Bleeding Edge cover art

Bleeding Edge

EDGE Force, Book 1

Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Thousands of incredible audiobooks and podcasts to take wherever you go.
Immerse yourself in a world of storytelling with the Plus Catalogue - unlimited listening to thousands of select audiobooks, podcasts and Audible Originals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Bleeding Edge

By: Matthew J. Barbeler
Narrated by: Heath Miller
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

EDGE Force: A clandestine organisation that leverages the best and brightest humanity has to offer to defend against the threats that can't be fought by normal means.

JD Rideout is a washed-up writer with the best years of his career behind him. Nursing the wounds of a marriage breakdown, his kids are the only thing keeping him going.

When JD wakes up on a tropical island in the middle of the Whitsundays on Queensland's Central Coast, chained to the ceiling, he knows something is very wrong. He feels like a character in one of his novels.

Those who fight for EDGE Force unlock the ability to level up and gain powerful skills to help them fight against threats to our reality.

JD is given a pistol and an axe, along with a new callsign: Hatchet. Uprooted from his life and forced to fight for the fate of the world, Hatchet may just be planet Earth’s last line of defence.

As Hatchet, he’s tasked with fighting back against a shadowy cult that has reappeared after 15 years in hibernation.

But fighting the cult isn’t the only thing that drives Hatchet. These cultists are using the essence of an ancient entity to reshape reality into whatever their twisted imaginations can bring forth. This entity is reaching out to Hatchet too, propelling him towards an epic showdown with the forces of the Fellowship of Cosmic Truth.

During the course of his mission, Hatchet encounters an unexpected ally–a German Shepherd dog named Kaiser–who might just be smarter than Hatchet. Kaiser has his own reasons for fighting the cult and the two form an unlikely alliance.

Bleeding Edge contains LitRPG elements including levelling up, skill increases, new abilities, and a deep crafting system. The book is written using Australian English, and contains Aussie slang.

©2021 Matthew J. Barbeler (P)2022 Podium Audio
Adventure Epic Epic Fantasy Fantasy Fiction Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction

Listeners also enjoyed...

Deadlands Druid cover art
Wolfpack cover art
Mark of the Fated Omnibus, Books 1-3 cover art
Nexus Guardian cover art
He Who Fights with Monsters: A LitRPG Adventure cover art
Headshot Online cover art
The Keepers of Limbo cover art
Wild-Eyed Southern Boyz cover art
The Dungeon That Walks Like a Man cover art
Dungeon Crawler Carl cover art
The Path of Ascension cover art
Big Sneaky Barbarian: A LitRPG Novel cover art
System Change: A LitRPG Adventure cover art
Legendary LitRPG cover art
Mark of the Fool cover art
Apocalypse Tamer: The Complete Series cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
The premise is good. I really liked the setting of the book and it promised something different from the regular LITrpg, but it soon fell into the regular traps of this Genre. It focus on the MC:s power leveling, skills and crafting over the main story arch. We get an in-depth accounting of all skills and the MC’s reason for his choices over moving the main story forward.

The main arch is said to be important and needs to be done fast, but the MC goes off on a power leveling and crafting sprees and he handle the main “quest” as if it’s of secondary priority, it is more important to gather crafting materials.
In some parts of the book I also get the feeling that the Author has lots of unfinished books that he uses to fill this book with.

This is sad because, as said, the main arch has promise and it is interesting.

Crafting spree

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

The basic story is interesting, with some clear philosophy underpinning the world, but everything is secondary to leveling, stats and equipment. World building, character development and plot all take a back seat, and I found myself zoning out due to boredom quite a bit, especially in the last few hours when things should be building towards a crescendo. There's a good story here, but it's lost under a power fantasy that makes the stakes feel dwarfed in comparison. When the fate of the world feels insignificant to literal chapters dedicated to grinding in a consequence-free zone with unlimited ammo, the balance is just not right.

The story could have really benefitted from less power leveling in a parallel reality in the MC's imagination with 0 stakes and more time grappling with the stakes and consequences in the first parallel reality on the island. Or with some character development. Or humor. It wasn't a DNF, but I won't be picking up the next installment.

It's alright. Not the worst or best in genre.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

How many trees died to bring this utter twaddle to the printing, how much did m j barbeler pay under the table to get this codswallop printed that's one credit i'll be asking to be returned 👿🤨

Bleeding edge?? bleeding twaddle

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.