Podium Audio dates this recording to October 31, 2017. Two of the five entries beneath it were written before that: one in August 2016, more than a year ahead, and one in May 2017. Both describe reading the book, and one is already asking for the next installment. That matters well before you have heard a minute of this audiobook, because it means the enthusiasm on display was built up in another format and carried across here afterwards, rather than earned by the recording itself.
Koren the Secret Wizard, Ariana the Reluctant Queen
Koren Bladewell is a wizard and has no idea. The Wizard's Council of Tarador was supposed to tell him, and supposed to tell everyone else that the disasters trailing after him are uncontrolled power rather than a curse. It did neither, because it knew what was best for him. His village fears him. His parents fear him, which is the detail that gives the opening its sting. The word the book keeps using is jinx, and the entire opening movement is a boy carrying a reputation he cannot argue with, because nobody has told him the one fact that would let him.
Tim Gerard Reynolds takes the reading, and one response on this page actually addresses it, which is rarer than it ought to be. That reader recommends the audio version over the paperback, on the grounds that the print edition had not been properly edited and the cover looked unprofessional, and then adds that the story is great and the reader makes it all the better. One clause about the performance, offered by somebody who had compared the two formats directly and chose this one. Weigh it accordingly, and note that nobody else on the page went anywhere near the subject.
Ariana Trehayme carries the other half of the book. Crown Princess of Tarador, she becomes queen on her sixteenth birthday, assuming her mother the Regent has not handed the realm to an ancient enemy before then. Ariana wants the royal army to strike first. Her mother, whom the copy calls weak and indecisive, knows what is best for her and for the realm. The structure is tidy: two young people, two sets of adults protecting them from information, one kingdom running short of time.
Adults Who Know Best, Three Times Over
Wizards and princesses are the furniture; the actual subject is adult authority. The description states its thesis in the final line, almost as a dare: together, Ariana and Koren can save Tarador, if the adults, who know best, will get out of their way. Some version of that phrase turns up three times in the copy, once for the council, once for the Regent and once at the close. Very few fantasy blurbs are this clear about the emotional promise being made, and very few young readers will need it explained to them.
Craig Alanson is better known for a different series, and two readers here volunteer that without being asked. One has read the Expeditionary books end to end and understands this to be some of his earlier work. Another mentions looking forward to the next Expeditionary volume in the same breath as the next one of these. Neither is exactly a complaint, but both frame Ascendant as the place a reader arrives after something else, which is worth registering if this is your first encounter with the writer.
Families are the audience the responses actually document. One reader listens with daughters aged six and nine, who will sit through the book for hours at a time, and describes switching between the two formats: listening together while the dishes get done, then settling on the couch to read from the paperback. That is a real and specific use case, and it says considerably more about the natural pitch of this book than the teen shelf it has been filed under does.
Seventeen Hours, an Impossible Rating, Two Spellings
Seventeen hours and twenty-three minutes is what you are buying, and the one reader who withheld a star did so precisely because of that. The story line is great, that response says, but it took way too long, and the story could have been told with less pages. On paper an overlong book costs you attention. In audio it costs you hours you have already paid for, and a first volume running this long before the series proper gets going is a substantial ask, particularly for a younger listener.
Tarador is spelled two different ways on this page, once by the description and once, with an extra letter, by a reader summarizing the plot. That is trivial. The rating is not. The counter reports a single vote while the badge reads 4.4, and no lone whole-star vote produces 4.4 under any rounding convention in use anywhere. Beneath that counter sit five written responses. Whatever the number is measuring, it is not the five people whose words you can read, and it deserves no weight in your decision.
Grand Wizard, jinx, Regent, ancient enemy: the vocabulary is standard and the execution, by every account here, is warm rather than grim. Every one of the five entries lands at four or five stars, and the two written before the recording existed are among the most detailed of them. One lays out the opening third of the plot in sequence, including what becomes of Koren's parents and how he first meets Ariana. Anyone who would rather not know that in advance should skip the longest entry.
Family Road Trips Are the Real Sweet Spot
Younger listeners are the sweet spot here, whatever the teen label says. A fit for families sharing one long book across several evenings, for children who like wizards and adventure without much cruelty attached, and for anyone who wants a fantasy where the obstacle is not a dark lord but a room full of adults making decisions on a child's behalf. Seventeen hours goes an awfully long way on a road trip, and the book is built to be picked up and put down without anybody losing the thread.
Pass on it if you want economy, if a slow first volume will lose you early, or if a rating you can lean on matters to you before committing, because the figure printed on this page is arithmetically impossible and no amount of squinting will fix it. The two things you can rely on are the runtime and the single line somebody wrote about the reading. Put it on for a long journey and let the adults be wrong for seventeen hours.
- Voice: Tim Gerard Reynolds takes the reading, and the one reviewer who compared formats recommends this one over the print edition on the strength of it.
- Big ideas: a boy who does not know he is a wizard, a princess against a Regent, adults deciding what children may know.
- Atmosphere: Warm, roomy and unhurried, closer to a family read-aloud than to grim fantasy.
- Worth it?: A long, gentle series opener best shared with younger listeners, and longer than one committed fan thought it needed to be.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are the rating and the reviews on this page trustworthy?
The rating is not. A single vote is all the counter records, while the badge shows 4.4, a figure no lone whole-star vote can produce. Five written responses are displayed below that count. The responses themselves read as genuine and useful, though two were posted before the recording was ever released.
Would the print edition serve me better than the audiobook?
One reader says no, and says it firmly, recommending the audio version while steering buyers away from the paperback of the time, which that response calls poorly edited and unprofessionally jacketed. The same entry credits the reading with improving the story. It dates from March 2018 and is the only format comparison here.
Seventeen hours is a long first book: does the audiobook's length become a problem?
For one reader it clearly does. A self-described fan of Craig Alanson calls the story line great, then says it took way too long and could have used considerably fewer pages. The full runtime is seventeen hours and twenty-three minutes, a serious commitment before the series has properly begun.
