Every other LitRPG hero is supposed to be funny, but this one actually says jokes that make the characters around him laugh and that made me laugh. He isn’t just some clown who pretends to not understand things and the author doesn’t break the fourth wall and your suspension of disbelief by making obvious references. He’s actually funny. It isn’t obviously juvenile like a character who references his origins and then acts like an idiot because people of that nationalism take pride in being idiots and there is not even a single mention of dysentery; instead, the character is actually funny.
Surprisingly, the book also has large check marks for all the basics that readers take for granted when reading normal fiction, but that are sometimes strangely absent in LitRPGs. The internal world is consistent. The narrative has a beginning, middle, and end with rising action and a climax, and the sex/romance are suitable for adult characters but also not weirdly indulgent and “the deed” is off-page – which is what I am looking for in a story that is primarily about action/adventure.
The critiques I have for it are minor. First, the author gives all the character’s skills poetic names *and* both the dragon and the MC obtain a large number of them all at once. It would have been better if they were obtained more slowly so that we only have to remember a new one every once in a while or if they were basic enough that we just get it without much explanation like “Jump”. Poetic names are cool, but having to go back and listen to a long table of abilities being read 2 or 3 times so that you can later visualize combat is a bummer. Also, I think making the character’s progression focus so much on special skills pulls focus from heroism and cleverness. The hero can intelligently use the abilities like using Shadow Dance to score back-stab attack bonuses, but when the abilities start becoming full attacks combos, it turns combat into literary button-mashing. Still fun and a good read as the scores reflect, but it does make this a novel that I enjoy for the humor, narrative, and story-telling more than the progression.
Finally, I love these narrators, but in this one (and the sequel I’m listening to now), there are a couple of instances where the music bed competes with the narrator in volume so much that I have had to rewind multiple times to keep up with the story. Still worth a few hiccups to get such a great narration, but annoying when it happens.