Kurt
I almost skipped over this book because, really, how interesting can a story about a pacifist be?
Fairly interesting, as it turns out. There was a surprising amount of action for a book with a MC that doesn't fight and I felt the overall story moved along at a good clip. Character development was good, along with the world building. Couple of minor typos that I found and posted on Goodreads, but nothing out of the ordinary for this space.
Anyway, they say don't judge a book by its cover and, at least for this novel, you shouldn't judge it by its title. It's a fun read that exceeds expectations for this genre.
Not sure why this one didn't grab me. The world-building was good, the prose was solid and the characters were reasonably developed. I just couldn't find myself caring about any of them, however, especially the MC. He is an intelligent young man, but he didn't really seem to have much personality imo.
Also quite a few typos and punctuation mistakes that kept breaking the immersion for me.
This series has not gotten any better. The main redeeming feature of the series is each book is very short, so you can read through them quickly. That said, on a percentage basis, I don't think I've ever read another series that has as many typos, grammatical errors and general mistakes than this series. There seems to be little-to-no attention to detail, or even any care for detail. Missing quotes, extra commas, ‘pf' instead of ‘of', the mistakes are nearly endless. It got to the point where I kept reading just to see how many more mistakes I could find.
Adding to the frustation, the MC complains in this book that the System didn't include mana or HP bars in his display. Yet in Book 1, page 8, the author writes, “Leo also noticed two colored lines running across the top right-hand side of the screen. A red one labeled (HP) and a blue one labeled (MP).” Just another example of the lack of attention to detail and it really breaks immersion for someone paying the least bit of attention to the RPG side of things.
Then, on top of that, the MC is on easy mode the entire time. Yes, I enjoy stories about OP MCs, but this is more like a MC walking through a park and occasionally having to swat at a few mosquitos.
Anyway, dropping the series here.
Solid concept made worse by poor editing and lack of attention to detail. This book is a fairly standard System LitRPG story with what is clearly intended to be an OP MC. It's also fairly crunchy, with lots of stats, leveling and skills. However, the author does an extremely poor job of actually tracking stats progression. So, in one chapter a stat will be 40 and, in the next chapter, the MC will “dump 15 points into it” and the new stat will be 45. For anyone who enjoys tracking the character's leveling progress, this can be incredibly distracting and breaks the immersion something fierce.
Beyond that, there are numerous typos and grammatical errors, even more than is typical for the genre. Again, it breaks immersion.
Lastly, as others have noted, the author makes LIBERAL use of plot armor, which stretches to the extreme how much disbelief has to be suspended by the reader. It's almost cartoonish in how extreme it is.
I'll probably see how the second book goes to see if things improve at all, but this was a poor showing for the first book in the series.
I don't know why some LitRPG authors start off writing actual LitRPG books, only to all-but-abandon that format later in the series. Book 3 of this series is the latest example of an author choosing that path. Gone are all of the detailed stats and there's only the most cursory nod to even levels in the book. Where previous books had tons of loot, which was an integral part of the story, the author deliberately and consciously starts toning down the loot in this book.
The story is still interesting, but what used to be a great series is now just a mediocre, standard post apocalyptic zombie series.
Very disappointing.
There's a fine line between ‘bold and confident' and ‘raging douchebag' and the MC for this story falls on the wrong side of that line. The story itself is fairly boilerplate LitRPG, with a (small, easily-skipped) dash of harem involved, but good lord the MC is like nails on a chalkboard to me, and I just couldn't get past that.
Add to that the trope that many authors run afoul of - the MC can do no wrong and never faces a challenge that he can't overcome, easily and without much effort. He just strolls in, solves whatever needs solving, boasting about how great he is the entire time. Barf.
So, yeah, not the book for me.
Solid, fun read. Setting is a system apocalypse type scenario, except with zombies. Lots of zombies. Fairly traditional litRPG with stats, leveling, loot, etc.
The book was originally written in Russian and the prose is noticeably different. Not bad - but you can tell it's not Western prose. If you've read other Russian authors, you know what I'm referring to.
MC is moderately overpowered, but not insanely so. Lots of action and the story moves along at a fast pace.
Fun book overall.
The concept was great. The execution? Not so much. Starting with the protagonist - I despised him. He has almost no redeeming qualities whatsoever and, the more the book progresses, the further the cringe factor gets. He's a loser, through and through. This was the single biggest detractor for the overall book - I loathed the protagonist and could not care less about what happened to him. And, without spoiling the ending, that only made it worse.
Then there's the overall plot - basically, we live in a normal world but somehow, an AI goes off the rails and does all sorts of magical things. Only there's no magic...and no explanation of what might have caused the unusual behavior. Just...hand waving and a hope that the reader will accept it. Which, fair enough - suspending disbelief is part of lots of literary works, but suspense here was stretched beyond the breaking point.
The concept could have been executed so much better - think like the movie ‘Limitless' or something similar. But...the author chose a different direction and couldn't pull it off.
I almost dropped this book after the first ~2-3% because there were an atrocious number of grammatical errors, to the point where it was incredibly distracting. Especially, turns of phrases were used incorrectly. (think: “for all intensive purposes”) However, that seemed to taper off and the remaining ~90% of the book had far fewer issues.
The book itself is solid. It's good, not great. As with nearly every book that comes from Royal Road, I felt this was significantly longer than it needed to be and I found myself glossing over significant chunks of the book because I just didn't care about whatever was going on.
On the positive side, there is plenty of action in the book and a decent amount of crunchiness. The world building was good, not great, but it did get better in the second half of the book once they got to the tournament. That said, overall the second half of the book was significantly better IMO - I'd give the second half a solid 4 stars, where the first half was 2.5 at best.
Anyway, at ~800 pages, and with so many other choices out there, this book didn't really grab me enough to make me want to continue with that level of time investment.
Worst of the series by far. This book meanders and drags with a fraction of the action and excitement of earlier installments. Additionally, there was one very odd, very out-of-place preachy section on consent that broke the immersion something fierce and soured a good chunk of the book for me.
Additionally, this book was FAR too long at ~750 pages and DESPERATELY needed a good copy editor to come along and cut at least a third of the crap out. This is a chronic issue with Royal Road books since they're released one chapter at a time, but it was particularly acute in this book.
I'm still invested in the overall plot, so plan to continue, but this one was an absolute clunker.
I almost didn't give this book a chance because of all of the Negative Nancy reviews complaining about the sexism in this book. And, guess what? The book is full of sexism. But it's certainly not glorifying it and, in fact, the MC spends a good chunk of the book railing against it.
For the people whining about the sexism: this was a fact of life in western society in the not too distant past. It STILL IS a fact of life in many other parts of the world. This book acknowledges the reality of humanity, albeit in a fantasy setting.
This book DOES NOT leave you with the impression that sexism is good or that women should “know their place”. It DOES leave you with the impression that the author was attempting to show the struggles of women in a less egalitarian society.
So, all that nonsense aside, the book is solid with a decent, but not perfect, leveling system. It's fairly crunchy LitRPG fare, but the author could do a better job of showing how the increase in stats translates to an increase in ability. For the most part, it seemed like Elaine could do anything she needed to do simply by having whatever skill was needed, whether that skill was level 1 or level 100.
But this is a fun read with an atypical take on traditional LitRPG and I always have a soft spot for those kinds of books. Worth a read imo.
The first half of this book was great. Very cute and kitschy, with a nice blend of slice-of-life and adventure.
The second half of the book was almost entirely slice-of-life and, if that's your thing, you'll likely love this book. For me, I found it a bit slow and boring, without the good blend of excitement that the first half of the book had.
All that said, the book is well-written, the world building is decent and I can see why many people love this book. I'm just not one of them.
DNF. Maybe I didn't last long enough, but there wasn't any strife, adversity or obstacles that required overcoming. The biggest challenge they faced (at least in the first part of the book) was finding queen honey bees.
I know this is a ‘slice of life' genre, but it's maybe a bit too sliced for my tastes.
A wonderful book that I truly enjoyed. The interplay between the characters was especially good. A slightly slower pace than I typically prefer, but still done extremely well. More of a ‘slice of life' type of book vs. anything with non-stop action. That said, the author has certainly set up future installments to be able to have more action and I'm curious to see how the series will unfold.
An interesting and innovative take on LitRPG. All the basic building blocks (leveling, stats, experience, etc) of LitRPG are in the story, but the author has put them together in a very different way.
This is definitely Russian literature in that the series is perhaps a bit darker and grittier than your traditional LitRPG read, but not in a bad way. Still, don't go in expecting unicorns and rainbows. Also, the copy editing wasn't the greatest, with a number of typos throughout the book. Not too distracting, overall, however.
Worth a read if you enjoy LitRPG!
Probably the best of the series so far, this book has more plot and storyline, less on the litrpg side of things. But still a very enjoyable book as the author continues to build an incredibly immersive world.
Copy editing was worse in this book, however, especially with character names. The protagonist was (incorrectly) referred to by three separate names in this book: Garrett (correct), Garrick and, believe it or not, John in one spot. That really threw me and definitely broke the immersion. Still, overall a great read.
A novel and refreshing take on the progression/litrpg space. This is not your typical litrpg book and the protagonist is, for once, not a spellsword. In fact, he has almost no physical ability whatsoever and, indeed, is relegated to a wheelchair. Yet the author still manages to paint an engaging, immersive world revolving around the MC and his quest for prosperity and stability.
I always appreciate innovative takes in this space and have thoroughly enjoyed this series so far. It's not super crunchy, but there is enough focus on stats to keep it firmly in the genre. If the idea of a story about a MC with intellectual prowess rather than martial prowess is appealing to you, give this series a go.
DNF at 25%. I just couldnt get into the book and the author seemed more interested in throwing made up scientific-sounding words out there than actually moving the plot forward. There's a fine line between leaving enough breadcrumbs for the reader to figure out what's going on and leaving the reader lost and in the dust. For me, there weren't enough breadcrumbs.
Maybe it would have gelled nicely had I stuck it out, but I simply lost interest
Brilliant analysis of the psychosis that has taken over the extreme left over the last few years. Murray doesn't break new ground, necessarily, but he points out significant errors in thinking, as well as hyberbolic and hypocritical views of advocates of far left ideologies.
Well worth a read/listen.
This book was awful, more so because it had a ton of unrealized potential. Others have commented on the uneven pacing - I'll echo that and add on that it's ~75% slow and plodding with ~25% bursts of things that are actually interesting. At 722 pages, a good copy editor could have got this down to 250 pages easy.
Beyond that, there's no progression system to speak of, so this isn't really a “progression fantasy” as the author claims. It's more a straight fantasy series where one of the secondary characters happens to do the tiniest bit of cultivation.
And then there's the absence of anything even resembling a plot. It's mostly just a “day in the life” sort of book where the protagonist takes whatever comes his way and rolls with it.
I basically lost interest in the series here, largely due to the protagonist being an annoying twatwaffle. The “clueless boy unaware of girl's interest” continues and, if anything, is amplified. Add onto that an annoying pacifist streak that emerged and...yeah, not my favorite.
Which is unfortunate, because I like the world the author built and the broader story arc. But I cannot get past the annoying MC.