The first book started out great and I enjoyed the story. The book moved along quite well and engaged me enough that I wanted to find out what happened next. The second book did not move along quite as quickly and had too many monologues of self pity and whoa is me, however, I felt invested enough to find out what was going to happen next.

The two side quests involving the girls had way too many feeling sorry for myself monologues and were not quite as good as the first two books. The side quest with Frank was better, but still he whined and moaned so much I was getting annoyed.

The third book was better than the side quests, however the writer goes back and forth on the intelligence of Jason. Sometimes he seems like an intelligent kid and sometimes an idiot who wallows in self pity. Yes, doubts will be there, and the character’s feelings will effect the story, but pages and pages of constantly feeling sorry for myself really takes away from the story. Mainly because it frustrates the reader and pisses you off. You want the story to move along, but you have to hear for the 10th time how they are so depressed because someone called them a name.

Also, I am an MMO player and the fact that he does not have players joining the un-dead in numbers does not reflect reality. Players always flock to those classes and most of the time the natural buffs are what they are after. They also usually do better in pvp because of their buffs.

I like the overall premise of the story about Alfred. It is an interesting take on a future MMO. However, there is so much downfall, discouragement, and overall failure on everything happening that I am not sure they would actually get that many people to play. If players are constantly loosing and going backwards and finding no fun in the game, it would not be played. The players do not seem to actually enjoy what they are doing, only stressing out about what to do. (Except for the girl playing in the garden.) People would not play what only brings stress and failure. There has to be some fun and some more wins than one win a book. As a listener, I was getting annoyed at all the pitfalls and failures, it took away from the enjoyment when the main characters being rooted for never seem to win.