Sarah Lin

This is my first LitRPG, and one of only a handful of self-published books I've actually finished. To sum it up at the beginning: this was a really fun read, and I burned through it way faster than I thought I would.

Since I'm not overly familiar with the tropes of the genre, I can't really say how representative this one is. It has things that seem pretty standard, though, with the main character becoming aware of his stats and levels, and coming to grips with his life as a character in an RPG. That was all rather fun in its way. As a long time fan of RPGs it brought a smile to my face watching the character struggle with fetch quests and trying to game the system for some easy leveling.

But what really made this book stand out for me were the characterization and the natural feel of the relationships. The three primary characters really seemed to inhabit their roles, and the use of natural, modern language did a good job of avoiding the stilted prose of many traditionally published fantasies.

There are some minor quibbles I have. The beginning of the book seems to spend too much time on pointing out, and then waving away, the illogic of certain game systems. I don't really get why it was pointed out that Bloodwraith wasn't familiar with the money system, only for that fact to be ignored for the rest of the book, either. Also, I feel like Meara's change from existential despair to wise-cracking sidekick was kind of abrupt.

However, over all the book is well written, well paced, and fun to read.

One more thing I would like to point out in particular: The editing was surprisingly professional. There were no real typos that I noticed, although I a couple of places a non-standard use of hyphens made some sentences hard to parse. But this was head and shoulders above about 95% of the self pubbed books I've read thus far, and indeed better than some professional publishers put out.… (mer)

2.5-ish, i guess.

The cultural interplay is pretty great. As is the setting and the scenario itself. I thought the core idea behind this book was great. How often do you see a hero being done like this? And by that I mean a hero that enthralls and corrupts and is a major force of and source of conflict/cosmic horror. The characters aren't too special, but they're alright, and the same is true for the prose.

Overall, this is probably a recommendation if you like cultivation, long series and slow progression.

For me, the giant elephant/deathspawn in the room is the length of the book. It's what's earned it its rating. There are over 1200 pages here and the story that gets told doesn't justify that kind of page count for. There are too many training arcs and too little focus. I like the multitude of characters, but that aspect also feels like it could have been refined. In the end, this is a 1200 page book that feels like the introduction to a giant saga and as such the conclusion of the first book honestly wasn't particularly satisfying. It didn't feel like an actual arc concluded here. Instead, a minor victory in a conflict that most likely won't matter in the end and the feat of staying alive is basically what this book was about. It feels like a very minor step in the overall story, with the focus being kinda character development. That sounds ok, but it should have been possible to do more irt the greater conflict in book1.

Anyway, i'm curious about the interpretations people have come up with for this. You can do a lot with the premise. The hero can be stand-in for a major force like climate change or religion. And the latter also works with the whole deathspawn vs natives angle displacement/hegemony desires as allegory for e.g. the middle east n stuff.… (mer)