Kindle Customer

Wow.

Revisado: 09-24-21

This giant book is fantastic. Slice of life portal fantasy focused on character and world building, exactly my cup of tea. I loved it. All of it. Grabbing the next edition immediately.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Interesting listen

Revisado: 08-29-21

This book seems to be a decent entry into stoicism, as a philosophy. I dunno, Im brand new. It felt very clumsy in portions though, and relied often on "the gods" or "the universe/primordial fire" to offer justification for some of the points it makes. Others are quite grounded and natural, it made for an odd dichotomy. Also the narrator stumbled regularly and didn't bother to correct such mistakes. Hence the missing star. This is an imperfect product is all. The rest of it seemed worthwhile, and I am still quite interested in pursuing philosophy after having listened to it, so I'm happy with the credit I spent.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

A decent start

Revisado: 08-29-20

I found a lot to enjoy, particularly in the performance. The narrator sounds a lot like Nathan Fillion, and it works very well for this story. I wouldn't be surprised to learn it was intentional. The story itself is fairly meh to me. Its fun and engaging and I have no large complaints, so I think its a pretty good book overall. The stuff that bothered me was fairly small. The story was pretty clearly ad libbed, and the game mechanics feel a bit tacked on. They're not disingenuous or anything, and I enjoyed their presentation a lot. I just didn't end up understanding much of anything about how the game system operates and wanted a lot more from it than I got. The death and game system and planets thing also felt very handwavey. Not really a problem, but it left me feeling unsatisfied. Also, the hints at harem stuff and general slapdash romance arcs combine with my smallish complaints to mean I likely won't bother with a second book if it comes out. Wasn't mad about this one though. Worth the read or listen if you like scifi western mash ups. That part to me was the star of this show. Loads of fun to be had there.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Pretty good

Revisado: 07-27-20

I enjoyed the story a great deal, had a few hangups that cost the author a star though. I hated the magic system. Its full of words I just didn't enjoy, the names of the schools in particular are unappealing. It also didn't resonate for me, a lot of hand waving about rune shapes and spell shapes, and very little relatable detail. Concept just didn't land for me. When combined with the stat dump style the game elements are told in, I got really sick of hearing about the magic really fast and it ended up pulling me out of my immersion. The game elements themselves felt tacked on. Just big dump segments and stat pages every few scenes or so, became quite irritating quickly. Never got any kind of reasoning or rationale for why the game system exists either, which was disappointing, I wanted to learn about it. Oh well, maybe in a future book. I listened to the whole thing, but really I saw no reason the game element areas couldn't be skipped.

The premise is great, and I came to enjoy both main characters quickly. The second took a minute but came out more fun than she began. Overall I thought it was a good story and look forward to more. Just a couple of not insignificant details I took issue with.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Nearly perfect.

Revisado: 06-27-20

I frigging loved this book. The author really nailed my exact preference for litrpg. Not too much in the way of stat focus, but plenty of rpg mechanics and solid gameplay. I would play the crap out of saga online if it were real. The narration had a couple noticeable issues, like American/British words not being sorted out. It just sounds jarring when an American accent says 'in hospital' instead of 'in the hospital.' Couple other hiccups like the narrator using the wrong voice on the wrong character. Really minor stuff. Overall, this is a classic litrpg that I feel really hits all the high notes of the genre and stays true to genre form.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Not really Litrpg, imo. Only for romance fans.

Revisado: 05-26-20

I don't like giving authors bad reviews, and I don't like giving up on books before they're complete, but this was bad enough that I felt compelled to do both.

The big glaring complaint; this isn't litrpg. It's barely even gamelit. This is a romance novel first and foremost, with the barest mentions of game mechanics here and there. Maybe they're all in the last half of the book, I dunno, I quit at chapter 26. It just never took off, and I finally realized that it was a chore to keep listening. The entire plot revolves around a woman who wants to have sex with a demon, and refuses to admit that to herself unless drunk or very tired. Gamelits are supposed to be about the games, the mechanics, the rules that operate these worlds, and the world building itself. Not a janky romance story that takes an eternity to actually progress. Slow Burn romance I think they call it. All I got from it was a severely unhealthy look at courtship, and a mega frustrating repeated storyline. It was the same elements over and over and over, admiring the demon kings muscles and then "putting on her bitch pants" to fend off his advances because....I don't even know anymore. I honestly began to wonder if the character knew why she didn't want to get involved after a certain point. The game elements I did see were slapdash and tertiary. Barely acknowledged and not really interesting. Pretty stock standard mmo stuff, felt like it couldn't decide if it wanted to be portal fantasy or vrmmo. The honest impression I got from this book was a romance novelist trying her hand in another genre. If so, I'm sorry to be discouraging, I just don't think this is a good fit. When I read Gamelit or Litrpg, its to enjoy the passion the author has for the gameworld they are creating, and I felt that was severely lacking in this book. I feel more than a little cheated, I signed up to read a gamelit story, not a romance. The write up on the store page is super misleading. Yes all those elements exist, no they are most assuredly not the primary focus.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Not without issues, but a good story still shines.

Revisado: 05-02-20

I loved a lot about this book. It was clearly based off EVE Online, which is great to see in litrpg. It had a ton of great world building and super fun and interesting characters, and a story I could get behind and enjoy. Solid mechanics too, as far as I could tell. Anyone looking for sci fi litrpg should check this book out.

Now to the bad, and I kinda hate to even say it, but there was a lot. If it wouldn't punish the author and narrator, this would have been a solid three star rating for me. There was a lot of weird stuff that dragged me from immersion, and a couple of fundamental problems as well. First and foremost, this felt MASSIVELY rushed. It honestly felt like this story would have benefited from being a stock standard trilogy. There was SO much happening all the time that it simply became difficult to keep up or even to pay attention at times. It also suffered from what I can only chalk up to quirks that didn't get edited out, like the frigging constant "aka" nonsense. Some aka moments were even right in the middle of intense actions scenes, which bursts the immersion bubble instantly. The narrator didn't do a bad job per say, but I wouldn't call it good either. Overly dramatic at all times, with a flat out movie phone inflection on occasion that just came off as weird. Needs more range too. Some character voices were great, and then some were not so much. Just felt like they were maybe a fledgling narrator, within the first few years of doing this professionally. Not by any means bad, just a little wonky sometimes.

Overall, this audiobook felt partially amateurish, which is not actually a terrible thing in this case. I think both the author and narrator are talented people who deserve to be watched pretty closely as their careers unfold. This book, while flawed, is still genuinely GOOD and worth your time and money. I just gotta be honest when I review, and your product wasn't perfect.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Interesting start. Pretty crunchy stuff.

Revisado: 04-13-20

Honestly? I didn't love this book, but you just might. My single biggest detractor is something many readers in this genre would find very appealing indeed. I prefer my peanut butter smooth, and holy wow is this chunky. Super crunchy litrpg, with lots of math and xp breakdowns, big detailed and obviously well thought out spell descriptions to go with a similar item system, and numerics heavy combat that still manages to feel visceral. For me, a lot of the more crunchy stat heavy litrpg content tends to go over my head, and this book was no exception to that. That's all purely stylistic, so no reason to knock off stars for it. I'm passing familiar with dnd, I enjoyed a few games with friends, but I don't have the depth and breadth of internalized knowledge about dnd I think I need to really enjoy crunchy litrpg.

Story was good, characters were engaging and fun, worldbuilding was on point. Some minor errors and oddities throughout knocked a star off for me is all. I was jarred from my immersion more than a few times, but nothing bad. I really like this world, and may push through my distaste for the crunch to read or listen to more about it. This book was a worthy addition to the genre in my opinion, and simply a must read if you're into crunchy litrpg. Odd choices in the epilogues though.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Pretty weak offering.

Revisado: 11-12-18

Not really sure why this book has so many positive reviews. I found it to be a disjointed and poorly crafted mess with an absentee main storyline. It does have plenty of upsides, but the negatives really overshadowed the experience and the audible version specifically was a chore to get through.

First and foremost I knocked off two stars for blatent plagiarism. The author copy pasted a very well known meme into his book to explain stats with a tomatoes metaphor, and while that may not be the property of any one particular individual, it's still truly pathetic plagiarism. It's not a pop culture reference either, as the author seems to claim the character just thinks of this on his own. Even a tiny reference to the meme or it's origins in the web would have made this acceptable, but as is it's just copy/paste. Also, the opening Elon musk sequence felt incredibly similar to the opener from Greg Bears War Dogs trilogy. That one I can't be positive was ripped off intentionally, but the similarities are too much to be ignored. It was basically a dumbed down version of the war dogs intro. (no offense to the author on that aspect, ain't none of us at Greg Bears level.)
The main class was incredibly refreshing and unique, which made the above mentions of plagiarism all the more hurtful to me as a reader. It shows the author is capable of originality, as well as quality material, so WHY copy paste stuff??
The other major point of complaint is the narration. The narrator adds a moviephone dramatis to EVERY single line he delivers, no matter if the main character is fighting an epic battle, or just reading a book in the library. Plenty of this book is casual and calm, with the story not having any need for overly dramatic inflection, so I found this aspect of the performance incredibly distracting and non sequitur. Super immersion breaking and annoying. The narrator also does voices, none of which I found pleasurable. Any accent is massively overdone, wether it be the somehow Russian librarian, or the valley girl guild member. No accent is done with any degree of subtlety, and everything is cartoonishly over the top. Again, pretty immersion breaking. I think I would have enjoyed this book a great deal more had I read it, instead of listening to it. The narrator did the author zero favors with his performance.

As to the main story. Everything felt out of sequence, disjointed, and even nonsensical at times. The main story arc didn't seem to appear until a good two thirds of the book was over, and I kept on wondering what the main threat was. There's plenty of build up and character development, but no overarching conflict aside from the class development, which was far too small and non threatening to be exciting or cause me to be invested in the rest of the world. Oh, right, there was a little guild conflict, but it gets quickly dealt with and forgotten immediately. A big part of the storyline is how rare healers are, but there didn't seem to be any reason for that rarity. The healer class seemed actually easy to play to me, I just didn't see a lot of reasons backing up the authors assertions of his world. It ended up feeling like a 'gimmie', where the concept is only the way it is because the author says so. That's fine...I guess. It'd be a lot more satisfying to have substantive world building to support that kind of thing though. Overall it really felt like the author had more of an idea for a world and a unique class than any kind of story, and that hurt the quality of this book for me a great deal.

Finally, an observation. The author seems to be fairly right wing, and does his utmost to work in metaphors that represent his line of thoughts on select modern issues. This was a great part of the book for me, as it was refreshing to see the right wing ideology touted as preferable, while keeping it out of the forefront of the story. His message on individualism and merit was quite on point, and almost resonated of The Incredibles first film. His dig at antifa I felt was quite appropriate and on point as well, and could easily be also applied to the kkk. That's some solid metaphor crafting right there. His metaphor against establishments of higher learning was directly in accordance with right wing thoughts on the matter; that dissenting voices are silenced, and any individualism is quashed for the collective good. These points are, of course, obviously incorrect and easy to fact check, but his ability to espouse them in his creative form was impressive nontheless. When people who embrace and spread hate or blatent falsehoods are blocked from college campuses, that is not an attempt to silence a dissenting opinion, it is a communal rejection of that opinion. There is an important distinction to be made there, and it seems to have unfortunately gone over this authors head. I did not remove any stars for this aspect of the book, and as I have stated, view it as overall positive. This is merely an observation because of the rarity of right wing fantasy authors in circulation today.

I bought this book because it's in the top list 'must read' for the litrpg genre. But, similar to The Land, I simply do not see quality writing or production at work here, and am left wondering at the mass appeal. I do think that if the author put more effort and editing into his work, he could have an original and interesting series to experience here. Sadly, this is overshadowed by the works flaws and at least one instance of overt plagiarism.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 59 personas

Overall, recommended.

Revisado: 07-03-18

While I didn't hate the story, or the delivery, there were some glaring issues at play that did reduce my enjoyment. The author has a tendency to repeat words or phrases. This is a common issue among new authors, but I don't feel inclined to be forgiving of it here, with the clearly high level of production. That should have been edited out. Same complaint with some of the action sequences being interrupted by repeated game text. 'webwood dingdong dongs your ding for 30 damage.' repeat that three times and I get REALLY sick of it fast. Then there are the clear and obvious mistakes that the narrator just read as they are on the page. A missed word, or misspelling is simply read as is. That's bad for a couple reasons, first is what I said above. EDIT your work man! Second to that...why the hell would you read an error as is, when it's CLEAR the man meant to write 'dingdong' instead of 'ringdong'. Bad narration, totally throws you out of immersion. That was a common theme, actually. I would get into the story, start caring about the characters and progress, and then something would drag me out of my immersion. Structurally, I found the story very interesting, if a bit on the amature side. Nothing wrong with being new, it was still a good and interesting story. A handful of rookie mistakes, like having entirely too many main characters, was all I really have to complain about in that regard. Specifically, I found myself constantly confused between the two spellcaster support characters. I still can't name them. They shared a role, and didn't manage to distinguish themselves, because there's frigging 8 or 9 main characters running around. Sierra was entirely forgettable, she never stood out or did anything worth reading about. Except one point, where it felt like the author remembered she was there and spoon fed her a shining moment. But by then, it was way too little too late and I couldn't care about her at all. I feel like the author just got things a little jumbled while writing out what he had in his head. To be clear, this was not a bad book. Just clearly an amature product on a handful of areas. The narrator does voices. That...isn't a bad thing, actually. But it ended up being kind of a bad thing here, because his voices were often not great or enjoyable. One of the later voices was clearly just Kermit de frog. That one made me cringe everytime. Drace, I think his name was? The big tanky guy. His voice was simply atrocious. I have no idea how people sat around a table and heard that voice and went 'yeah. that's the one.' Now, if none of that turns you off to this story, and I DO hope it doesn't, here comes the good stuff. I really enjoyed this game world, first off. In a market flooded with fantasy worlds, this one held my interest and made me care. The main character was relatable and fun. He cusses a bit too much, or when it doesn't seem needed, but eh. No big deal there. His class was really cool, and not something I've seen explored in litrpg yet, so that was a big point of enjoyment. The focus on crafting and town building really served this story well, and I will most assuredly be keeping up with this series as it expands. One big point of favor with this is that it managed to avoid the standard pitfalls of this genre, specifically the porn and cliffhangers. There is no stupidass harem nonsense in this, and it has a clear and satisfying ending. Overall, this may not be the most polished product on the shelf, but I did enjoy it and recommend it pretty highly. This author is going places. Just...you know...do the work dude.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona