Desmond

fun but riddled with discrepancies

Revisado: 04-28-25

Just a concise and basic review - This is a fun little title that is light and easy to follow. My only big objection is that it is riddled with inconsistencies and discrepancies. For example, in one section of the book, the main character gets a crab, and the book says "Nobody has seen this creature before" and he is prompted to give it a name. But then within a few minutes of that, some guy shows up and has a book that fully details the crab, its abilities, what it tastes like, and what its parts are used for...in great detail.
Little things like this happen in various parts of the book, giving the impression this was very poorly edited or the writer just wasn't trying hard enough. Otherwise, it was fun, just know not to expect consistency.

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One word describes story, narration and MC, "DULL"

Revisado: 04-02-25

DULL - this starts off with a promising premise as far as lit RPGs anyways, but then descends into the most simplistic, pedantic and dull Main Character and story narration ever.

I seriously worry about the declining levels of sophistry we are witnessing in real time with what is being passed off as literature these days. I wonder if there is a correlation between that and the rise of certain unsavory aspects of our political landscape. I mean seriously, where is the complexity in narrative, where is the "figure it out" opportunity for the reader? Why does the MC sound like a mentally disabled person even after the "enhancements"? Why is the relationship he has with his ex so childishly one-dimensional? and if its not, why isn't there any substance to it and that of his relationship with anyone in this story, including his daughter. Why does this read like it was written for 4th graders??

TOM LARCOMBE, PLEASE DO BETTER IN THE NEXT BOOK. I am getting it not for this story but to see if your writing gets any better.

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another great addition to the series

Revisado: 10-15-24

awesome continuation, coupled with Tess's signature voice character skills made this another great addition to the series. officially hooked and looking forward to the next book.

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Awesome lit rpg. much much better than expected.

Revisado: 10-09-24

awesome lit rpg. well written and performed. everything you would want from a good litrpg.

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Wow, much better than I ever expected

Revisado: 10-02-24

Don't judge a book by its cover, except this one. The cover captures the main character's story and the sheer badassery of the overall book.

Unlike a lot of other Lit-RPG books that read like they were written by a shit-kicking, MAGA hat-wearing, middle-school dropout after uttering the words "hold my beer" , this one delivers on all aspects. original concept within the Isekai genre, original character, and original (enough?) mechanics.

This one delivers also in the parts that matter the most to many readers, which is sophisticated prose and writing. Bad writers, especially in fantasy, and more often than not in Lit-RPG (because gamer bros....of course) will sprinkle an overuse of curse words and gimmicks to detract from their poor writing, inability to create original concepts, dialogue or storytelling, Similar to how a bad cook will over-spice their work to hide the fact that it's pretty bad, or worse, contains expired ingredients like bad or rotted meat.
This writer is not one of those, and thankfully neither is the narrator. The characters are brought to life in a way that compliments the writing and keeps the reader both engaged and entertained. And this is not one-dimensional storytelling either. The main character and supporting characters all have well-developed plots and motivations and will keep you guessing what might happen next.

For example (spoiler potential here so read at your discretion) - The Spider that loves to sleep, voiced so unexpectedly perfect for her caricatured stereotypical valley-girl behavior is also uncharacteristically insightful. And this is a small player in the overall book. Then there is Ratzinger and the rats, who are done just as well. And the list goes on.

More importantly, it doesn't read like a 12-year-old wrote it and published it without edits, something that happens way too frequently within the genre.

If you haven't gotten this, get it. It's a great addition to the lit RPG genre.

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Great story and narration but childish writing!

Revisado: 10-02-24

The story and concept are not bad, and follow a fairly formulaic "isekai" troupe - the main character is whisked off to some place and uses game-like powers and mechanics to overcome the odds, etc.

The problem is a lot of the writing is very childish, and could have benefited from extensive edits. That's the biggest problem I have with the book. It reads in many regards like a high-school drop-out with nothing better to do decided to write one of these and probably used some AI to help with it. It reads like a teenage adult wannabe wrote it as a personal challenge, and enough people with equally ....simple sensibilities about prose and dictation, read it, told them it was great, and they published it with barely any edits.

as good as the story is, and it's not ground-breaking in any way, it could have been so much better with some adult supervision. I hope the writing gets better.

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story and narrator were good...not great

Revisado: 08-18-24

the story is good but follows a repeat pattern at times. Most of the events seem poorly designed to allow the Mc to overcome them, but not always. the biggest issue I have is the same I see in a lot of fantasy stories, which is that the bad guy('s?) never really have a decent back story as to why they are bad or doing bad things. Almost like they are written to be superficially bad to allow the reader a to readily accept whatever the Mc ends up doing to them. Other than that, it's worth the time if only as a way to pass time till a more decently thought out out series surfaces....which honestly...given the quality of what's out there....likely not likely 😉, so....just enjoy this for what it's worth.

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Hmmm...Not what I expected from them.

Revisado: 08-14-24

Well...I am a bit disappointed by this book, mostly because it starts off promisingly like some of their other books, but the milking of this series may have come to an unfortunate end with this one, considering the oddity of this book.
At times the prose was enough to distract from the lack of new ideas, or repetitive themes involving scientific words like “sub-straits” and other biological terms intended to inform and support the concept the authors have done research and are not writing to appease our ignorance. But yet, thematically, it seems that is what the book ultimately ends up doing. What was most disappointing, at least for me, was the writer's eventual capitulation to that saddest of sci-fi sacrilege…. the trope of ascribing human qualities and motivations to an alien species. At least they didn’t give the aliens British accents.
As an unpublished but aspiring writer, who worships the ground these two guys write on, I get it. A book needs a solid protagonist and antagonists in some cases, and when you take on the lofty challenge of making a whole species take up those roles across multiple books, it becomes difficult to maintain the interest of the readers without some sort of individual perspectives to root for.
Here as the readers, we find ourselves rooting for perseverance in more ways than one. The perseverance of the fictional humans, versus that of the (very human) readers of this book whose incredulity will be stretched in not-so-fun ways at how base and simplistic the progenitors of the “proto-molecule” end up becoming more human than alien as far as their motivations go.
The authors should have left some of the mystery as a mystery in this series. Squeezing another book out of it by trying to loosely tie up some alien mysteries with human motives makes it difficult to sustain reading.
I have loved this series from the beginning but wish they had gone in a different direction. Aliens may have similar motives to humans, but those of such an advanced order of knowledge should be allowed to exist in a presence that we cannot comprehend as we simply do not have the comprehension needed to understand their level of reasoning. The proto-molecule was “Scientific magic”, and trying to understand the mind that created it would be like cavemen trying to understand Einstein if Einstein was a squid-like species with multiple brains that evolved in one of Jupiter's moons. It simply wouldn’t take, and as a reader, I can honestly say … That is okay.
This book was not good for me for these reasons, and while I would still say it is by far superior to many other books out there and so worth the read if anything just for Jefferson Mays's dictum, this one did not live up to the others and has significantly diminished the world of the expanse.
I also get that many will read this book as a setup for a new series…but it's in the same world as The Expanse series. Keeping that in mind, it's odd to me how readily some are willing to simply dismiss the obvious implications of the plot devices used in the “set-up” in this book for future series, just to accommodate that idea it’s a different series.
Perhaps I am being too peculiar about it. I have tried not to spoil it for anyone choosing to read by not speaking to specifics, but human prisoners. The somewhat ascetic “order of things” theme…juxtaposed with violence that when you consider the intelligence of the folks who engage in it in the book, comes off as a bit forced and unnecessary, more to fill the pages than anything else…it’s a bit gimmicky. Not at all something I would have ever in my life said about these two authors.
Will I still get the next book? Yes of course. I am a fan, and I will want to see if any redeeming this one. But this is all just my opinion, and I am sure many there will be different than mine.

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Great non AI content

Revisado: 08-04-24

Decent lit rpg. Great world building and Decent introduction to this series. looking forward to reading book 2

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fun story.

Revisado: 06-26-24

nice short fun story that doesn't get too seriously with itself. slice of life with potential for future stories

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