You may know Mr. Virdi from his Urban fantasy novel: Grave Beginnings. I had been hoping for some time that he would get around to making them into audiobooks, so I flipped out when I saw that not only had he done a LITRPG story, but it was also being done by SBT that I nearly had a nerdgasm. I thought it was a fantastic pairing, and I was right.
Now, there are a lot of things going on. The book starts out in a dystopian society that cannot afford to keep everyone fed, so certain types of people get put on the chopping block when they turn 21. Think of Logan’s Run in outer space. The MC, a fine fellow named Devrim Bains, is offered a choice. He can die, or he can have his consciousness uploaded into a virtual reality game where he can play until he dies there. Not a lot of choice, but hey what’s a protagonist gonna do? He signs up for the VR of course and gets dropped into a world of crap. When I was telling my wife about the story she told me it had some things in common with the 100. I don’t know, because I’ve never seen that show, but she was fairly certain that it had a lot of commonalities. That’s cool, because she watches it, and that means she’ll listen to the book in the car while I drive.
Luckily for him his knowledge of mythology saves his butt and he earns a class called the Slayer that is actually a pretty sweet deal, as he gets clued into a ton of things about the monsters he faces that other players don’t. The bulk of the book is him battling monsters and trying to figure if the Goblin King is real and if he is, how to stop him. I loved the whole title aspect like Slayer of men, and the implications that it had in the game. Lots of neat thinking. One thing I was not in love with was the toad companion.
For me, a mini-companion either flies or fails. Lately, the whole snarky or braggadocios companion has been a fail. I prefer more helpful aides over companions who don’t do anything but try to take the credit, I just don’t find that stuff funny. I guess I see that stuff too often in real life. They can be funny but the toad here did not ring that bell for me, I was actually hoping he would get killed. The odd thing is that Devrim feels the same way, and if he had continued to feel that way I don’t think it would have put me off, because then the character would have been meant to be unbearable. However, he makes a complete turnaround on that fact, and begins to like the little bugger, which is where I, the reader, am supposed to like him too but that didn’t happen. I could not stand him from start to finish, and the only saving grace was that he was not super prominent in the book.
Usually I will say that a book flew by or dragged, but this one just felt like it was paced out pretty well. There were some excellent fights and a lot of realization moments and a mystery about the Goblin King that worked nicely. The best part of the book was the characterizations of the players, they were pretty real in their depiction, although I did find a little bit of the dialogue to be stilted. The ending does play out like a David vs Goliath, but it was a fun fight.
Jeff Hays handles this one in all his solo glory, and I was quite happy to get it. With all the tag teaming that goes on over at SBT we don’t get a chance to see to single narrators shine much any more. Jeff handles this tale masterfully. I think his best characterizations are the females, although he does do a badassed battle toad impression that caused me cognitive dissonance because I hated the character, but enjoyed the portrayal. I really enjoy hearing Jeff do things on his own, as I can see just how much he’s refined himself since his last recording. Getting bits of him in snippets, as in the punny dwarf in the Wayward Bard, is nice, but that is a supporting role. That’s like putting Brad Pitt in the role of a stoner who just sits on a couch an entire series of scenes like in True Romance, rather than making him into a killer character like Aldo Rains in Inglorious Basterds. More is better. I think that is why I like him so much here, he gets to do a few ladies, mind out of the gutter people! A job that seems to go more and more to Annie or Laurie. Anyways, Jeff throws out all the stops and clearly has some fun with this book.
Overall the book is fun, filled with frantic action, and some nice LITRPG moments. Again the title stuff was the best gaming part for me. I enjoyed the book a lot and look forward to, but with 60% less toad. Final Score 8.3 Stars.
Even though I did receive a promo code for this review it in no way influenced my considerations of the material, and in fact, inspired me to be more honest. Getting a code generally makes me harsher as a reviewer as I am more often concerned what someone like Me will decide based on my review.
If this review helped, please press the YES below. Thank you immensely!!!
As seen on the LITRPG AUDIOBOOK PODCAST, please check it out on Youtube.com