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Great for getting started.

Revisado: 03-10-22

This one is better if you're looking to get started. not so much if you are looking take what you already have to another level.

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Neil might have actually done better than Todd

Revisado: 08-04-21

I was very hesitant when I saw that Neil was narrating this one. Turns out he's better at not highlighting some of the crappy writing. the biggest sacrifice is Rugrat's voice. Everything else is good.
This is still my favorite most terribly written series. Can't wait for the next one.

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Great, sort of.

Revisado: 07-20-21

Still the best, most terribly written story ever. They only spend about 30 minutes in the fifth realm. The writting is still garbage, but the story is awesome.

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Probably the best litRPG series yet

Revisado: 01-18-20

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Narration
I am incapable of deciding if Nick Podehl if my favorite narrator or my second favorite, but this guy is awesome. The voices, the energy, the cadence of each character. Nick is the perfect fit for this series.

Basic Summary
Richter finds himself stuck in his favorite game, but it's not a game. In fact, his favorite game is merely a poor copy of this world. Transported here as part of some god’s greater plans to escape its prison, Richter must learn to thrive in a world run by gamelike logic and filled with all the dangers of fantasy. Follow along as one kid from Georgia and his wood sprite companion take on the dangers of the forest, claim a place of power, and try to build a town from the ground up.

The Good
Fun, well written, full of humor, seriousness, and suspense, this series is awesome. The MC is not actually stuck in a video game, so it lacks the loot drops, kill 5 rats quests(sort of), and generic NPCs. The world is rich and vibrant. The author understands distances so nothing takes four minutes to run thirty feet. Honestly I find that last one to be the greatest sin of writers. Anyway, this book is just great.

The Bad
Well that’s convenient. I kind of hate the whole “amazingly good shit happens to the main character, just because.” To be fair, most of the excessively good stuff has a reason behind it, mainly that the MC is a Chaos Seed and his mere existence demands things happen and not everything is good. Another issue is how the MC deals with stuck in another world. This is one of those “this is my life now, i’ll never think about my past” stories, but there is a good reason for that which will be brought up in the 5th or 6th book. MC also suffers from “I can do this random thing because i’ve done bla bla bla”, again to be fair to the author, the result of his actions sometimes end up as “and that’s why it never works out”.

Final Thoughts
I thoroughly enjoy this book and its six sequels. Can’t wait for the next one. It’s the perfect blend of action, town management, and humor wrapped up into a wonderfully colorful LitRPG. It has a lot of numbers, and a lot of repeated prompts, but is probably the best LitRPG series out there.

Review by rcdaviswrites, 01/15/2020

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Supervillain by circumstance

Revisado: 01-18-20

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Narration
Neil Hellegers has made it on to my list of Tier 2 narrators. This being the second book I've listened to from him and this one fit him a bit better than the last. Pacing is great and while he doesn’t have a lot of separate voices, his tone fit the main character well.

Basic Summary
Erich is a genius mechanic running a POS shop in a rundown chunk of gang territory, when he realizes he doesn't have the protection money he needs to pay the supervillain gang leader. Erich’s solution, finish some wannabe suppervillian’s power armor for the gang leader, not only paying the protection money, but earning himself a nice chunk of change. The problem, the neiboring neo-nazi gang is pushing into Hardlight’s territory and there’s no time to get the power armor calibrated to some other thug. Suddenly Erich finds himself not only as the Supervillan’s lead engineer, but also the super villain known as Mechro-mancer.

The Good
The two very attractive stepsisters the MC finds himself dealing with do not end up in any type of harem fantasy thing. Their beauty has an in world reason to it and the relationship with the sisters takes the whole book to grow into friendship/tolerance. I also enjoy how the fall into supervillainy is really just a series of events where the MC tries to avoid being murdered, avoid people in general, or tries to make money.

The Bad
Huh. I can’t think of much to put here. The writing isn’t perfect, but there are no glaring problems with the book. Or maybe I'm just getting lazy with these reviews.

Final Thoughts
I enjoyed it, but I'm in no hurry for a sequel. I’m just not much for super heros and when I do pick up such books, I tend to focus on the villains by circumstance ones. If you wanted an engineer villian in power armor, start with the Dire seres.

Review by rcdaviswrites, 01/11/2020

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Missed Potential

Revisado: 01-10-20

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Narration
What the hell was that? Honestly, when I saw the name of Jeff Hays, I did a point, click, and buy without further scrutiny. The narrator is Will Watt, not Jeff Hays as it clearly states. That's my bad. The narration was fine, I really don't have any complaints there, but then there's the music and some of the sound effects. WTF? Why is there circus music during combat? Why is there fart sounds during item descriptions? Yeah, would have been better without sound effects.

Basic Summary
Ryan is unjustly executed by corrupt clergy of the Goddess of Justice. Said goddess reincarnates him as a dungeon core as some sort of apology for his unjust punishment. Soon his celestial dungeon fairy comes to offer up guidance and Ryan’s options for the type of dungeon he can become. He inexplicably chooses darkness, something to do with the church not liking it. Carving out rooms, collecting bones, creating bone squirrels and zombie rats later, Ryan is open for business.

Ryan has survived scrutiny by the church and now the Adventures Guild is building a town just outside. Skeletal fight club is up and running, Ryan is steadily growing stronger, and so is his favorite advenuring team. What could go wrong? Well there is that overpowered necromancer.

The Good
The undead dungeons have been mentioned in almost every dungeon core book thus far, but this marks the first one actually about one. There are some unique world building bits in here, mostly to do with the symbiotic relationship between mortals and the dungeons, that just don’t really exist in other books. Also, some of the references are awesome.

The Bad
The writing is ok mechanically, there is some word repetition on occasion, but it’s not bad. The puns really aren't that great and after the first few chapters, the fairy is basically useless as a character. The relationship between Ryan and his fairy is kind of weird and completely forced. One last thing, Jack is basically Hans from Divine Dungeon.

Final Thoughts
I did enjoy this book, the best dungeon core story out there it is not. The narration was kind of a disappointment considering it was by soundbooth theater, though that might be solely the fault of the music and sound effects.

Review by rcdaviswrites, 01/10/2020

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Not Great, but Not Bad

Revisado: 01-06-20

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Narration
Pavi Proczko sits at what I consider the lower end of Tier 2. You’re always going to get a well paced, professional narration, but that's about it. He does seem to have more voices than say, Luke Danels, but just barely. His voice isn’t terrible strong either. This was fine in the Eden’s Gate series where the main character was in his late teens, maybe 20, but here the MC is thirty and the voice just feels too light.

Basic Summary
Hall, and several others just found themselves trapped in Sky Realms Online. According to a message they’ve received; due to an attack on the servers, their bodies are in some sort of stasis, some people are dead, two years have passed, and their minds are trapped in the game. The developers have altered the game to be more suitable for their new lives. Better graphics and A.I.s. It’s almost indistinguishable from reality.

Hal can’t do anything about his situation, so to make the best of a bad thing, he decides he’s just going to play the game until something changes. As such, he starts his journey as a level one player and slowly deals with the new changes, the emotional stress of the situation, and the ridiculously realistic NPCs. The game is now his life and that changes the way he needs to view his role in the world.

The Good
This is one of those stuck in a video game stories. Often the question of “What happens when you die in the game?” is answered early on. In this case, it is left vague and unanswered. The players constantly worry about it. Do they die permanently? Do the NPC’s die permanently? The question remains unanswered.

The world is pretty cool. The concept of floating islands and the pseudo-real world lore that goes behind it works well for the gameworld and, by extension, the book. All the leveling mechanics and such work as expected from an MMORPG with some creative tweaks here and there and the social issues with living in a game are a constant in the background. The amount of people trapped in the game also sits in a middle ground. It’s not flooded with players and yet it’s not the story of a single player.

The Bad
The writing has some redundant wording. It’s one of those things that annoys me, but it isn’t terrible. I don’t like how people can die, but not be dead yet. It’s very d&d and not very video game like. One of those, “well that’s convenient” things.

Final Thoughts
Not a bad book. I like the overall story so far and will likely pick up the sequel. It follows a gaming progression storyline, so it’s mostly smaller quests as opposed to some overarching thing. I seem to prefer that kind of story.

Review by rcdaviswrites, 01/06/2020

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What happens when playing Follout gets boring.

Revisado: 12-24-19

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Narration
I don’t have much to say about Neil Hellegers. As far as I’m concerned, he did a decent
job, but there is nothing special. He doesn't have a lot of voices, which can cause some
confusion when the narrating character switches. All in all, I have no complaints.

Basic Summary
The bombs are dropping. Total nuclear annihilation is imminent. Then everything stops.
Turns out humanity is a simulation and they have killed themselves off over a million
times. The Aliens are now supposed to turn the simulation off, but they enjoyed some of
the things humanity has created, primarily RPG video games. The simulation is
converted to a post-apocalyptic open world RPG and broadcast to the galaxy as a form
of entertainment.

The story focuses on one man, his wife, teenage daughter, and their struggle to thrive in
this new world. Honestly, I think the author got tired of playing Fallout 4, and started
writing his own version. I’d like to play this version, it seems better.

The Good
Firstly, I love the concept that mankind is just sentient beings in a computer program. It
is a good and, to my knowledge so far, unique way of putting people into an RPG
setting. Also I love listening for all the fictional names of real world brands. The writing is
decent for a first person narration. The narration includes small bits of information that
the character doesn’t know, which I find unique among books told from perspective.

The Bad
The dialogue between characters has almost no grounding in realistic conversation. I
also find the main character’s constant droning on about “the love of his life” to be
excessive. Also, it’s like the author tried to make his characters three dimensional and
failed.

The Interesting
The author created an awesome post-apocalyptic game with lots of customization and
interesting ways to build a community. I want to play this. The creatures seem to have
been lifted from a few places and subtly changed.

Final Thoughts
A fun book as long as you don’t take it too seriously, but not a lot in the department of
characters you care about.

Review by rcdaviswrites, 12/16/2019

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Interesting, but not for me.

Revisado: 12-24-19

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Narration
Luke Daniels sits in a position I consider the upper second tier of narrators. His voice is
strong, his pacing is good, and I always know that the narration will be of a high quality.
That said, he lacks in variety of voices and something else that I just can’t put my finger
on. He’s a good narrator, he’s just not an exceptional narrator.

Basic Summary
Malem has the ability to get into the minds of and dominate, or break, creatures.
Starting out, he can only do this to animals. Also, he is cursed and a devouring
darkness hunts him, so Malem keeps on the move, never staying in one place for too
long. He encounters a beautiful woman whose mind he can sense. This is strange and it
drives him to track her down only to get wrapped up in a D&D-esk mission to deliver a
message to the Metal Dragons.

Accidentally breaking a monster girl starts Malem down a path of gaining in power and
building a harem.

The Good
This is one of those “save the world” stories. I’ve always hated them, but the main
character really doesn’t care about the world. He only gets sucked into the overall world
plot due to circumstances and his libido. Malem also has an interesting power set. It’s
magic, but not magic. More of a mind over matter thing. One last thing. While the
characters only travel through one city, it is a vibrant and believable bit of world building
that most fiction seems to lack and I really appreciate that.

The Bad
I avoided this book for nearly a year and only picked it up when I had finished a different
book by the same author. The whole “Harem” thing is full of its own tropes that I really
don’t like. All the women are drop dead beautiful. All the women have a thing for the
main character. The circumstances and dialogue that lead to the union usual suck; and
most of these stories go pornographic (This one not so much).

Final Thoughts
Not a bad book if you like Harem fiction and D&D styled quests in a very D&D world. I
won’t be picking up the sequels, it’s just not my thing.

Review by rcdaviswrites, 12/18/2019

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Still the best Science fiction Story Ever

Revisado: 12-08-19

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Narration
Ray Porter is Bob. I honestly can't see anyone else narrating this book. The pacing is amazing. The infections are perfect. The voices are great. This is possible the most well narrated audiobook ever.

Basic Summary
Bob Johansson, after selling his software company for a lot of money, signs up with a company that promises to freeze his head when he dies and revive him when the technology to do so becomes available. Bob is hit by a car literally the same day. That’s chapter one. Bob wakes up over a hundred years later. He is not “good as new.” Infact, his brain has been scanned into a mechanical network and he is now basically a computer. Also he is property of a government that is a religious, totalitarian nightmare, but he gets to be a space probe, so it’s not all bad.

Bob narrowly escapes sabotage by rival factions and nations. Leaving Earth in the interstellar dust to explore the galaxy.

The Good
This is still the best science fiction book (series) I have ever listened to. The story is hilarious, from the banter between clones, the references, and Bob’s reactions to the situations he finds himself in. Bob’s reactions and thoughts throughout the story on his emotions are also possibly the most realistic and understandable I have ever seen. This book is well written, fun, and just damn good.

The Bad
Despite the main character claiming to dislike hand-waving details in science fiction, there’s a lot of hand-waving. What kind of propulsion systems do the shuttles have? What about the drones? Why does every Human (or Pav) in space seem to have artificial gravity, but only the farm doughnuts are a ring? How can ships move so fast without taking damage from space junk?

The Interesting
Every clone is different. Honestly it would probably be boring if this wasn't the case, but it really makes the story awesome. The main character is a software engineer and not military like most other space ship heavy books.

Final Thoughts
A must read if you like sci-fi. I don’t know what else to say. You’re going to want all three books, so budget for that.

Review by rcdaviswrites, 12/07/2019

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