December 31, 2016 is the date on the oldest response under this audiobook, and Podium Audio did not release it until January 2, 2018. A year and two days separate the two. A second note, from January 2017, sits inside the same gap. Both are five-star notes from people who had just finished the first book and bought the second immediately, which means they read it, in some other form, well before this recording existed. What either one tells you about the sixteen hours and ten minutes on offer here is nothing whatever, and that is the central difficulty with this page.
Reviewers Explain Why Koren Is a Jinx
Koren Bladewell had his future stolen by wizards who chose to lie about what he is, which is a wizard. Crown princess Ariana Trehayme has to find a way onto the throne before her sixteenth birthday, because an indecisive mother is letting all of Tarador drift toward conquest. That is the description in full. Two sentences, two protagonists, one kingdom under threat, and no further detail of any kind attached to a book that runs sixteen hours and ten minutes.
Sixteen hours against forty-seven words of copy is an unusual ratio, and the reviewers underneath end up doing the publisher's work. One explains that Koren is struggling to find out why he is a jinx and to come to terms with his true identity, a word the description never reaches for. Another says the suspense really starts to build as he begins to learn the truth. A third describes two main heroes fighting different battles. Every specific fact about this volume arrives from a reader.
Transcendent and Ascendant Are Not the Same Name
One further piece of the record wants squaring up. The title on this listing is Transcendent, while the series it belongs to is Ascendant, and this is the second entry in it. Two reviewers say so plainly, one calling it simply the second book, another instructing you to read the first one first. The record carries both names without explaining how they relate, and the two words are close enough to be mistaken for each other at a glance.
Reynolds Alone Juggles Two Widening Story Tracks
Tim Gerard Reynolds is credited alone for all sixteen hours and ten minutes, and this story hands that single reader a great deal to keep apart: a young man discovering what the wizards concealed, a princess maneuvering toward a crown, a queen who will not decide, and the liars themselves. Two protagonists on separate tracks is the structural problem here, and in audio the work of signaling which track you are on falls entirely to delivery.
Soap-Operaish Twists Still Keep the Pace Fast
Suspense is what the reviewers keep reporting back. One describes plot twists that were totally unexpected and separate storylines converging by the end. Another calls it an edge of your seat, twisty tale, if a little soap operaish in places. A third says the pace stays fast enough to keep you moving while carrying more detail than the opening volume did. For a middle book that is the pattern worth having: more character development, more branches, no loss of speed.
Readers who like epic fantasy split between a magic plot and a court plot are well served here. The description sets both up in a sentence each, and the reviewers confirm they run in parallel, with Koren working out his identity while Ariana learns how complicated politics can get. Sixteen hours gives both threads room to breathe, and one response singles out the way different parts of the world keep getting pulled into the plot. A second volume is where a series of this kind either widens or repeats itself, and three separate entries report widening: more people, more places, more threads bending toward each other by the last chapter.
Nobody Agrees Whether She's Ariana or Adriana
Editing is the one recurring complaint, and it comes from the newest entry of the five. Filed in January 2026, it reports that the editing and proof reading had improved but still fell short, and it means text: line-level errors on a printed page. Whether a narrator smooths those over or stumbles on them is untested by anyone here. That same entry then asks whether the story continues in an available book yet, which arrives eight years after this volume came out and suggests its author was not following the series as it appeared.
Nobody agrees on the princess's name. The description spells her Ariana Trehayme; the earliest write-up calls her Adriana instead. That is a minor thing in print and a serious one in audio, where a listener gets one pass at a name and no way to check the letters. The same entry also describes politics as very completed where complicated was clearly meant, worth mentioning only as a measure of how lightly these write-ups were proofed themselves.
Eight and a half years of responses hang beneath a counter that admits to one rating. The oldest is dated December 2016, the newest July 2025, and the five graded entries between them break down as three fives and two fours. The average on display is 4.5. No rounding rule anyone uses turns a lone whole-star vote into that number, so whatever that figure measures, it is not the vote being counted. Five written verdicts stacked above one counted rating is the other half of the same problem, and nothing on the record explains how a page accumulates more essays than votes.
Cold Starts Are the Sequel's Main Hazard
Epic fantasy readers who have already finished the first book are the audience, and everyone who mentions sequence agrees. Two reviewers describe arriving here straight from the opening volume, and a third simply instructs you to read the first one first. The record files this under teen and young adult with no other tags, which undersells a story about succession, regency, and institutional lying, though the ages of the two leads go some way toward explaining the shelf. Anyone who listens in long uninterrupted stretches will find the length works in their favor, since a two-track plot of this size pays back continuous attention far better than ten-minute pickups.
Cold starts are the main hazard. The description explains nothing about what came before, the reviewers assume you have read it, and sixteen hours is a long way to travel while reconstructing a backstory from context alone. A second caution: the most recent reviewer, writing in 2026, still wanted to know whether the series had continued, so anyone starting now should work out where the sequence actually ends before committing. Anyone for whom a tight edit outranks momentum should look somewhere else.
What accounts for reviews dated before this audiobook was released?
Two entries, from December 2016 and January 2017, arrive ahead of the January 2018 release by as much as a year and two days. Both describe buying the book immediately after finishing the first, so they were written against an earlier edition and later gathered under this recording. Neither mentions a narrator.
Who narrates the sixteen hour Transcendent audiobook?
Tim Gerard Reynolds takes all sixteen hours and ten minutes alone, which means one voice for Koren Bladewell's magic plot and Ariana Trehayme's court plot at once. Podium Audio put the recording out on January 2, 2018, more than a year after the earliest written response appeared beneath it.
