Nick Podehl Audiobooks: 8 LitRPG Series, Where to Start
Nick Podehl audiobooks in LitRPG: 8 series, 45 books, 686 hours on Audible. Start with The Land: Founding or Life in the North, both under 10 hours.
8 min readBy LevelUpShelf EditorialLast reviewed
TL;DR: For game-style LitRPG start with Chaos Seeds (The Land: Founding, 9 h 49 m) or The System Apocalypse (Life in the North, 9 h 51 m). For progression fantasy, Arcane Ascension (Sufficiently Advanced Magic, 21 h 58 m). He reads every book of the four series we track book by book. Next up: Weapons and Wielders book 4 on November 3, 2026.
Start with The Land: Founding if you want Nick Podehl audiobooks at their most LitRPG: book 1 of Chaos Seeds is 9 hours 49 minutes and has 34,094 Audible ratings. Audible lists 426 audiobooks with him as a narrator, and 45 of them sit in the eight LitRPG and progression fantasy series below. Those 45 come to 686 hours 30 minutes. Below: the eight series, where to start in each, his longest book, and what listeners say about his voices.
Key Takeaways
- 8 series, 45 audiobooks, 686 h 30 m of LitRPG and progression fantasy by our sum.
- Two short starts: Chaos Seeds 1 and System Apocalypse 1 are both under 10 hours.
- The most-rated: Sufficiently Advanced Magic (35,362) and The Land: Founding (34,094).
- Longest single book: The Land: Predators, 46 h 56 m.
- Three pre-orders are listed for November and December 2026 (checked Oct 27).
Nick Podehl Audiobooks at a Glance
Every series here has a LitRPG, cultivation or progression fantasy label in its Audible title or publisher blurb, or appears in our own series data. Lengths and ratings are Audible's, read on our check date.
| Series | Author | Books | Total | Book 1 | Book 1 rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chaos Seeds (The Land) | Aleron Kong | 8 | 137 h 42 m | 9 h 49 m | 4.6 (34,094) |
| The System Apocalypse | Tao Wong | 12 | 129 h 45 m | 9 h 51 m | 4.5 (3,227) |
| Arcane Ascension | Andrew Rowe | 6 | 118 h 43 m | 21 h 58 m | 4.6 (35,362) |
| Immortal Great Souls | Phil Tucker | 4 | 117 h 16 m | 38 h 23 m | 4.7 (3,602) |
| I'm Not the Hero | Tommy Kerper, SourpatchHero | 5 | 80 h 54 m | 17 h 34 m | 4.5 (4,646) |
| The Rogue Dungeon | James Hunter, eden Hudson | 5 | 49 h 46 m | 7 h 41 m | 4.6 (4,930) |
| Jeff the Game Master | Jaime Castle, Troy Osgood | 3 | 33 h 20 m | 10 h 59 m | 4.4 (1,357) |
| The Quintessence: Crucible | C.M. Carney | 2 | 19 h 4 m | 10 h 22 m | 4.5 (639) |
Desk note: Nick Podehl reads three of the 25 series in our longest LitRPG audiobook series ranking: Chaos Seeds, The System Apocalypse and Arcane Ascension. Those three alone come to 386 h 10 m. The Land: Predators (46 h 56 m) is longer than Chaos Seeds books 1 to 4 put together (44 h 47 m).
Cover: Audible product page
Where to Start With Nick Podehl Audiobooks
1. For classic game-world LitRPG: Chaos Seeds. Audible subtitles the books "A LitRPG Saga". Book 1, The Land: Founding, runs 9 h 49 m. Books 1 to 6 all came out in 2017; book 8, The Land: Monsters, followed on June 2, 2020. Book 8 is also the lowest-rated of the eight on Audible, 4.1 against 4.6 to 4.9 for the rest.
2. For a finished apocalypse: The System Apocalypse. Twelve books, from Life in the North to System Finale (January 18, 2023), 129 h 45 m in all. Audible subtitles book 1 "An Apocalyptic LitRPG". Its current pages for books 1 to 3 are Starlit Publishing editions dated March 2024; books 4 to 12 date from 2018 to 2023.
3. For progression fantasy: Arcane Ascension. The Audible blurb for book 4 calls it "a progression fantasy epic that mixes dungeon crawling and magical school content." Book 1, Sufficiently Advanced Magic, is the most-rated audiobook in this list. Our Arcane Ascension reading order has the Kindle dates and page counts.
4. For one long run: Immortal Great Souls. Four books, 117 h 16 m, and book 1, Bastion, alone is 38 h 23 m. Book 4, The Lost Cube, came out on May 26, 2026.
Cover: Audible product page
The Shorter Series
- I'm Not the Hero (Podium Audio): every title carries "An Isekai LitRPG". Five books since December 19, 2023; book 5, Crucible of Sundered Loyalties, came out August 4, 2026.
- The Rogue Dungeon (Shadow Alley Press): Audible subtitles book 1 "A litRPG Adventure"; five books from 2018 to 2021. Book 1, at 7 h 41 m, is the shortest start on this page.
- Jeff the Game Master (Podium Audio): book 1 is Manufacturing Magic: A LitRPG Adventure; book 2's blurb promises "a unique spin on the LitRPG genre". Three books, 2021 to 2022.
- The Quintessence: Crucible (Book Room Press): book 1, Awakened, is billed as "An Epic Cultivation LitRPG Saga". Two books, 2020 and 2022.
Coming Next on Audible
| Date | Title | Series | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 3, 2026 | Flowbreaker | Weapons and Wielders, book 4 (Andrew Rowe) | 25 h 17 m |
| Dec 1, 2026 | Monarchs of Madness | Master of Puppets, book 3 (Eric Ugland) | 11 h 25 m |
| Dec 8, 2026 | Blessed by Death: An Archmage's Second Life | Blessed by Death, book 1 (Euterpe) | 21 h 40 m |
All three are pre-orders with no ratings yet. Monarchs of Madness is the publisher Aethon's title; Audible lists it as "Monarchs of Malice" (checked Oct 24, 2026), with the same December 1 date and length. Blessed by Death, from Podium Audio, showed up in our October 27 re-check; Audible files it under Action & Adventure and Epic, not LitRPG. Weapons and Wielders shares Andrew Rowe's Arcane Ascension universe; Audible's blurb for Master of Puppets calls Eric Ugland a "powerhouse LitRPG author". The Flowbreaker and Master of Puppets dates will be on our release calendar.
Cover: Audible product page
Where Listeners Split on Nick Podehl
His female voices are the argument. u/Soundmindsoundsright, in a 2025 r/litrpg thread asking for Podehl LitRPGs: "He really really shines. Lots of females with accents. Nails it." (comment, July 1, 2025). In an older thread titled "Why can't everyone be like Nick Podehl?", u/ntenga disagreed: "If i understand it right he also makes the women's voices right? and i find them too nasally" (comment, September 25, 2019).
The same thread has the strongest case for him. u/Ameizing: "I don’t think I would have made it through Chaos seeds without Nick Podehl. He just makes it so much more enjoyable when parts could have been incredibly cringy." (comment, September 27, 2019).
I don’t think I would have made it through Chaos seeds without Nick Podehl. He just makes it so much more enjoyable when parts could have been incredibly cringy.
Authors are fans too. Andrew Rowe, pointing readers to another of his audiobooks on his blog, called it "narrated by the fantastic Nick Podehl!"
Beyond LitRPG
Audible's catalog returned 426 audiobooks with Nick Podehl as a narrator when we searched, 334 of them with him alone. Most are not LitRPG: the list runs through Kel Kade's King's Dark Tidings (7 books) and Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books, among many others. Super Sales on Super Heroes is the near miss for this page: Jeff Hays reads book 1 and Podehl books 2 to 6.
Cover: Audible product page
Our take
Our pick: start with The Land: Founding, then try Sufficiently Advanced Magic. Both have over 34,000 Audible ratings, and the first costs under 10 hours, so you hear his voices before a long commitment.
Skip it (for now) if: a male narrator's female voices bother you; that is the one complaint listeners repeat.
What we don't know yet: whether Chaos Seeds gets a book 9; Audible lists nothing after The Land: Monsters as of our check.
How we checked this
On October 24, 2026 we searched Audible's catalog by narrator (426 results) and read the catalog data for every audiobook in the eight series: title, series number, date, length, publisher, rating and blurb. Totals are our sums of Audible's lengths. The series list is ours: we kept series whose Audible title or blurb says LitRPG, cultivation or progression fantasy, plus Immortal Great Souls from our series data. Reader quotes come from r/litrpg threads read through the Arctic Shift archive. We have not listened to these ourselves.
Related Reading
- Travis Baldree audiobooks: the other narrator behind several of the longest LitRPG series.
- Andrea Parsneau audiobooks: The Wandering Inn's narrator and where to start with her.
- Best LitRPG audiobooks: the series listeners name most, with narrators and lengths.
Frequently Asked Questions
What LitRPG audiobooks does Nick Podehl narrate? Eight series in our count, 45 audiobooks.
Which Nick Podehl audiobook should I start with? The Land: Founding or Life in the North, both under 10 hours.
What is the longest Nick Podehl audiobook? The Land: Predators, 46 h 56 m.
How many audiobooks has Nick Podehl narrated? 426 in Audible's catalog when we searched.
Does Nick Podehl narrate every book in these series? In the four we track book by book, yes.
References
About the author
The LevelUpShelf desk
The LevelUpShelf desk reads the store pages and the reader threads so you can pick book 1 with the numbers in front of you. Every count is dated and linked.
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About this article
LevelUpShelf is independent: no ads, no sponsored posts, and nobody pays to be on a list. Some store links are affiliate links: we may earn a commission if you buy through one, and it never decides what we list (affiliate links). As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Book counts, release dates, audiobook lengths and ratings are snapshots from the date we checked them; publishers and stores change listings, so check the store page before you buy. Recommendations come from cited reader discussions, not from reading we claim to have done. Articles are researched and written with AI tools, and every fact is checked against its source before publishing. See how the desk works and how we use AI.