Travis Bagwell has pretty consistently provided engaging stories with a great litrpg flavor. This newest entry follows a new character on their own journey and was enjoyable almost start to finish. My main criticism of this particular entry was this weird run near the middle of everything where the author took a paragraph or 2 to paint the main character, Finn, an older guy in a weird stereotyped conservative baby boomer brush. Going out of his way to talk about how little he values in game achievements and “participation trophies”, and how hard work is the only thing that really matters. This came off pretty tonally dissonant, considering Finn was leveraging the AI research and work his company had funded to get a leg up over the other players he was competing against. I don’t know if that was meant to be some weird throwaway to remind readers that he’s an old dude, or if that was intended to endear him to the reader for some reason. That one part really threw me off, but the rest was very good, and I hope the author leaves that kind of dumb garbage behind in the remaining books in this set.
Review from Awaken Online: Ember →