I was a little hesitant when a friend recommended the audiobook of Hero Forged to me. The first thing I noticed was that the author was also the narrator, and that doesn’t normally go as well as authors using professional narrators for their books. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the author is, in fact, a really damn good narrator.
Hero Forged follows around conman Gabriel Delling. It kicks off with him taking a robbery job which turns south fast. A crazy demon is there, and by the end of it, Gabe is running from demons, supernatural hunters, and has an evil god in his head. Thus begins his quest to find out what is actually going on, how magic works, and to avoid being killed by the people chasing him down.
Gabe is a really enjoyable character to read about. He has all the charisma in the world—as you’d expect from a conman—a difficult past, and makes for an awesome reluctant hero. He really doesn’t want to be involved in whatever the evil god and demon are up to, but with the god stuck in his head, everyone is after him, and he doesn’t have a choice but to get involved or be hunted down.
Hero Forged has some great humour in it, and some really touching moments too. I really liked that Erikson could show the way Gabe dealt with stress and difficult situations, and how he felt for those people who he’s close to.
Erikson has written a fantastic book here and done really well with the narration too. Would highly recommend to people who enjoy:
- Urban fantasy
- Reluctant heroes
- Charismatic MCs
- Humour
We were lucky to draw this in our SPFBO group and it made semi-finalist (so far) — I’m really looking forward to reading this one.