The Quest

Dark Paladin, Book 2

By: Vasily Mahanenko

Narrated by: Kevin Kraft

Surviving in a tough situation is not always the best option; sometimes dying is much better than staying alive. The Academy showed Paladin Yaropolk what makes the world go round: pragmatism and personal gain. Restart was set in motion, but it only makes players more frantic. Now everyone plays only for themselves. Yaropolk faces the same dilemma: be like all of them, or keep his humanity and be known as an odd duck. Because there is only one rule in this world: kill or be killed....

©2017 V. Mahanenko; English translation copyright 2017 by Alexandra Tussing (P)2017 Tantor

Good story hindered by poor translation.

Not up to the standards set by Way of the shaman series when it comes to the translation but even despite that fact good if just barely. You will notice this wasn't originally written in English. I just feel there's so much lost even if I technically understand everything and because of that fact I stuggled to continue in places. Here's to hoping that the translation will be handed to someone else next book.

Good not Great

Better than the first but yet again the plot was not easy to follow. Alot of things do not make 100 sense.

Decent storyline

I bought these books because I really want to support Vasily. His shaman books are freaking awesome. These books are good but they could be better with a different narrator. He's really needs to slow down and be better with his inflection, and pauses in each sentence. I feel he is rushing the entire time and I am not sure why. Maybe he is trying to pump out as many book narrations as he can in a year. Vasily, you're still one of my favorite writers, keep em brotha!

Its decent but...

Overall this story is decent, but for some reason I haven't been able to figure out, the author decided to make the main character quite sexist. I didn't sense the same sexism in other stories by this author, but in this particular trilogy, the main character is so completely sexist, at times it wasn't comfortable.

Same interesting writer, same bad translator

I already reviewed the first volume of this series and this second one is no different. It is the kind of writing we expect from Mahanenko. A bit sloppy but inventive and in my opinion original and creative enough to be interesting and entertaining.

However, the translation is horrendous. This woman obviously has barely a grasp of basic English. It is clear that the fault lies in translation since time and time again the reader will hear better sentence structures and superior choice of phrasing in his or her own head while listening to this book.
I beg all publishers to encourage this "translator" to stick to disgracing her native language and leave English translation to the true professionals. Shame on her for defiling a writers work.