So, I’ll be honest…I picked this book up because the cover looked cool and I saw it was narrated by Travis Baldree. That was enough to give it a chance and boy I’m glad I did. I left a Facebook review to this extent, but the gist of it is this…This book hits my whole LITRPG bingo sheet.
* Main Character is NOT mourning or moping the loss of a loved one the entire book. It’s rare that LITRPG books balance this with the melancholy it deserves while not dragging the reader down. To date, the only series where I’ve seen this done right is the Noobtown series.
* Real world is believable and MC has enough reason to enter the game world
* LITRPG aspects are new & exciting while being crunchy, but somehow not being overly repetitive.
* Main Character is interesting and I can sympathize/empathize with his plight.
* Game systems have depth.
* Fun character banter. Frank is hilarious and the banter between Frank and Ned is just so fun.
* Main Character isn’t given some kind of unique overwhelming ability or class skill that breaks the game. The number of LITRPGS that do this is annoying and, personally, I prefer the underdog.
* A murderous talking Ax. Seriously. What more do you want?