Yeah, I saw mixed reviews on this and since I’m a fan of Travis Baldree the narrator I decided to give it a try. As expected, Travis was excellent. The story however…
For me there are two main things that incited me to return the book. First, I need these types of books to have an overarching theme or crisis which drives the story forward and motivates the MC to improve and get as strong as possible as soon as possible. Since it did t have this, the story kind of meanders with the MC admitting they don’t like to kill things and they are just playing for the experience. Unfortunately as a listener, this comes a little to close to my own boring life and was not interesting at all.
The second issue is a dislike of the MC. I want an edgy, motivated, hard working and creative main character who really thinks about why he is doing what he is doing and why he is putting points into his character where he does. In fact, that’s what finally did it for me. He kept throwing points into different stats based on how he was feeling at the time but when he even blew his whole level of points on charisma With the justification that he wanted to be well rounded I paused the book in disgust. One minute he wants to be like a mage character and is putting points into intelligence, the next he imagines he is a tough lizard warrior and throws the points into strength. But then out of left field this charisma choice without any justification. In fact..can I add a third thing? There is a distinct lack of explanation for his actions in general with the exception of wanting to be kind hearted so he wants to spare the creepy crawly things. .
In summary I rate this a… meh. Not great, not terrible. A much better couple books just released in the same genre are “Age of Stone” by Jez Cajiao and the “He who fights with monsters” series by Shirtaloon (pseudonym).