I read the synopsis for this book and said, “I don’t think it’s for me”. I listed to the excerpt of this book and said “Yeah I really don’t think this is for me”. Yet every LitRPG site had this book as recommend. So I spent a credit… a sad little credit I will never get back, but so desperately want back.
Story:
Privileged, judgmental, “nice guy”, lives as a victim in a world full of people he considers privileged and judgmental who all pick on him in the most mustache twilling, bad guy kind of ways, because otherwise he wouldn’t be a victim who needs to get his revenge. Even the “adults” in this world are there just to torture this poor soul who has never taken respons…has never done anything to deserve it. (Really the plot feels like it was written by an angry teen sitting alone in the corner of the school lunch room). The “nice guy” then does what “nice guys” who blame the world for everything tend to do, except luckily he gets to do it in a video game. He enters a video game and is granted the power of Mary Sue which he uses to make all the NPCs adore him (by killing them and turning them into his undead slaves, ignore what level he is, game mechanics are not important to a Mary Sue) and takes revenge on all those judgmental stupid evil people (most of whom he does not actually know) from the real world. There is an attempt at a side plot that tries to make him have a reason for the murder of many innocent NPCs but it’s really half hearted and kind of dropped halfway through the book. Sure the other Chad guy is a terrible person…his name was Chad, right? Whatever, it doesn’t matter he was “bad guy” who is supposed to make all of “nice guys” actions somehow not so bad. Guess how the book ends.
Characters:
Not one likeable character in this book. except maybe the aunt, but really she is just there to validate “nice guy” so, no, not even her. They try to make us feel bad for the girl who friend zoned “nice guy” but she’s just another annoying, helpless “victim” of “bad guy”. She will eventually come to be “strong” and adore her white knight, the undead king “nice guy” in a dark trenchcoated and fedora {that was a magic fedora at the end right?). I mean who wouldn’t, right? Personally I cannot imagine spending one second longer with any of these people. It was a struggle just spending the time with them necessary to finish this book. If I had my way this this fictional reality and all it’s characters would fold in on itself and blink out of existence. I mean, even the cat is annoying. Oh and about that cat Mr. “nice guy”. You are in a video game. It is not a cat. It is a computer program pretending to be a wizards familiar. Why are you always so surprised when it doesn’t act like an actual cat? Why is that brought up over and over? We know it is not a cat, how can you not know its not a cat?
Narrator:
He speaks clear English. He does voices to distinguish characters, some are more successful than others. He made the main characters voice sound as whinny as the writing made him, so, if that was on purpose, good job. However, the narration is very…plodding. It helped a great deal when I sped the book up. After speeding him up it was more tolerable and the narrator with the little bell sound reminded me of a Youtuber video game reviewer I watch sometimes. Also, speeding him up had the additional benefit of shortening the book. It still took me a while to finish the book as I felt sick every time I thought of listening to it. I couldn’t even go to sleep to it as the characters were so irritating. but that’s not the narrators fault. Still I don’t think I will seek out other books just because he is narrating them like I do with some narrators.
Overall,
I did not like like this book. If you read the synopsis and listened to the excerpt and think “this book is for me” then I hope you enjoy it. I did not. As stated previously the book felt like it was written by an angry teen. I felt like there really wasn’t any character growth in this book, but it is book one in an apparently long series so hopefully the author and character grow up and maybe future books are better. I will never know as I have had my fill of these characters and this universe and have no desire to revisit it.
P.S. I will give the book a point for no harem or other “adult” content type stuff, so it is not as bad as it could have been. But gosh that angsty teen victim stuff really gets old fast.