The Barbarian's Tribute

Not-So-Savage Barbarians, Book 1

By: Amy Padilla

Narrated by: Kirt Graves, Jonathan Lake

Every year, a woman from each town is chosen as a tribute to the barbarian clans to keep the peace, never to be seen or heard from again.

The rumors about the barbarian clans were horrific. It was a sentence worse than death. I never thought they'd choose me. But when my brother betrays me by telling my father about my interest in men, he decides to throw me to the wolves to spare our family the shame—making me the first male tribute.

©2025 Amy Padilla (P)2025 Podium Audio

Amazing narration!

Both narrators absolutely killed this. I’m so impressed.
The book was solid too, and it was told in a good way.

Surprisingly comforting and sweet.

This was such a wonderful listen!

I usually don’t go for short stories, but I love all the tropes included in this book. Amy Padilla was able to cover a great amount of issues despite the book’s brevity.
Finn (the villager) comes from a homophobic society and often deals with anxiety (which is referred to him as being sensitive) and trauma and it was like a balm to the heart reading about how he found his place in the world, his family and grew stronger! All of this in roughly under four and a half hours.
Rath is a gentle giant, who desperately wants to find his person, his culture is strong enough to the point where they’re completely oblivious (or plainly don’t care) about other non-nomadic cultures’ social prejudices, so being gay is just another orientation. He takes to Finn immediately, despite Finn’s fear, but is patient with him and shows him what safety actually is.

As for the narration, Kirt Graves did a wonderful job with the accents and different voices, as he usually does. He’s a favourite narrator of mine whose work I’m quite familiar with so I know the narration/performance is going to be good.
Jonathan Lake is a new narrator to me, this is my first time listening to his work and I’m so so impressed! His voice’s rougher and lower than Mr. Graves but it’s a delight. He was an excellent Rath and even before I knew how Rath was gonna sound I knew it had to sound like the way Jonathan Lake delivered him, haha. He was extremely expressive and performed the hell out of Rath. 10/10, no notes.

I found this book quite comforting and sweet, so if you like your barbarians not-so-savage I highly recommend it.

3.5 stars

I really liked the narration!

This is a new to me author so I wasn’t sure what to expect. The characters are sweet, especially Rath. I appreciated the contrasts between the towns and barbarian cultures. AlthoughI found it a little slow at times, it was an enjoyable story.

The narration was amazing

I gotta say anything Kirt is in is always a treat. I enjoyed his voice and also generally speaking for both narrators, AWESOME JOB. Story was predictable and left some questions and much to be desired but all in all a good time

Nice Change

I grabbed this on impulse for a change from sports and trauma rep books and was not disappointed. My only disappointment was I wished it was longer. I could have gotten lost in more Rath and Finn. The storyline was sweet, Rath was adorable! Always so considerate. Finn was just a sweetly shy guy. Narration was great.