Overall a fairly interesting game world, and a fun story. There is a lot of focus on town building. Many of the characters are interesting. I think this could end up being a fun series.
There were a couple issues i had with the story, towards the end there was a bit of a tone shift where the story gets a bit darker and it kinda comes out of nowhere, like the author suddenly realized he needed to be more hardcore or the other authors are going to laugh at him. I unfortunately expect this new hardcore tone is going to continue and become the focus of the next arc.
Also the romance subplot was pretty clumsy,
I will get the second book but i don’t actually have high hopes for it.