Kurt
This is a solid LitRPG series, with a few minor quibbles. The good: plenty of action, plenty of monsters (human and otherwise) and plenty of interesting characters. The protagonist doesn't seem like a goodie-two-shoes and isn't afraid to do what needs to be done. The story sucks you in (mostly) and speeds you along the plot at a good clip.
The quibbles: the economy is inconsistent. Some things are expensive while other things are cheap and it isn't intuitive as to which is what. Frankly, I get the impression the author makes some things super expensive when he wants to keep it out of reach to the protagonist and cheap when he doesn't. While I get it...I would rather see a consistent economy that is rational and makes sense.
Lastly, like nearly all books that start on Royal Road, et al, this could benefit from some serious copy editing. I have yet to read a RR (or similar) book that couldn't be ~30% slimmer without losing anything of the story.
Still, good read overall.
I was torn between 3 and 4 stars on this, so call it 3.5, with the tie going to the author.
The good: solid, settlement-building story with lots of detail. Decent characters and back story and solid writing. A few typos here and there, but nothing abnormal (for the genre) and nothing that is overly distracting. In other words: A good, solid read.
The opportunities: Name a LitRPG trope and this book probably has it. It breaks no new ground, but also doesn't really try to. It's the meatloaf and mashed potatoes of LitRPG. My biggest beef are the inconsistencies in the leveling system. The attributes are not consistent throughout the book - it starts off as charm, moves to charisma, then moves back to charm. That sort of thing bugs me and breaks the immersion. Without that one flaw, this book would be a solid four stars.
The story was solid and I enjoyed the world building and the protagonist. But the system mechanics did not seem to be based on any sort of solid foundation. That is to say, where some system mechanics are very logical and orderly, such that simple math allows you to see how a character got from A to B, the mechanics in this book seems to use way less math and way more artistic license.
That was a HUGE distraction for me, as it seemed like the author would just randomly make numbers up to fit the story line vs. actually having a logically-based leveling system.
I'm surprised I liked this book at all, let alone as much as I did. It has all the elements I usually avoid in fantasy novels - lots of politics and court intrigue, combined with not much in the way of actual action. It's dialogue-heavy with nary a battle to be found. (Indeed, weapons are conspicuously absent in the book)
But the author did a masterful job of providing insight into the protagonist. I felt connected to him in a way few other books can manage. The book wasn't so much about court intrigue as much as it was about Maia's reaction to the court intrigue - and that was what made it so engrossing.
The book is incredibly rich and textured, with So. Many. Characters. Indeed, I spent a good chunk of time looking up the characters to remind myself of their place in the story. (side note: read this on a Kindle if you can - x-ray was invaluable)
Anyway, the book is fantastic and one of my favorites of the year so far. Give it a shot, even if you typically avoid these kinds of stories.
So, I liked it. But...
...what I liked most about the first two books was the ambiguity of the characters' moral foundations. The story was not clearly about good vs. evil - it was much murkier than that. Indeed, the protagonist was not even human, but rather a monster.
This book deviated significantly from that format and adopted a more traditional “good vs. evil” philosophy. The adventurers are the good guys and the monsters are the bad guys and everything is right in the world. That may be overstating it slightly, but...it didn't have the same spark that the first two books had for me.
All that said, it's still incredibly well-written. The world building is fantastic, the plot is engaging and it's, overall, a great LitRPG book. It just isn't as great as the first two, unfortunately.
One other minor quibble: there's far less LitRPG in this book. Some, certainly, but less than the prior installments. This book felt more like a fantasy book with sprinkles of a leveling system vs. a solid, crunchy LitRPG book.
This book was significantly slower and less interesting to me than the first two installments. There seemed to be a lot less action in this book and a lot more focus on wall thickness, wall height, wall density and wall materials. Not that I don't appreciate a nice wall as much as the next guy, but it felt a bit...too front and center in this book. And not just walls - there was a tremendous focus on base building in this book, which I would typically enjoy, but this somehow felt flat to me. Just...uninteresting.
Add to that the various threads of the plot in this book and the prior installments that just seem to get abandoned and I couldn't stay engaged with the book.
This will be the final installment for me in the series.
Really enjoyed the book overall. Much more gritty, realistic type of system apocalypse LitRPG than most. The author doesn't do a great job of explaining the details of the system (at least compared to other books I've read), but it's good enough to get the high points, at least.
Character development is solid and I appreciated the lack of plot armor in the book. Overall, a solid start to the series and I'm looking forward to the next installment.
One gripe that I didn't let influence my star rating: the author chronically and persistently misuses the term ‘clip' in the book, instead of ‘magazine'. Given that guns are featured prominently throughout the book, it is a significant distraction for anyone who knows anything about firearms. This may seem petty to some, but to those of us who care about proper terminology, it absolutely broke the immersion as I was reading the book.
Best book in the series yet. I've finally gotten over my dislike of the MC as he has finally stopped being a doormat. The rest of the story remains solid. It does get a bit more complex and convoluted, but not unnecessarily so. Overall a fun, engaging read.
Glad I stuck with the series and am looking forward to the fourth book!
I'm glad I stuck with the series and persevered with book 2. It is markedly better than the first book. The overall story seems tighter and more engaging. (and those weren't flat spots in the first book, either) There are also definite feelings of Dungeon Crawler Carl throughout the book, so that appears to be an influence on the authors.
If you read my review of book 1, you know that I really, really hated the MC. In book 1, he was a complete doormat with little-to-no spine whatsoever. He improves moderately in book 2 and, without giving away spoilers, has to confront some fairly major decisions that forces him to grow up and face his new reality.
I still dislike the MC quite a bit, but he's getting better. Perhaps the authors' goal was to show growth over time and, if so, they've succeeded in doing that. Where things still fall flat is in hating (or at least significantly disliking) the MC to begin with.
That said, the rest of the book is great and I love the world-building. Definitely planning to continue with book 3, where I hope my distaste for the MC continues to wane.
This book was quite frustrating to read. On one hand, the overall theme, plot, pacing, writing, etc. is quite good and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
On the other hand, I absolutely hated the MC, who is a complete doormat. I can tell this was intentional by the authors since they tried to work in explanations and subplots for why the MC is such an absolute dweeb, but the problem is they failed to make him relatable. I hated the MC so much that I almost put the book down at around the 40% mark.
But the rest of the book is quite interesting and innovative. If you remove the MC, this is a solid, 4-star book.
The MC improved enough by the end of the first book, that I decided to give the second book a go. In fact, I'm writing this as I'm half-way through book 2, so I can say the MC does get a little better, but he's still a bit of a pantywaist. Again, the authors try to explain that via the plotline, but fail to quite hit the mark IMO.
DNF at about the 50% mark. This book started out so promising and then somehow just unraveled for me. The progression of the book felt chaotic and uncontrolled. I would be reading along, feeling as though I had a handle on the flow, and then the author would completely flip things on end and take the plot in an entirely new, unforeseen direction. It happened 3-4 times that I can recall.
Maybe it was intentional. Maybe some people like it. But I find it highly disruptive to the flow of the story.
A solid finish to the series. Overall, I retain my original statement that this series is the LitRPG equivalent of a classic American diner. There wasn't much in this series that was revolutionary, but it was a solid story with solid characters and a solid plot. The pacing was decent and I never felt like things were dragging needlessly.
I did feel the ending was a wee bit too trite, but that's a small nit on an otherwise solid series.
Did I mention it was solid?
This book is still solid, but perhaps not as good as the first one. For me, at least, things started to seem a bit formulaic and the MC started to become moderately less likeable and/or relatable.
Still a good series overall and I've already started the third and final book, but this one was a half-step down from the first one IMO.
If LitRPG was a bunch of different restaurants, this one would be a classic American diner. There isn't anything on the menu that you haven't had before, but it's solid, good comfort food.
This book will feel fairly familiar to LitRPG enthusiasts, but with enough freshness to not read as just a bunch of tropes. If you're looking for ground breaking LitRPG, this isn't the series for you, but if you want a good, solid comfort food read, then this one fits that bill nicely.
This book is closer to 3.5 stars, but I rounded up because it gets better towards the end. The beginning, however, is rough. The initial premise of a family of assassins is fairly weak and difficult to believe. Then the family adapts incredibly (some would say unbelievably) quickly to the new system, with nary a hitch. I almost put down the book in the first ~30%.
But the author found his stride around the half-way mark and the rest of the book was solid. I enjoy the dungeon crawler theme and the author does a good job of keeping things moving. The main character is a bit flat and emotionless, but the author seems to lean into that vs. trying to improve it.
Anyway, a fun, solid series that has some rough patches at the beginning.
I enjoyed the book overall, but it takes a while for it to hit its stride. It has a unique twist on the traditional LitRPG approach, which I appreciated. That said, the beginning was super rough. The protagonist gets dumped into a new world with almost no explanation, no back story and no adjustment period. The protagonist essentially looks around the new world, says “welp, this is my life now” and carries on as if nothing happened.
I wasn't able to get past that and it put a damper on the rest of the book for me as a result.
That said, the rest of the book is good (and gets better in the second half), so it may be worth powering through the first part of it. As I write this review, I'm about 30% into the second book and that one has been much more enjoyable so far. So, I'm chalking this up as first-book writing pains for the author.
Overall, I enjoyed the book. It's...solid. Not amazing, but not a dumpster fire, either. It's hard to really get invested in the protagonist's success - he mostly just seems...there, but it's hard to feel much empathy or...much of anything for him. (this does improve in later books, btw)
Additionally, I felt the book could benefit from a really good copy editor as it felt like there was plenty of extraneous fluff in the book.
That said, if you like theorycrafting, this book has that in spades. Lots and lots of detail and a reasonable amount of crunch.
I was really disappointed with this installment. The first two books were fantastic. This one...just sort of fell apart for me, and I'm not precisely sure why. I think things got a bit too weird and/or esoteric and the mechanics became more difficult to follow. The story also felt less cohesive than the first two books. It had much more of a random, chaotic flow to it and I just couldn't keep my head in the story.
I may still check out the fourth book (which is supposedly the last one) when he picks the story back up in 2H 2023, but boy was I let down by this one.
A rare detour into non-fiction for me, I really enjoyed this book. If you cannot approach it with an open mind, you are not likely to enjoy it. That said, I felt the authors did a good job presenting hard facts to support their claims. Any one of the facts, by themselves, could likely be written off as a coincidence. All of them added together, however, definitely makes you think.
I'm not sure the authors convinced me that their answer is The One True Answer, but they did convince me that the more mainstream, traditional answers are very likely incorrect.
Worth a read if you like science and like having your boundaries and preconceptions stretched.
I enjoyed the book overall, and the pacing and plot development remains solid. However, there's a distinct lack of an overall story arc that is making me lose interest in the series as a whole. Rather than a multi-volume series, leading to some sort of culminating event (think: Wheel of Time), this series is more episodic in nature, where each book can almost stand on its own, with little, if any, contribution to an overall story arc.
Some people really like that kind of series, but I prefer something with a defined beginning, middle and end, and this series isn't it.
Bailing out here.
Overall, I really enjoyed the story. Good pacing, good character development and a good plot. It's less crunchy than some LitRPGs, but still has enough to make it interesting.
If you like LitRPG, this story is worth reading. Full stop.
All that said, there's one niggling plot element that I really struggled with. The protagonist is, in real life, a near-invalid who has significant struggles moving and operating in every day life. Yet, despite that fact, he for some reason has never played virtual reality games and goes into this one as a noob.
I'm generally quite willing to suspend disbelief, but this one was tough for me to overlook as it just doesn't make sense.
Anyway, it's a small detractor, but the overall story is still solid and worth reading.
I thoroughly enjoyed the story. Well-written, interesting characters and an engaging plot that moves at a decent pace. My only quibble is this isn't really a LitRPG novel. It's more a fantasy novel that has only the barest rudiments of an RPG system loosely bolted onto it. You could just as easily make this a non-LitRPG novel.
Still, an enjoyable read - just don't go in expecting much, if any, LitRPG crunch.
Too hard to follow and too hard to believe
First off, this is Russian cultivation, so expect the story to be dark, bleak and fatalistic. But that's fine - I was actually looking forward to a more grim take on a cultivation story.
The story, though, is too hard to follow. Instead of using numerical or color-based progression tiers, the author insists on using an entirely different scheme and it takes roughly 3/4 of the book to have even some understanding of how it works.
Then there's the scale. The author wants you to believe that an army of two million people can be led by a handful of officers, and one general. The author wants you to believe that two million people can operate as a single fighting force. The author clearly doesn't have any understanding of how many people two million actually is. Many books expect the reader to suspend disbelief, but this book takes it too far.
Overall, not worth the read. I will not be continuing with the series.
My least favorite book in the series so far. I almost made this two stars instead of three. First off, it's the third book in a row that focuses on a tournament. It's old. It's been done. It's time to move on. Second, the female characters feel very monocultural or one-dimensional. And their interactions w/ Greg feel very repetitive as well. The author tries to differentiate the characters, but not enough, imo. Plus, where the first couple of books either skipped the harem entirely or only lightly touched on it, it's front and center in this book. Almost distractingly so. I skipped over big chunks of the book because there's only so many times I want to read about one character washing another one's back in the daily bathing ritual.
Also, 5 installments in, the tropes present in the other books start to really stand out here. The protagonist is good and virtuous - everyone else is either weak-willed or evil. The protagonist is open-minded - everyone else is racist. All tropes that have been present since book 1, but really start to feel...overdone...by this point.
When I look at the release cadence of the overall series, with a book getting released every ~6 months, I wonder how much better this series could be if the author took more time to refine his stories instead of churning them out.
I still plan to read the sixth installment because, thankfully, they'll at least be done with the tournaments, but there's a high probability I'll drop the series at that point if things don't significantly improve.