Book Stats
- Advanced Listener Copy (ALC) from NetGalley🖤
- Book 1 of the Witch Walker series
- Format: audiobook
- Audiobook Length: 13 hours 16 minutes
- Narrators: Meg Sylvan & Tim Campbell
- Narrator POV: Alternates 1st person POVs – primarily from Alexus and Raina, though occasionally from other characters
Book Rating
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Spice: 🌶️🌶️/5
Summary & Review
This one has been on my TBR for quite some time. Imagine my surprise and excitement to find out the audio version was available on NetGalley! I was so excited to get approved for this one and I finally got a chance to dive into this world. 🖤
I know this book has a lot of mixed reviews and to some extent, I get it. Many readers felt the plot was slow, that nearly the entire story took place in the forest and not much happened. Which is fair, however I felt like that gave the author a chance to slowly bring in other important aspects, such as learning about the character’s pasts, focusing on their building relationship and switch from enemies to lovers, and getting a chance to learn about the world and its history without an insane info dump at the beginning of the book. I also read one review that just pointed out the name of the FROST king was Colden – as in COLDen. But that just made me chuckle. I love it.
So yes, this story mostly takes place in a forest, but in my opinion there is still plenty happening to keep things moving forward and remaining interesting. I prefer a slower build up to conflict when it’s well done as it gives you as a reader the chance to really grasp the entire story and receive more backstory for the characters.
The Prince of the East is a wonderful villain. He’s truly cruel and mysterious and makes a great adversary. I look forward to hopefully learning more about him in future books. I also can’t wait to see the story progress as things were left in a very tense and unsure situation by the end of the book.
As for the narrators – both did a great job on their own. Keep in mind this is a dual narration, not a duet, so the female narrator voices the male dialogue in her chapters and vice versa. I thought they both did a good job with this. My only complaint is that I have to listen to books at a faster speed – my mind can’t focus on it otherwise. And the narrators spoke in such different speeds themselves that I had to keep adjusting the speed when the POV changed – 2x speed when Meg Sylvan narrated & 1.75x when Tim Campbell did. But that’s a personal issue not a narrator issue so it didn’t impact my rating.
I rated this 4 stars overall because it was very enjoyable for me. I had a good time with the story and I definitely look forward to the next book (which shows it’ll be available on Libby for me in the next 2 weeks!). I rated it 2 chili peppers because there’s some kissing and right at the end, there’s an intimate scene. It’s not overly detailed, so if you don’t enjoy smut, you’d likely still enjoy this story. But as it was more than just kissing, our scale places that at 2 chili peppers.
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