I want to say right off that I did not hate this book or the characters, most of my complaints are more personal disappointment then eye rolling dislike but I cannot give this book more than 3 Stars. Many other people like it better but I will try to state why I liked it less.
Story:
The story starts out kind of dark with a pandemic. While I do not like “dark” stories I knew this was going to happen from the snippet in the description and was OK with it as long as it was not dwelled on too much. It was not. I got a little eyeroll when our MC had to comment on the sexiness of an android but let it go. Then he gets a chosen one little moment, but that’s fine he is the MC. Then he had sex with the very first female NPC he meets in game outside of character creation. I mean he doesn’t do it immediately, just the first moment they are out of any major danger. I start to smell Haram. Still the story settles down, Sure he still comments on most of the women he meets but is apparently loyal to the first one he sexed up so maybe it will be ok. The game mechanics seem interesting, there is some interesting ideas with him being basically a beta tester. Sure he is pretty vanilla and his background as “virgin motorcycle stuntman”(before drafted into the army) is kind of silly but I can roll with it. There is some promise here with the beta testing game, and his goals, and that he doesn’t pretend to be the smartest guy around. Then nearing the end of the book they kind of slam the door on all the potential I was seeing with another apocolypic event. Now, perhaps things are not as they seem, maybe there is still hope of the promised interesting stuff coming back but when I look forth at the synopsis and reviews of future books I am not seeing it. In fact, I am seeing more of the stuff I don’t necessarily like perhaps raring its head. So my interest in the story quickly deflated, though the ending almost saved it since I am still very interested in the Dragon aspect. It looks like books 2 and 3 may be ok and if they ever go on daily deal or a 2 for 1 I would probably pick them up but mostly this story is not really “fun” and much of which was interesting to me was kneecapped.
Characters:
I mean I didn’t hate anyone (outside of who you were supposed to hate and really I did not hate them either). However my favorite character, the most interesting one to me, was Cutthroat and she is a mount that doesn’t speak so….yeah, everyone was unremarkable and bland. Would I go have a drink and watch a ballgame with MC. I mean I guess, probably would forget he was there, but I have nothing against him.
Narrator
They were fine. These guys are like the Fast Food of narration. They get the job done, are a little shinny with their music, but ultimately are nothing special. They are certainly nowhere close to any of the best narrators on Audible. They speak clearly and that’s about it. The guys seem to have some voice ACTING range, but its hard to tell since there are two of them but I feel like I can tell all the male characters apart in a conversation. The lady reads clearly but does not really engage in voice ACTING. Whether the character she is reading is a sexy mage, a young herbalist, a supposed hardened Construction worker, or long time military Sargent they all sound exactly the same. Now that I think about it, I gave these guys a higher rating in the Life Reset books, but mostly all the women in that story were basically the same age so I guess her voice fit and it didn’t stand out to me as much. She just seems to have no acting range. That’s fine, sometimes you just need someone to read lines without sounding like they are reading lines and she certainly can do that, so certainly not the worst, just very, very average.
Summary:
I cannot recommend or unrecommend this book. It will really depend on what you like in a story. There is nothing objectively bad here, I mean some people like them sex scenes and it really ended up being very short and did not take over the story. I know a lot of people like apocalypses too and are not too high on the goofy humor that is in some books (Not every book needs a talking bearded ax, after all). I do think the less than exciting characters may be a bummer for many but the game system is fairly interesting especially with glitches and fixes having potential in the story, so I think it is easy to overlook the MCs lack of personality. At least he is not an annoying angsty whinner or overtly proud of himself Mary Sue perfect in every way. He is just a somewhat boring guy who got a good break after having some bad breaks and growing up in a terrible world. Oh and the book has Cutthroat… and Dragons (though really only at the end, but it is an interesting end). If it sounds good I guess give it a try. If not, your not really missing much. I am OK with the credit I spent. I would probably continue with the story if the books were in the audible catalog, daily deal, or some kind of big sale, but probably not all the way to series end unless the 2 and 3rd book were significantly better.