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  • Golden Age

  • The Shifting Tides, Book 1
  • By: James Maxwell
  • Narrated by: Simon Vance
  • Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (238 ratings)
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Golden Age cover art

Golden Age

By: James Maxwell
Narrated by: Simon Vance
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Summary

The discovery of a strange and superior warship sends Dion, youngest son of the king of Xanthos, and Chloe, a Phalesian princess, on a journey across the sea, where they are confronted by a kingdom far more powerful than they could ever have imagined.

But they also find a place in turmoil, for the ruthless sun king, Solon, is dying. In order to gain entrance to heaven, Solon is building a tomb - a pyramid clad in gold - and has scoured his own empire for gold until there's no more to be found.

Now Solon's gaze turns to Chloe's homeland, Phalesia, and its famous sacred ark, made of solid gold. The legends say it must never be opened, but Solon has no fear of foreigners' legends or even their armies. And he isn't afraid of the eldren, an ancient race of shape-shifters, long ago driven into the Wilds.

For when he gets the gold, Solon knows he will live forever.

©2016 James Maxwell (P)2016 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

What listeners say about Golden Age

Average customer ratings
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  • Overall
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    5 out of 5 stars

Brilliant

I sure hope there is a follow up.
This narrator had me willing the story on. I wanted to know the end; yet savoured every detail on the way

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5 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Simon Vance's narration is his usual excellent job

Not my most favourite to be honest, I struggled to get into it and almost dropped out. Glad I stuck with it, the final third stepped up and delivered, albeit a little predictively in places. Good end and yes I will listen to the second installment.

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4 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent start

I loved James Maxwell's evermen saga and Simon Vance is one of my favourite narrators so this new series was always going to have huge potential. And I wasn't wrong. What an excellent start to this exciting new series. I absolutely loved it and jumping straight into book 2.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

A good start

A very enjoyable start to Chloe and Dions' intertwining story . James Maxwell has again introduced us an unique world with interesting characters. Simon Vance as always does a great job of the narration .

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Gripping

Gripping story line, very good audio narration between characters. A well thought out world by the author.

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3 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

great story that flows effortlessly

Maxwell has a wonderful way of twisting the knife just when you didn't expect it. He keeps your attention and rewards you in turn with an awesome twisting menagerie of characters

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3 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Brilliant

Enjoyed every moment and Simon Vance is fantastic as narrator have already downloaded the next in the series

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Golden age

Really good book, well narrated, I couldn't put it down looking forward to the next part :-)

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2 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Lazy and mostly unoriginal

There could have been a good story there somewhere but it’s lost in boring stretched sequences of the mundane and very little effort to actually flesh out the world the author was attempting to create - instead borrowing and imposing too much of our world into there. Characters are poorly developed and I laughed when I heard one of the two main characters only properly described more than half way through.

Simon Vance has a good voice for male characters but his attempts at high pitched female voices is hard to take seriously. He also (like Dune) manages to read the non English words in such a way as to make them sound foreign and alien, which is really the opposite of what he should be doing.

I skipped through the last couple of hours which I’m glad for because the final battle and conclusion (read: the author couldn’t be bothered to finish it in the hopes he’ll get to write more books) is lacklustre.

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1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great fantasy story

A different take on a fantasy story set in a hot/tropical land for once. I really enjoyed the story and the narrator was engaging. It did sound like the author had just discovered the word ‘swarthy’ as he used it liberally through the whole book!

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