Warning, I truly abhorred this book. So take my opinion for what it is. I will try to describe why I came to feel this way and I hope if you read this you take it as strictly my opinion.
First of all the protagonist is the most stale one note character I have ever encountered. Every single line of dialog and every thought he has is one note. He is Puritan but has zero depth, zero growth, and zero emotion. He’s basically a puritanical blank slate. Every other character looks to him as the leader but he has zero charisma and zero appeal. They look to him for strategy however as all the other characters are more fleshed out it surprises me. An example would be “hey as the healer you should stay back a bit, you’re the rogue with some long range abilities go hide somewhere.” The strategies are facile and banal to the point that I would imagine that any other character could have more nuance. He has no motivation except to get better. This is a fine motivation if you can give it a reason or if the MC is driven by something. His drive is the challenge because he enjoys games, however he never seems to enjoy anything.
Time jumps! Time jumps are fine and a great tool when used to progress a story. However I feel in this instance the author uses it as a workaround to avoid writing or plot. For instance we’ll have a problem. The MC will discuss the problem for a page and then poof time jump twenty years and boom the problem is either resolved or such an easy task at this point it becomes trivial.
This happens several times. It’s one of the things I hate the most about this book. I’m going to provide an example and will save details for spoilers however consider this a warning.
Our MC and his group decide to go training, you see one difficult battle time jump twenty years and we open in another battle that is now trivial. The group then goes to save an army that was raised in their absence (no explanation other than to say they coordinated all of this through in game messaging during their 20 year training hiatus). So our “heroes” show up and every time there is a difficulty oh no what are we going to do? Don’t worry the Mc will himself use a new ability or instruct a companion to use an ability that up until this moment the reader was unaware existed and boom, problem solved! Btw the new power thing happens countless times and we only learn of them in battles where they are needed.
As a Lit RPG there are some interesting systems that are hinted at, however there is zero depth. Eventually all you get is a few numbers that should mean something to denote power or challenge however there is no context that explains what it should mean. Some books can get bogged down by overly long stats lists and powers. This can be fatiguing but the exact opposite can be true as well and in this case that’s what we have. Leveling has no value other than to make the numbers bigger. We know nothing about the characters abilities until they are used. Nothing is explained, not how a given ability works or how it was attained. We only get one throughout the entire book and that’s the god power our hero creates in the opening of the book.
Story, I was drawn in at first and there was enough worldbuilding to pique my interest. However no depth is ever provided nor any deeper insights. Characters are all one note and I feel like the introductions to some of the enemies to provide I assume a sense of challenge before a battle have more depth and character motivation.
The narration. I have to assume the editing was bad or the direction was poor. However the performances are flat and frankly detract from an already weak story. I’m surprised at this as the actors used are billed as a professional voice acting ensemble. The voices are great, the production and direction are lacking compared to the majority of the many audiobooks I have in my collection. The main narrator not once that I can recall changed his voice, pacing or tenor to suit the story.
Honestly I understand if this comes off as vitriol but frankly I genuinely feel like my time was wasted.
I almost never write reviews and I’ve had my membership for several years now. This is a first where I feel a book deserves a negative review let alone one as scathing. However that is my reaction and I will be getting my credit back for this.