Steam & Aether Books 1-5

Complete Series Box Set

By: Jaxon Reed

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

2000+ pages of award-winning steampunk science fiction!

Sergeant Ripley Coulter heads up E-Squad, the US Army's premiere online unit. Fighting in an advanced simulation, he gets pulled into a parallel universe and sent back to an earlier time.

Here, the timeline has changed slightly. London is Ethinium, and all the great European empires are still competing with one another. Technology is steam-based, and the vacuum tube reigns supreme. Magic exists, along with vampires and other creatures, and the Dar control massive underground vaults beneath the major cities.

With knowledge of our world's history, and the assistance of his gaming implant, Coulter joins the king's forces, fights against evil . . . and falls in love.

Don’t miss this thrilling steampunk gamelit adventure! Veteran science fiction and military fantasy author, two-time Kindle Scout winner Jaxon Reed presents an exciting series set in a fantastic gaslamp universe. Featuring fistfights, machineguns, gang warfare, dungeon crawls and sci-fi adventure, the Steam & Aether web series garnered tens of thousands of reads on Royal Road and was a 2022 Writathon winner!

Grab all five books in the complete series for one low price in this boxset: Ethinium's Vault, Mons' Angels, Solomon's Compass, Carpathians' Shard, and Kaiser's War.

Narration is disappointing

The voice is clear and natural sounding, but it lacks life. Same voice, tone, and inflection no matter which character is speaking. Hard to get lost in the story when I am trying to understand who said what. This was just the book being read aloud. Not a story being told. I would expect AI to be capable of assigning different voices for each character at minimum.
This narration is was I would expect from a text book in school or my emails being read.
Story was good.

Really fun story and the AI voice wasn’t terrible

First thing, the AI voice. It’s really hard to know which character is talking sometimes when every single voice is the same. It’s not like when you read a book yourself. You can change the voices in your head for different characters. It was sort of like the whole book was from one persons point of view. However, the voice did have some inflection, so it wasn’t all terrible. I made it through all five books, and really enjoyed it, so that’s something!
With that out of the way, this was a really fun story! The idea of an alternate world so close to our own to nearly match it, but with game mechanics and a steampunk setting?!? Yes, thank you!
The last book felt really rushed, like the author knew he had to wrap it up. Other than that (and the AI voice), I really don’t have any complaints.
Overall, this was a great series and I’d love to read from this author again.

Get past virtual voice and it’s PHENOMENAL

The only draw back is the virtual voice, but this is such a great story

great story, ai narrator isn't the worst but not great.

I really enjoyed the story! The bits of humor thrown in had me outright laughing out loud a few times. There were a few parts I had to raised my eyebrows regarding the portrayal of female reactions but generally very good story. I certainly related to some of the gaming references.

The biggest hiccups were the mispronounced words and weird inflections by AI narration. It wasn't the worst I have listened to but it also wasn't great. I did enjoy the male accented AI voice, it wasn't distracting or too deep/high/nasal etc... it was pleasant (pronunciation aside).

The author clarifying which character was talking in virtual voice

This is one a few virtual voice stories that loud you to understand which character was talking in spite of having the same mono voice.