I really liked the first book and a half, but this has just gotten to be such a slog. The author delights in meaningless conversation, and at this poiI really liked the first book and a half, but this has just gotten to be such a slog. The author delights in meaningless conversation, and at this point it feels like there’s nothing left. This has been a problem throughout the series - early on in the first book we were overexamining Jaresh being in the way of a cart and the agony of the resulting apology - but now it feels like there’s nothing left to keep me going. Just so much meaningless talking. It’s all filler. There’s a fun story buried under all this stuff somewhere, but it’s getting steadily harder to get there. Worse, we understand the world now. That shameless exposition was annoying early on, but also there’s a crazy homicidal storm god flying around killing people and we kinda needed some context. Now everything has already been spelled out, but we’re still forced to deal with the same characters having the same boring dialogue, or worse, politicking.
This last book has really ruined this series for me, it just became too much. Three stars overall because I had a lot of fun reading this at first. ...more
I wanted to like this book - this entire series, in fact - but it's just impossible, and it's completely because of the author. Aleron is the reason II wanted to like this book - this entire series, in fact - but it's just impossible, and it's completely because of the author. Aleron is the reason I joined Goodreads and am writing a review right now. Reading this insufferable writing is really that unpleasant.
Obviously, if you don't have a history with gaming, this book probably won't really resonate with you. The gaming part is the appeal, and it's what I'm here for. I love the LitRPG genre. The stats and optimizing are nice, the progression and quantifiable improvement are what keep me around. For that reason, I've made it through the first three books and am going to make a heroic effort to finish this thing. But with every page, I'll hate Aleron, because he sucks. The following are my issues with the author and how those issues affect the book, in no particular order.
-He's trying to copyright the term 'LitRPG', for some reason.
-He's clearly inserted himself into a fantasy written for his own consumption. The characters flaws are his flaws (aw darn, he didn't think about what he was doing and there were negative consequences. But he's fantastic, so he stupendously dealt with the fallout and emerged all the better for it. Woo go infallible main character.)
-The moral issues are a joke. Ranging from the treatment of non-humans (yet another setting where non-humans are second class citizens. It's not new, but there's nothing wrong with it in principle. But it's so goddamn binary in this. All humans are bad except like four freedom fighters who think this is bad, all non-humans are victims, and it was just so direct. No subtlety. Just a weird look from a guard, then an in-depth explanation.) to the consideration of the lives of sentient beings to the treatment of his villagers, it all feels fake and forced and in no way authentic. He wonders if it's okay to kill kobolds, since they're a fully sentient race with an established language and apparently a particular talent for mapmaking, but then just kinda stops caring pretty quickly.
-Spelling/grammar - really just awful. Inexcusably bad. Like in high school when you'd turn in a paper without proof-reading it. Get an editor. How do you not have an editor?
-Descriptions - he's overly in-depth about everything. He'll ramble forever about absolutely nothing. Half of these books are filler.
-The fight scenes are about what you'd expect overall, but there's an annoying tendency to look at things from the soon-to-be-dead opponent's POV, as if to add intensity. And it comes off as cheesy and distracting every time.
-Aleron is also calling himself the "Father of American LitRPG". What? Literally no one thinks this. He's written crummy series. He's neither the first nor best to do it. There's absolutely no basis for this statement, just sheer ego. He's just aggressively monetizing this whole thing. It's transparent and shameless and shitty.
-Probably the biggest issue in this book is how hard Aleron tries to inject his personality into this book. And his personality sucks. An odd amalgamation of childish sex jokes, random profanity, sidebar commentary of absolutely no significance or wit, and pop culture references all take you out of the moment, waste space on the page, and broadly just suck. Absolutely none of it is funny. It's awkward and forced and cringey - you can tell this guy's writing this book exclusively for himself.
-General logicky things with backstory. The character pretty much never wonders if this is a dream or tries to get home or anything, he just takes the whole thing in stride. So, sure, you assume he was a loser back home and this is a blissful escape and all he's ever dreamed of, that's fine. After all, he's introduced as one of the highest leveled players in the game in the prologue. But NOPE. He's in med school. Has Aleron ever met someone in med school? Where does he find the time? It's like his back story just generated this entire arbitrary lifetime of pursuit of medical knowledge to justify Richter performing a minor healing on someone one time. Then later, the character specifically states that all he used to worry about was video games and getting laid - med school has completely left the list of concerns. At no point does he express an interest in being a paladin or cleric or any such thing. He's got healing spells, but they're far from his focus. I cannot fathom why med school was introduced. Plus his home life was great! All these references to his loving mother in Atlanta pepper the book as well, none of it for any reason. And my did Richter have a lot of girlfriends in his few short years of life. None of it was given any thought by the author.
-Enemy strength consistency/levels. One of the greatest failures of RPGs is that you can never make things quite as realistic as you'd like. It's tough to capture fighting a giant ogre, to give it quantifiable health and strength and such, but then let a standard human go toe to toe with it and take a hit despite reality. But what else can you do, if this human will indeed progress to become a god? Basically just give it a high level and call it a day, typically. Fair enough. But not here! Levels don't actually seem to mean much. Level 15 Richter vs a level 33 assassin? Richter pulls it out with some minor trickery. Level 20 Richter vs a level 13 rock giant? Richter gets OBLITERATED. He's getting knocked out in single hits, he runs for his life for like three nights and eventually has to hide from the thing. Why is it level 13? What do levels mean, if not a representation of an enemy's relative strength? This is just lazy. On this note, seemingly every townsperson is in single digit levels. Levels seem helpful, provided you don't distribute stat points as arbitrarily as the least personable protagonist in the world. You're telling me that a 40-year old man in this game is level six because he runs a shop and he never did much fighting? Fine, I guess. Except you get major experience for leveling skills, and you've gotta assume our boy has pretty fantastic cooking/trading/hunting/horseriding/knife wielding/sewing/what the hell ever else skills, since he's been doing them his whole life. After all, Richter soars through the levels in just a few months. Single fights send him up multiple levels, but people that have existed in this world for decades are level-averse. It's annoying. Put some thought into your opus, father of litRPG. Just explain it away reasonably, that's all you have to do. But he does not.
There's so much more. The way he talks to his pet, the way he flirts, the way the world conspires for things to go right for the main character. He finds legendary items of incalculable value on a daily basis guarded by the most minimal and beatable of opponents. The way the author refers to him as "the Master of the Mist Village" and "The Chaos Seed" as if he's writing the damned Iliad. Everything about this book screams talentless amateur, and the only reason it's had any success is because it's a field so desperate for content and this guy markets himself so shamelessly. Despite all of this I'm going to read through all of these books, because at this point I'm owed a payoff, but I'd prefer not having started. For my money, go read Worth the Candle. It's not done yet, but it reads like a book written by an author who cares about creating a quality product. This has been a rant. I hoped that he was a brand new author and he'd start improving as I progressed through the books, but he has not. So frustrating....more
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