I once again made the mistake of seeing a book, reading a description, and deciding it wasn’t really for me despite knowing that the author does amazing work. This time it was with Dave Willmarth’s IO Online (The Greystone Chronicles #1). While I enjoy LitRPG and love GameLit I tend to shy away from the books where the characters are just “Playing a game” not trapped, no death, no stuck, no otherwise high stakes as it just doesn’t have enough tension for me. With that out there I was more than pleasantly surprised with this as the author came up with multiple ways to raise the tension and stakes for the main character without resorting to any of that. The story mostly revolves around a group of friends adventuring together in a game world, testing experimental VR equipment (based on when this was written I can see several other authors took inspiration directly from how the author designed it in this book to use in their own.) Battling Demons and Player Killers, and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in the worlds immersion system. There is a lot more to it but I don’t want to spoil the story. There is plenty of magic use and theory crafting, Lots of “base” building, Just enough action, comedy, and piles of epic loot. Pretty sure this book had the first time I’ve almost pee’d myself laughing at a scene ever. It also has a few emotional scenes that lead you the other way. The main characters are all great and it’s a joy to listen to their adventure> I’m not saying the book is perfect because it isn’t, Things come a little easily to the main characters (there is logic behind it in the book) and other players all seem to be on the level of Bulk and Skull from MMPR or Wile E. Coyote which I’m going to chalk that up to the real world possibly not being in the best of states this is reflected in people working in the game full time to support their real world families, so I’m going to just assume many of them quit school to play the game full time before they developed critical thinking skills. As always the narrators over at SBTL did a fantastic job at bringing the book to life. I will definitely be reading the next book in the series and I highly recommend this one.