The Hunter's Gambit

Book 1 of the Archanium Codex

By: Nicholas McIntire

Narrated by: Ulf Bjorklund

The Hunter's Gambit is the first novel in the Archanium Codex, an epic fantasy series in which two protagonists, Aleksei Drago and Jonas Belgi, struggle to keep their home nation of Ilyar from being plunged into a bloody civil war even as a 1,000-year-old evil called the Demonic Presence threatens to break free of its prison and consume the entire world.

©2020 Nicholas McIntire (P)2021 Nicholas McIntire

Great Fantasy Story

This audiobook is an enjoyable listen. The world-building is top notch and the story and relationship between characters is amazing. The only disappointing aspect is that book 2 is not available as an audiobook yet so I will need to buy the ebook in order to read it.

Rushed, inconsistent, shallow.

I got a couple hours in and had to return the book, I kept hoping it would get good but it just didn't. The personalities of the characters were inconsistent, the choices they made didn't make any narrative sense, there was no depth to the plot - but you really felt like there would be, like there almost was. This feels like the author had a solid outline for a story and then just published that instead of writing it. There was so much that we were told happened without being shown, like the romance between the two main characters; there was absolutely no development shown (barely even any attraction, even). It felt like very little was happening at all but it was happening at such breakneck speeds, and the narrator's refusal to pause between sentences made it seem even faster, I actually had to slow the recording speed down to be able to parse the words that were being said. I wanted to like it and I wanted it to be good, but I didn't and it wasn't.

A truly epic story masterfully narrated.

This is a beautifully written book and, amazingly, the language lends itself to voice interpretation as much as it does to close reading.

The story is indeed huge, full of well developed characters - not just the two protagonists - but many other characters crucial to the story in this book and, clearly, the books to follow in Archanium Codex Series.

Beyond writing characters so real you want to have dinner with them, the world building is stunning and the magic systems are rule based and highly original, placing this epic story in the company of Sanderson, Martin and Tolkien.