Delvers LLC is a book that takes a basic concept, adds a a little bit of a twist, and then completely botches the execution. Two humans come to a new world and have to save it and everyone in it. It’s a perfect example of ‘tell, don’t show.’ There are large segments devoted to explaining in minute detail how the world works. And it tells you details about what the characters are like (sometimes inaccurately) instead of letting them show it through dialogue and actions.
One of the biggest issues I have with the writing is just how repetitive it is. Throughout the book, it will remind you of just how much Jason and Henry respect one another. It will tell you of how they’re both great guys with their own powerful morals. And the story will make sure you remember that these two were brought to Ludus against their will and the place sucks. It gets old quickly. Especially when the book already suffers from pacing issues. I genuinely believe this book could have been cut down to eight hours of less without losing anything of substance.
The plot also repeats throughout the book. The same story beats repeated over and over again. The two heroes get involved with a situation where bad people are doing bad things. They think that they’re going to die. They triumph. They recover, learn more about the world, and are fish out of water. And then they get exponentially stronger, going from nothing to being referred to as gods within two months.
Perspective seems to shift whenever it feels like it. Midway through the book, we’re suddenly following a character. The book then precedes to info dump their entire life story as well as recap the last four hours. That perspective shift into a background info dump happens multiple times throughout the story.
While I won’t spoil the ending, I’ll say that the book doesn’t give any real closure. It instead ends on a cliffhanger. Which explains a lot of my complaints about this book. The ending made it clear this book exists primarily to set the scene rather than tell a story. And judging by the scene it set, I’m not interested in investing further into it.
As for the characters, Henry is an Asian-American veteran with a dark past and kind heart. Jason is a lanky programmer with a dark past and acts as a good friend. The two feel like they were the same character at one point, and were only split for the sake of the story. To distinguish them, Henry is straightforward, where straightforward means acts like an ass but it’s okay because he has a heart of gold, swears as often as he can, is well versed in combat tactics, and is somehow a genius inventor. Jason is nerdy, where nerdy is a cringe-worthy obsession with catgirls, very intelligent, a good strategist, but has a ‘dark side’ to him. While the story implies Jason should be the one having the easiest time adapting to the game-like world, the two go back and forth on understanding the world perfectly and not getting it at all almost at random.
The secondary characters tend to be better despite being generic. Though both of the major female characters fall in love with the protagonists as soon as they see them. A major part of their character development in this book are tied directly to their feelings for the heroes. Any given character who is intended to be one of the protagonists also almost instantly has a deep respect for both of the main characters. The book forces anyone who’s on the positive side of things to be at least interested in the heroes without any real reason.
Even the book itself wants to make sure you know that the heroes are the good guys. Almost every antagonistic group not made of simple beasts kill children, rape women, and usually enslave people in this book. Even going so far as to laugh while talking about it at points. There’s an entire almost pointless section where the point of view shifts to a villain who tortures, rapes, and kills women because he’s mad at one of the main characters. It makes the story feel desperate to convince you that the heroes are good and you should like them.
Dolos, the godlike character who brings the heroes to this new world is one of the few characters who could have helped salvage things. A powerful entity who is self-absorbed and doesn’t care for the people beyond their use as experiments. Instead, he comes off as a petulant child angry that his parents are making him take care of an ant farm for a school project. It felt like the majority of his dialogue is whining about how he doesn’t want to be in the book.
For the narration, I’ll say this. The narrator had a good range in the style of voices. But where it fell flat is showing emotion. The only time it felt like the narrator or most characters weren’t neutral was when they were angry. That said, I think he did a good job with the experience overall.
Final Thoughts/TL;DR:
Delvers LLC: Welcome To Ludus read, to me, like a first draft to a middling litRPG fantasy adventure. The repetitive nature, push for the two human heroes as the best guys ever, poorly done romance, and lackluster writing made it a slog to get through. I do think that it could have been polished into something decent. But it would have required a lot of work to get there. As it stands, I wouldn’t recommend this book.