 5 stars

beware the audio boss

the books definitely a great buy but 5-6 chapters are all mismatched so the book does need re-cliping and organizing

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