Free the Darkness: King’s Dark Tidings, Book 1 UNABRIDGED

• By Kel Kade
• Narrated By Nick Podehl

I was kind of bullied in to getting this book by Audible. for the last 2 months it has been the only series to be recommended that I haven’t already listened/read. When I noticed that it was Narrated by Nick Podehl I caved and got it. and Nick did a great job on it. I probably liked the book way more then I should have because of the fantastic job he did reading it.

Why shouldn’t I have liked it  that much?  Well let me tell you a bit about the plot first. It starts out in a training montage. A 5 or 6 year old boy broke his leg with bone showing and he is expected to tell what he did wrong, and then set the bone by himself. Really? I dropped a table on my foot at 12 breaking 5 bones, and finished moving the table before I went hopping to show my mom a foot 3X normal size. I was laughing as I said “Hey ma I think I hurt myself”. At 15 I grabbed my kneecap from the back of my leg and pulled it back in to position. I did both of those things without screaming. But there was a whole lot of cussing and  laughing. With the knee. It was hilarious because my Mom and my Girlfriend had to pull my jeans off so we could see what was wrong.  But it is physically impossible to set a broken shin with ripped skin by yourself. You just can’t reach it.

Now lets skip to when our hero, Rezkin, is 19. He has mastered every weapon ever made is a master healer and spy and everything else. (I have a theory about why Rez is so good at things but I am not going to say.)  Additionally he lives his life by all the rules he has been taught. After a bit of confusion and everyone he has ever known laying dead around him he rushes up to his master as he is about to die.  He tells Rez rules 2 to kill with compassion and rule 1 to honor and protect….He sees all of his friends that have died before him and says “my friends” …..he dies. Now Rezkin was never told how one gets friends or what they are really so he is just a Tad confused about his life’s purpose.

When he gets to the closest town that he of course has memorized he goes to a inn that is pretty much full. A girl about his age asks to sit with him as there is no other chairs. As they talk we learn that Rez is the most beautiful man ever Like OMG SEXY.  So of course she says I am so glad we are friends now…..

To me it felt like a kind of well written teen fantasy, But as I am writing this I pulled it up on Goodreads and disappointingly  it says flat out “This book is intended for adult readers. It contains graphic violence, creative language, and sexual innuendo.” While that stuff is true it’s no more than a PG-13 at best  You will see more violence in a video game,  and more sexual innuendo in a Animaniacs cartoon…..HELLOOO Nurse.

Final Thoughts

So yeah, ridiculous plot and I don’t know why I liked it but I did. The girl fights over Rez and him being so oblivious to it are pretty funny  add that in to A lot of persistently running jokes and you get a quite amusing book. The action scenes, while being completely one sided, are written well.  As i said before it was excellently narrated by Nick Podehl, and to me that is the biggest point in its favor. So I am not sure how it earned 3.75 stars out of 5  but it did. So Check it out I guess.