Ascend Online

Executive Summary: This was a fun listen, but nothing spectacular. I like MMOs and I like popcorn fiction and this was a decent enough blend of the two.

Audiobook: Luke Daniels is one of my favorite narrators and does his usual excellent job here. However, since this is LitRPG, there are some downsides to the unabridged format. On paper you'd scan over the various stats, character sheets and item descriptions that Mr. Daniels must painstakingly read out to you.

Full Review
I'm still not sure what I feel about LitRPG. I've been playing WoW for nearly 15 years now and I've spent a lot of time out of the game reading about the game, strategies, stats, gear, etc. So the idea of reading a book about someone playing a game works well for me. I imagine it won't work as well for others who'd rather just play a game than listen to one.

However so far my experience with the genre is that it's not being written very well. I don't have a large sample size to base that one, so I could be wrong. Just two authors so far. My main gripe is the book could have used more editing. This book has a lot of repeated words/dialogue and some cringeworthy speeches.

It also suffers a bit too much from lack of diversity. I don't necessarily mean that in terms of race or gender, but that could be applied too. I thought all of the characters in the book were fine, but they felt too much alike. They are your fairly standard non-asshat dude gamer. They were all likeable, but not everyone who games is the same. Yes some people swear a lot (I'm guilty of this myself) but not everyone talks like that constantly.

Not to mention in a group of 6 players there is only one girl. He does add some more female players later in the book, but for a book that's supposed to be set in the future I find it hard to believe the ratio of men to women players is 5:1.

That said, I wasn't picking this up to be something deep or eloquently written. I wanted a fun book and that's what I (mostly) got. I really liked that this book while focused one character added a bunch of other players working together as well as in opposition to the protagonist rather than just a bunch of NPCs and quests. I also like the idea of a game where you can shape the growth of the world so much.

I'll probably pick up book two, but I'm torn on if I want to read the side story book first or not. For now, I'll probably hold off a bit until I get the itch for another light read.