All Hail Our Tiny Green Overlord!

Oren was one of the first players in New Era Online, an immersive virtual reality MMORPG. He leveled up in the game until he was a highly influential player, the head of the top guild in the game, with an impressive number of prime badges. All that is taken away when Oren is betrayed and a powerful scroll spell is used against him. Oren wakes up as a tiny green goblin in the unexplored Deadlands of New Era Online.

Determined not to delete his character, Oren decides to continue to play as a goblin and wreak his revenge. To do this, he needs to build a goblin city in the Deadlands and take the fight to the players who betrayed him.

If you’re a fan of this genre, you know what to expect. The main character takes on quests, level grinds, improves his stats, and interacts with the game. This book has all that and more. There’s really something for everyone here. If you love stats, this book is full of them, Oren’s personal stats, the stats of his goblins, his building stats, resource stats, you name it. If you love city building, this is the book for you. You can just settle back and watch him build his new village, weighing food production needs against resource management, watching everything move at a realistic pace. And if you like combat, there’s some of that too, as Oren defends his new settlement and takes out those threatening it.

I was genuinely invested in Oren and his progression. In the beginning, he made some frustrating bonehead decisions, and tried to explain why the mistakes actually worked in his favor. But by the end, his struggle to hold everything together made him really likable. There’s some other characters I can’t wait to see more of. It’s going to be interesting to see where the series goes from here.

Jeff Hays did an awesome job with the narration. He has an impressive number of different voices for the characters, and is consistent with them throughout the book. He also has a realistic female voice which I always appreciate. He made the book a pleasure to listen to. I requested a copy of the audiobook, and I’m voluntarily leaving a review. I’d 100% recommend this book to fans of the LitRPG genre.