The Last Warrior of Unigaea Written by Harmon Cooper is a new book in the LitPRG genre. If you do not know what this is, let me explain. LitRPG is a fairly new genre that mainly consists of story and characters based in either a Virtual reality world, MMO game (Massively Multiplayer Game Online Game – Like World of Warcraft), or other similar RPG (Role Playing Game).
The story follows Oric Rune as he lives in the world of Unigaea as a special class of character called a "Player Killer". This class is universally hated and untrusted by other players and NPC’s (Think computer controlled characters) alike. Oric chooses this profession in order to be able to seek revenge on other "Player Killer" characters who had previously wronged him in the game. While he is on his quest he discovers another threat that is threatening his new world of Unigaea and must make a decision to ignore this threat or to put off his mission of revenge and face this new threat for the sake of the virtual world that he loves.
Harmon Cooper drops us into the world of Unigaea without any explanation of how this world works. We do learn a few things such as in Unigaea when you die, your character is DEAD and you must start completely over as a new character. We also learn that Oric in real life has opted to be "Perma logged" into this game. How or why is never explained. To me, these things are both a blessing and a curse. Other books in this genre that I have read have the tendency to explain these things as if they were explaining to someone who has no idea how video games or RPGs work at all and tend to go a little TOO into the details to the point that it is too much. Pretty much these days most people get the concept of Virtual Reality, Video Games and such. If not, then this genre is probably not for you.
On the other hand, it would be nice to have some more information than is provided in this book. I get the feeling that this book is in the same universe as other books by Harmon Cooper such as Fantasy Online and if I had read those books then I would have a better understanding.
Overall, I was still able to enjoy the story. The pace was a bit slow at first (never too slow though), and picked up nicely by the end. I found myself not wanting to put the story down and finding excuses to find time to jump back in!
The narration by Jeff Hays and Annie Ellicott was done very well! I enjoyed how the game voices had effects on them and how the character of Sam Raid was performed by Annie Ellicott. The dual roles really lent a great contrast to the experience!
** I received this book free of charge from the author / narrator / publisher in exchange for an unbiased review. **