Awaken Online: Dominion

This is where my journey with this series ends. I noticed this with the last book, but it was very apparent here, this could not grasp my attention. I did a fair bit of travel over the holidays and figured by the time I got back home I'd have finished this series, but I got through just one entry. These books are getting longer without really including any more story. The pace of the narrative is fixed to the progression of the game and that progression is broken up book to book; of which there are 7 mainline entries, 4 or 5 “side quests”, and a whole three book spin off series. I am not invested enough for all that, I barely got through this book!

It's not that things don't happen in this story, there's always something going on, but this reads more like gameplay commentary than it does a narrative. The bulk of this book is about Jason unlocking some race specific skills in order to overcome a new/powerful enemy. This in-game progression is mirrored by a high profile and lurid congressional hearing concerning the oversight of the VR tech and Alfred the AI. But maybe mirrored isn't the right word, the trial does take its share of pages, but it doesn't move the story along one bit. Everything that “matters” as far as the story is concerned is what's happening in the game; and like I said for book 3, that's not the unique and interesting part of this story to me.

I gave this a shot, but it's getting a little too long-winded and repetitive for me. There's just not enough development in here to justify the page count, I know the focus is on the game but dude I've played DnD, and I've already read/seen/heard about this game in a million other stories. I'm just not interested in this campaign dungeon master, I want to go outside.