A Dance With Demons
Jeff Offringa’s novel, A Dance With Demons, is now releasing:
Tarn Nohmal doesn’t want much out of life. Food on the table, a roof over his head, and privacy. But when his old commander shows up and needs someone to track a band of orcs, what should be a simple mission turns out to become an endeavor to stop disaster from spreading across the entire realm of Averim.
Not only is the kingdom threatened from within by a civil war, but the lack of troops on the eastern border seems to be making the orcs bolder. And to top it off, a demon is slaughtering orcs and humans alike. And it’s up to Tarn and his companions; Nyla, a half-elven wizard, and Logan, a human priest raised by dwarves, to stop it before it comes to their home town and slaughters everyone there.
But will there be a home town to return to? The Earl keeps calling troops west to support him in the civil war. The orcs can’t be that big a threat… right?
Step into the world of Aromathus, the creation of author Jeff Offringa, and experience swords and sorcery, military maneuvers, and political intrigue in a place where magic abounds, knights charge gloriously into battle, and the orcs may not be as stupid as they appear…
We’re dropping the first six episodes with more to follow weekly. If you don’t want to blow through them all right away, get a custom feed. You get to choose the frequency of updates. Or you can subscribe to the default feed and have access to everything immediately.
December 29th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Nice start, but you need to fix a few audio issues. At the start of the fight in the bar, there’s a big volume drop. Drag file into audacity and look at the forms to find it. Also, I think it was episode 3, there was a static burst, again, it should show up in audacity.
January 4th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
Thanks Craig! Can’t believe I missed those. Both episodes are re-uploading now, and those issues should be a thing of the past.
March 1st, 2010 at 7:09 am
This is a very good book well written lots of action and characters
you want to root for keep these episodes comming Jeff, and thanks
for a book with a great story.
March 2nd, 2010 at 3:52 pm
Thanks for the kinds words Oscar. I’m the guy who does the reading, and I promise you, the chapters will keep coming regularly. I don’t plan to miss a single week, and Jeff’s way ahead on the writing. In fact, if you want to skip ahead, or find out more about the world the book is set in, you can check out http://www.aromathus.com.
Jeff and I are both really glad that you’re enjoying the story
March 29th, 2010 at 4:19 am
Wow. Absolutely amazing. Great story, excellent narration, awesome plot. I am waiting for the next chapter!!!!! Can’t wait. Can’t give you enough praise. Podiobooks is a great site, and what a gift to have all you authors share your creations with us, but it is a special treat to start listening to a story and just love everything about! Thanks you!
March 31st, 2010 at 3:32 pm
I’m glad you like it Cat! The chapters will keep coming regularly. Praise from listeners like you is what makes it all worth it
May 10th, 2010 at 9:36 pm
Great story!! Can’t wait to hear more!!!
July 1st, 2010 at 6:42 pm
really enjoying the story, and appreciate fairly regular releases of the new episodes.
July 28th, 2010 at 7:57 am
I’m enjoying the story so far; though, I have to admit that it does seem to have similar characteristics to the start of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign.
August 30th, 2010 at 6:59 pm
Hey, it’s Jeff, the author of the book. I’m glad you folks are enjoying the story; I just hope you enjoy hearing it half as much as I did writing it!
Now, to respond to Nhonami – Yes, the book did honestly have its origin in a D&D campaign (Hey, I’ll admit it!) But it’s far more than that! A D&D campaign gave me the plot idea – the story developed into something much bigger.
I’ve always enjoyed political and military fantasy; my goal was to tell a story based on those two things. Yet, there’s more to it. Why do people do heroic things? Why do people always assume that villians are purely evil – for evils sake? Why do all dwarves have scottish accents?
Yes, these are and can be gaming plot lines. But he same can be said of many great fantasy authors. Ray Fiest. Steve Erickson (both of whom have admitted that their books ae based on games) Even, dare I say it, Tolkien -(a group of heroes sets out to save the world? Hrm….)
So, yes, it is based on a game. but it’s a great story in it’s own right. And if you want to know more, check out my own site at http://www.aromathus.com!
Jeff
September 7th, 2010 at 8:31 am
Really enjoyed the first couple of episodes, but it looks like I’m getting file not found on episodes 3, 4, and others… is there something wrong with the source files?
September 21st, 2010 at 9:53 am
James: Have you tried to download the files again. I recently downloaded all the files with no issues. I wonder if a server was busy when you tried to download the files.
November 15th, 2010 at 6:57 pm
Enjoyed listening to all the episodes.
From an audio point of view, there were a few things that could have been improved. I did notice some static in the episodes towards the end and periodically the sound would dip quite a bit.
From the writing side of things, everything seemed pretty clean. There was a large cast, but they all had important parts of the story to tell and most of the loose ends were tied up nicely.
May 4th, 2011 at 6:11 am
I’ve just discovered A Dance With Demons and have been listening to it on my commute to and from work. While not perfect, it is good enough for me to not want to turn it off in favor of the radio.
There are a few issues that preventing me from enjoying the story as much as I might, however. First is the narration. It almost sounds as if it was narrated by a robot, until you get to the voices and accents, which made me cringe. I found them much more distracting than the robot voice.
The second issue is the massive amount of info dumping. Character back stories do not need to be told all at once, if at all. Neither does the history of the lands, or how humans came to be. Though delivered through dialogue, the fact that it was an info dump made the the the dialogue sound false and unnatural.
All in all, I am enjoying the story and it makes my commute pass faster. Thank you for writing the story and posting it on podiobooks.