Rogue Merchant Books 1 and 2 - Roman Prokofiev
Language: EnglishKeywords:
Fantasy
LitRPG
Manapunk
Merchant
Sci-Fi
The Gene Of The Ancients
The Starlight Sword
Shared by:bd2232
Written by
Read by David Bendena, Pete Cross
Format: M4B
Bitrate: 128 Kbps
01 The Starlight Sword:
Dear Readers,
We’re relaunching this LitRPG series by Roman Prokofiev - or rather, we’re relaunching Book One. Some of you might have already read its previous version released a while ago by another publisher under the title Cat’s Game. The author has completely reworked the book’s first chapters; he’s also already completed Book Two of the series, fully intending to keep the story going. And we fully intend to release the whole series in English.
Rogue Merchant is a classic might-and-magic-style LitRPG series with the elements of manapunk. It’s set in the Sphere of the Worlds: a worldwide multiverse comprised of hundreds of worlds, from horrible Infernos ruled by Demon Lords to mechanical worlds inhabited by sentient constructs, and gigantic markets that have sprouted at the crossroads of trade routes.
Players use astral ships to travel between worlds, otherwise they have to venture into the perilous underground tunnels of the Endless Paths. Dozens of powerful clans share this delicious pie, scheming or waging wars against each other.
The series’ main character is Cat, a wannabe merchant who specializes in procuring in-game valuables to sell them for real money. He is a Free Merchant, which is both his character’s class and his playing style - as well as his preferred problem-solving method. Cat is a cunning trickster who wriggles his way out of trouble thanks to his quick wit and his trading talents. His credo is, “Anyone can be bought provided the price is right”.
Cat starts from scratch, using every opportunity to advance his plans. This book is the story of a common trader’s rise to greatness until he becomes the world’s new legend, the most famous merchant in the entire Sphere of the Worlds.
The series focuses on the economics of a game world, including various trade methods such as regular and auction trading, as well as social and political interactions between clans and players. Plenty of intrigue and espionage, betrayal, trade wars, besieged castles and epic air battles of flying ships - all this has already made the fantastical universe of Rogue Merchant popular with thousands of Russian readers.
Now it’s your turn to enjoy it.
02 The Gene of the Ancients
Now that Cat has discovered his sword’s secret and received the task to collect the Seven Keys, he’s not in a hurry to complete the new quest. Why would he care about the future of the world when he has much more exciting things to do, like claiming his place in the clan, participating in the redistributing of trade influence and just plain making money?
Cat starts building his own trading empire - and ends up getting involved in an all-out economic war. Having gotten the taste of real money, he travels to the Bazaar, the world’s biggest marketplace at the crossroads of trade routes, intending to finally show to all of the Sphere’s tycoons what he’s capable of. Cat is serious about making it to the top, earning influence, money, new risky deals, new friends and new enemies in the process. And once he finally makes it big, he suddenly gains a new a stranger who turns out of be the god of shadows, rogues and traders who takes interest in the brazen merchant.
Following the route his new patron god has shown him, Cat arrives at the legendary Helt Acor, to the Endless Paths of the Ancients whose finest web permeates the very fabric of Creation. Their tunnels form the most perilous dungeon in the whole of the Sphere. Only the one in possession of the Ancient Gene can tread in the footsteps of the long-perished race and find the most amazing of all treasures. And in the end of their journey, the daring adventure-seekers should brace themselves for a surprise…
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| Creation Date: | Sat, 19 Oct 2024 15:28:12 +0200 |
| This is a Multifile Torrent | |
| 02 The Gene of the Ancients.m4b 684.15 MBs | |
| 01 The Starlight Sword.m4b 840.38 MBs | |
| Combined File Size: | 1.49 GBs |
| Piece Size: | 2 MBs |
| Comment: | Updated by AudioBook Bay |
| Encoding: | UTF-8 |
| Info Hash: | 08722e705bdd1596130315fc892ce59538332af8 |
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This post has 8 comments with rating of 4.6/5
October 19th, 2024
Okay, these are the first 2 books in the series. Had this one on a thumb drive for a bit and, had forgot to up it (with work being crazy).
Have heard of the author before and, liked his other series (that is upped on here).
I think most will like these books. It is different and, I do have more in the series to up.
Will put more of the Rogue Merchant books up after this is seeded and, I have an ‘emergency’ 5 hour shift this afternoon to try and fix the ’slight’ problem someone made. Slight is like saying an elephant is just a tiny bit bigger than a freaking cat. lol
Have a great Saturday folks.
bd.:)
October 19th, 2024
Thanks for the upload, mate. Seems like a welcome diversion from the usual fantasy fare.
October 20th, 2024
Thank you
October 20th, 2024
Thanks
October 20th, 2024
Thank you!!
October 20th, 2024
@bd2232 You dont work in wastewater do you? Goodluck with your OT shift though. THanks again for the series and all your efforts put forth here. getting called in just reminded me of when my dad used to get called in when people screwed up on his days off.
October 3rd, 2025
Thanks for the upload!
Finished the first book. Surprisingly adequate. The bad things I can say about it, are:
- The MC is never a likeable one. It is, in my opinion, a result of modern Russian culture. In communist sci-fi such a character would be, probably, considered a degenerate. On the other hand, he is also not evil or stupid or irritating. It’s just I didn’t really care for him one way or another.
- The author makes a use of cheap emotional manipulation tactics to produce strong emotions in the reader/listener. I really hated it.
- The author sometimes tries to make the plot more exciting by using time jumps or switcheroos. I found it unnecessary and annoying.
- As usual, the main plot doesn’t get resolved at the end of book 1.
The thing is, the book would be just fine without all the negatives mentioned above. The world has the typical cyberpunk/VR-game setting that seems different enough so not to be tiresomely generic. This aspect strongly reminds me of the “Ready Player One” film (I didn’t read the book). The characters aren’t stupid or too cartoonishly evil or good. The plot progresses in a more-or-less satisfactory pace. The audiobook’s narrator isn’t a perfect match because it feels like many characters should sound much younger and the accents feel random, but, on the other hand, he wasn’t irritating.
October 3rd, 2025
Regarding book II (in addition to my review of book I). Four hours in. It gets more stupid, bloated and unfocused, compared to the first book. Starting to remind me the Stellar series which I abandoned at book I.
More specifically:
Firstly, the characters’ IQ level has plummeted for some reason. To me, the MC’s intelligence level is a function of author’s respect towards his readers. The smarter the MC is, the more intelligent I as a reader is assumed to be by the author. Considering the MC is actually living in this world and much more invested in his story than I am, I also expect him to apply at least as much thought to his situation as I am during reading/listening. Stupidly behaving MC not only isn’t engaging, but also feels like the author is being lazy at my expense.
Secondly, the lore is very mutable. Again, for reasons of author’s convenience the lore which was established previously gets significantly changed. For example, the ultimate system instrument designed for destroying anything within than virtual world, suddenly can be countered quite easily. In other words, first author creates an ultimate OP cheat weapon for the MC, but then decides to nerf it so to create a challenge. And the supposed explanation is “well, you see, there is a type of objects that actually cannot be destroyed at all…”. Which, of course, negates the original lore of a top admin tool, specifically designed to destroy (i.e. delete) anything within the system.
The third problem is the bloated exposition and slowing down in progression of the main plot. Author has previously created a lot of secondary plot lines in order to give the story more depth and make it more exciting and complicated. But if the main plot’s objective is already known, having the MC doing some new side quests for no good reason while abandoning the old ones and the main objective is just frustrating. And on top of it, we get a lot of pointless exposition we don’t care about. If we see a major goal ahead — why would we be interested in these pointless subplots?
The fourth problem is the morality. In the first book the MC was established as a con man who mostly care about himself. If he see something bad happening to others then he feels bad, but not to the point of making it a priority. In the second book when his personal problems are more or less resolved, he still doesn’t care enough about the morality of his deeds, actually going through with an obviously immoral plan.
So, not only I as a reader don’t connect to this character, but I also has to question why was he chosen by other significant character in the book to play a major role in the system management? He has demonstrated himself to be unintelligent, easily manipulated, self-involved and having gray morals at best. Yet he is some kind of a chosen one. Why?
In conclusion. I didn’t like at all the Stellar series, but decided to give the author another chance with the “Stardust Sword”. The first book was surprisingly OK. The second one is a significant step-down. I’m now convinced that it will only get worse from here. Still, since I only rate based on what I’ve actually listened to, I’ll give it 3 stars out of 5.
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