The Renegade Apprentice

Also referred to as Evren's Story. This is a prequel novella to the Heirs of Destiny and the latest I've finished from the included Podium Audio prequels on Audible. 
This prequel novella focuses on the darker side of the world. Well, a fantasy world. It mainly focuses on the darker side of humans and human nature. Evren, an apprentice priest wants to escape the confines of his cell. The priests are nothing more than aggressive rapists and abusers, that call their nightly visits “prayers” (to me this is unfortunately mentioned so often it's literally beaten into the ground). The older apprentice boys manage a fight club, so that they can bet on others' suffering. When an opportunity to escape surfaces, Evren will soon find out that the streets are no safer or kinder. 
The rest that ensues, to me, doesn't really do anything in the way of setup for a series that I can see, other than perhaps giving backstory on the character of Evren. We also only get the world building through the eyes of exactly what the characters see. So a seedy church compound and seedy poor city streets. There's not much in the way of lore or anything else. I didn't mind or dislike listening to this one, but I find now that I can't really think of good things to say. 
I will say that the narrator didn't do a bad job, but he is American and doing an accent. Because it is not his actual accent, it comes off as sounding Spanish and Italian and Russian depending on what he's saying. Which I guess in a fantasy world isn't necessarily a bad thing at all, but it did pull me out of it more than once. 
Just didn't really work for me.