The story opens with Chase joining this real-time on-line game where the characters are interactive. His tech allow him to see, hear, and sometimes feel everything that’s going on with the NPCs whether in the real world (near-future NYC) or in the computer world arena. His first step is to go find his hunters, which are near-AI level NPCs that will pick him as their alpha. Lady Cassandra (Lady C) and Aia quickly find him and they team up to walk the streets of NYC finding mythical creatures (mythcrea) to capture and add to their dojo. This first part goes by pretty quick and relies mostly on the action to explain a lot of how the game works.
Chase and his dojo are joined by his real-world friend Iris. It’s pretty clear from the beginning that Chase has a deep crush on Iris but for some reason he has never told her. They have been close friends for years and they have great chemistry in this book. But I did get a little laugh out of this whole ‘alpha’ thing as both of his female hunters hit on him often. In fact, Lady C takes it a little further than that but the book itself remains PG-13. And just an aside about Chase, he’s pretty broke, living in a small apartment he has to share with some guy he doesn’t really know. Iris is always lending him money. I did wonder why the guy didn’t have a regular, if pathetic, job. So Chase kind of comes off as a bit of a slacker. Yet he is still quite likable and I was rooting for him throughout the story.
I really liked Aia, who is a Thulian (don’t you dare call her a Dragon Lady! Ha!) and is kind of intimidating. I like her rough sense of humor too. Lady C, who supposedly reads a lot, really comes off as a daft flirt 90% of the time. On one hand, she’s fun and cute; on the other hand she’s dumb and annoying. But I’m glad to say the dojo is quickly joined by other mythcrea such as Rose (a bearadillo) and her cub, a wise monkey king, and others. There’s plenty of characters to enjoy by the halfway point of the book.
One of the things I sometimes don’t like about litRPG or gamelit is the time taken to explain the player stats, etc. I am happy to say that this story manages to keep all that to minimum and also sprinkle it throughout the story instead of giving it to you all in one big boring chunk. The tale also does a good a job of explaining game rules through action. This let the story keep up a swift pace.
All together, it was a fun story that left me on a win, but with the door open for the next adventure. 4/5 stars.
The Narration, Sound Effects, & Music: Soundbooth Theater put together a solid cast for this narration. I also liked all the sound effects and music. They were well timed and placed and never over-shadowed the narration. All sound effects were easily identifiable too. The narration cast was pretty good. Chase sounds like a young, the ladies sound like young ladies (even Aia with her Russian accent). I wasn’t that enamored with Lady C’s character and the choice of narration (dumb blonde valley girl) didn’t help me like this character more. I did find Lady C a bit annoying. All around, it was pretty well done and I’m tempted to pick up book 2 in the series. Soundbooth Theater has a choice in narrations when you buy from their site directly – narration only or what they call a Deep Dive (with all the sound effects and music). I think this is a most excellent thing to offer listeners. 4.5/5 stars.
I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by Soundbooth Theater. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.