Mask of the Template: A Monster Girl Harem Fantasy cover art

Mask of the Template: A Monster Girl Harem Fantasy

Celestine Chronicles Series, Book 1

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Mask of the Template: A Monster Girl Harem Fantasy

Written by: Cebelius
Narrated by: Tess Irondale
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Not all heroes go to heaven.

Terrence Mack was born poor, grew up tough, and died hard. Waking up in a sea cave with nothing but the clothes on his back and a new bullet scar was enough to convince him that wherever his death had brought him, it wasn't paradise.

His new world quickly proves to be a place of danger, magic, monsters, and - for Terry at least - women.

Known on Celestine as a template, Terry's genes are key to the survival of the eldritch races. But the fiercely competitive eldritch don't typically leave their lovers alive long, and aren't accustomed to taking 'no' for an answer.

The average life expectancy of a template on Celestine? Three days.

A city boy with no survival skills to speak of, Terry sets out in a desperate bid to gather allies. With the help of a lonely dryad, a mixed-up minotress, and a misguided party of dungeon delvers, he must be brave, cunning, and good with the ladies to have any hope of living through the month.

All the while an ancient evil bent on the destruction of Celestine exists in the north, and templates are the key to its southern expansion....

Warning: This book does not pan to waving curtains and fade to black. Those uninterested or under the age of 18 are strongly warned of explicit content.

©2018 Cebelius (P)2018 Cebelius Epic Epic Fantasy Fantasy Fiction Survival
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Finally, quality characters and narrations. looking forward to book 2. Well worth the credit.

Nice

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This was my first introduction to the MG harem genre and it was great! Cebelius' usage of the "transported to another world" motif worked well and he did a great job building the characters and the world. Also, Tess Irondale was an absolute delight to listen to (up there with greats like Kate Reading, in my humble opinion). This combination left me wanting to hear more or just start it over... again and again!

Greatly surprised

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I must admit i was not sur about Tess Irondale voice at the begin, but the more i hear it, he more it feel right.

Probably the best and most realistic isekai. The fact that he think about his family and miss them, the fact that he almost lost his mind due to stress of a new environnement and so much more real details make this first book a masterpiece. I m telling you the physcolagical level of this book is really good.

Great first book

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I am new to audiobooks, much preferring to read things. When my wife got the Audible subscription and then never used it, I have tried my credits with two books that I have already read.

The first I was not impressed with the voice actor (no names, no pack drill), but I decided to try a different book with a different voice actor. I was very pleased with Tess Irondale's treatment of this, finding her baseline contralto-ish voice to have a good range for female and male characters. I was prepared to be picky, as this is one of my favourite book series, but I will definitely listen to books I like if she's narrating it.

A great book gets a great performance

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I'm leaving this review on the first book for interested parties but this review is not strictly for the first book. I'm a little under halfway through book 6 at time of writing.

TL;DR This book has a stable of monster girls diverse enough in body type that by the end of the series there'll probably be something for you. It also explores enough monster girl related kinks enough you likely won't be disappointing in that regard either. The setting is a bit generic but logically consistent and well thought out, the plot is typical isekai fare but competently executed, but the characters. Oh my god the characters. I can't remember falling so in love with a group of characters in a book since I read the Dark Tower series or was watching Gintama. I seriously like them that much.

After the disappointment of Making Monster Girls by Eric Vall, I was looking for something decent. My hope was to find a book that had the bones of an at least passable fantasy novel that also happened to have monster girl harem elements. In Celestine Chronicles, I found a very engaging isekai story that in addition to having monster girl harem elements had surprisingly well written and likeable characters. I don't typically read Fantasy so it's unlikely that I would have picked this book up without the harem elements, but in the hypothetical world where I read this exact same story reworked without the adult/harem elements, I think I would still rate this quite highly and would not hesitate to recommend it. I don't know if I can give it higher praise than that.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that means the adult passages are lack luster though. As the harem grows throughout the course of the series, the monster girls become very diverse, both in terms of body types and personalities. If you have any particular inclinations, there is a very good chance there will be at least one scene in the series for you. The monster girls range from borderline human to pretty far into the monster girl extreme. By the end of the series, you will have read scenes with tentacles, quadripeds, giants, and a few other body types besides. As someone who only recently became interested in monster girls, half the fun of reading this book for me is seeing how Cebelius will make the adult scene with a particularly monstrous girl erotic and with one exception where he straight up dodges the adult scene, he does not disappoint. And their physiques are quite diverse too, even if they do skew a bit more muscular and busty than is my preference.

This book is also not shy about indulging kinks, and you'll know what I mean by that before the halfway point in the first book. Once again, the diversity of the kinks explored is high enough that if you have a particular monster girl related kink, odds are pretty good that there will be a scene for your particular kink before the end of the series.

The strongest part of this book for me though was the characters. It's possible that coming into this book hot off of Making Monster Girls, which had characters defined entirely by their love of the protagonist, lowered my bar a bit but I don't think that's the case. Each woman in the harem has her own trauma, motivation, flaws, and quirks. The relationships between them are also well executed, and the women within the harem have different relationships not only with the protagonist, Terry, but with each other as well. The relationships change and the conflict that arises when the characters want different things is believable and fun to watch play out.

This book is also about as respectful to women as such a story can be. Through out the story, Terry (almost) always gets consent, treats people with respect when they deserve it, he's incredibly sensitive to the women's hangups, and and he never once body shames any of them. If you haven't read Making Monster Girls, this is a huge improvement from that and I was boundlessly thankful for it.

The only thing I dislike about this series is that it's a monster girl harem story where the protagonist actively avoids adding girls to the harem. This is not a problem at all in the first book, but becomes increasingly so in books 2 and 3 before plateauing at book 4. This is absolutely consistent with Terry's character so I feel kind of bad complaining about it but there were a few monster girls that Terry encounters that were within my... area of interest, but Terry does not hook up with them and I feel a little bit cheated as a result.

All in all I loved this series and kind of regret burning through it as quickly as I have. I am really gonna miss these characters when I've finished the series.

Exactly what I was looking for

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