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KRISTEN’S REVIEW:
I’m just flying through these finalists!*
Today I’m diving into my review for No More Levels – which surprised me a lot! LitRPG and I have a complicated relationship, and so I don’t always go into them with the highest of expectations (not that they aren’t written well or have their audience or anything, but I bounce off a lot more than I love, unfortunately).
No More Levels is the story of Rin, who is a potato farmer in the world of The Gods’ Game. He can’t wait to turn 16 so he can go into his beginner dungeon and pick a class. Unfortunately for Rin, this doesn’t go at all like he has planned, and Rin ends up Cursed. Being Cursed means that you can’t gain any EXP at all – and so Rin is fated to forever be a level 6 potato farmer.
But, as it turns out, Rin finds out that being Cursed isn’t exactly what people think it is, and so he goes his own way, finding all of the dungeons that he can so that he can level up the most unusual way that he or anyone has ever seen. Craven, the god of the Cursed, has all kinds of secrets, and Rin is going to find them all.
This one surprised me. LitRPG and I have a weird relationship – I bounce off them a lot, and it’s really nothing against LitRPG as a genre, I just have a hard time jiving with a lot of them because in a genre that erupted like this one did, there’s just so many that are just the same thing over and over. So when I started reading this one and realized it was the ‘we’re regular people with regular lives except we see stats in our heads, because reasons’ kind of LitRPG, I will admit that I rolled my eyes.
But then I read further and all of a sudden I was like 65% into it? How did that happen?!
Rin was an easy character to cheer for. He gets the shaft here, and he doesn’t know why. He just knows that his father was not who he thought, and that his father’s wife absolutely hates him. So he starts out being quite literally punished for nothing. He becomes Cursed, and as such he is shunned by most everyone he meets. But Rin rises above all that and discovers that the Cursed class works differently than everyone thinks. Sure, it can’t gain levels or EXP the traditional way, but it certainly isn’t weak. So, this level 6 potato farmer is going to show the world that being Cursed isn’t the worst thing that could happen!
All told, I had a solid 8/10 stars of fun with No More Levels – if you’re into LitRPG, you’re going to like it, and if you’re not sure where to start with them, this would be a good one to start to wade into the ocean with.
ESME’S REVIEW:
I’m a fan of litrpg, in particular, I am in love with Dungeon Crawler Carl – so I was excited to see one make it into the finals. That said, if you’re looking for the raw, gritty, brutal plunge through a dungeon that DCC gives you, this isn’t that. This will be for folks who find that maybe to be too much and want something a bit lighter.
Our protagonist, Rin, turns sixteen, and so it’s time for him to enter a dungeon and play the “game of the Gods.” This is a fairly common coming-of-age theme, except that Rin was forced to pick a “cursed” class, and this throws a major wrench into things. The title then becomes obvious fairly early in the story since part of taking this cursed class means he can’t level. He is stuck at level 6, and he needs to figure out how he’s going to navigate life as a level 6 potato farmer. As the book goes on, he has to up his stat in charisma, a stat that everyone has thought was useless for generations – but turns out there’s some pretty neat stuff that comes along with having a high charisma stat.
There was a little bit of over-exposition, at least by my taste, but it wasn’t so suffocating that I lost interest in the story. I would say the same thing about the stats throughout the book; they were there, but it wasn’t so inundated with stats that I got bored and annoyed, which can definitely happen with litrpgs. The writing style was an interesting mix of old-school fantasy feel and modern dialogue that kept each individual scene moving, but I’ll admit things slowed down for me in the middle a little bit.
All things considered, this was a cute story that I think folks who want a YA litrpg for their kid — or maybe a book that could ease you into this genre without feeling overwhelmed. This could be a good entry point into litrpg for folks who want something a bit lighter.
I also want to note that I love how many standalone books we are getting this year. I almost never make it to book 2s anyway; it has to super, super, super pique my interest for me to stick around and wait for book 2. I love getting the full story all at once, so thank you all for submitting so many this year <3 I give this a 7.5