This was part of Ventureadlaxre’s grouping and has since been eliminated.
Plot:
Liam is a twin and his brother, Tommy, asks him to go into a game illegally for him and stand in while he’s busy somewhere else.
Ashley, Liam, and Walt don’t recognize the game when they log in, and they find that they can’t log out.
Most of the plot centers around the different quests granted in the game, like saving his friend, defeating the Rat King, defeating the Queen of Spiders and other in world type stuff. There isn’t a lot going on as far as real-world plot or ties to the in-game world. There are some hints that Walt is a part of some group that if revealed could lead to his execution – but maybe this will be more fleshed out in the second book.
Final Score: 6/10
Characters:
- Liam – This guy really likes the ladies, and his affections are fairly fickle. He’s taking an ‘evil’ route through the game and enjoying himself more than he thought he would. There’s a little bit of growth from the beginning to the end of the story, but he more or less stays the same. When he enters the game, the game scans him and analyzes his personality qualifying him as self-righteous, hypersexual and stubborn and creates a Paladin avatar for him.
There are side characters, Walt and Ashley are two members of his group going through the game with him. Walt is a mage and Ashley is a rogue/thief and she’s really obsessed with looting stuff. There are several love interests Liam goes after including a goddess and the Queen of Spiders.
Final Score: 5/10
World Building:
- You don’t choose your class or race, one is assigned to you after a personality analysis from the game
- You can’t log out unless the NPC’s in the game let you
- Classical fantasy races, elves, dwarves, orcs, magical beasts etc
- Gaining “charisma” points makes your character more attractive, and in general different attributes you gain changes your appearance in the game
- You develop a red aura if you start to go ‘evil’ in the game, ‘grey’ for neutral
- There don’t seem to me any right or wrong ways to go through the game, what side you chose to ally yourself with or betray is totally up to you
- Gameplay is similar to most MMORPG’s. Leveling up, allotting points to different talents, changing gear, collecting poisons, inventory bags etc.
Final Score: 5/10
Pacing/Prose/Tone
It read pretty quick, it’s not a long book and there’s a lot going on without a lot of downtime.
Tone is pretty light, def not a ‘darker’ book.
Pacing Final Score: 8/10
Writing Final Score: 6/10
Originality:
Honestly much of what I saw here I’ve seen done before in other LitRPG’s
Final Score: 5/10
Audience:
- For people who like LitRPG
- For people who like single POV
- For people who like classical fantasy races
- For people who like a lot of magic
- For people who like sexuality in books
- For people who like a lot of fight scenes/action scenes
- For people who like shorter faster paced books
- Not for people who don’t like cursing or prefer cleaner books.