Side Quest: Retribution
Awaken Online Series
By Travis Bagwell

Overview:
A book dedicated to Jason’s Demon Archer Lieutenant, Riley. She was so badass in book 2, but her dark side wasn’t really explored in detail. Now we get the full scoop.

The Good:
1. I really enjoyed Riley citing Jason’s battle tactics and then implementing her own inspired strategies. It made her relationship with Jason feel more like a mentor-apprentice than tenuous friends who might become something more one day.
2. Completely unexpected but Riley’s parents sided with her griefs at Richmond and even suggested to get even with the mean-spirited students. Hoorah!
3. The backstory behind Riley’s bow (named “Vengeance”) and its original owner, Lily, was moving and helped fill out the book with purpose.
4. Book 3 was a great introduction to the other mage classes (fire, water, air, earth, light) and their governing affinities. E.G.: Lucas is an Air Mage whose affinity is happiness which is described as “living in the moment”. He learns to use a coin flip to decide on matters (much like 2-Face in the Batman franchise).
5. Confrontation with Emma went better than expected. I figured Riley would spare her out of any lingering sympathy but instead it was the other group members who pleaded with Riley to stay her hand. What’s more, Emma was genuinely repentant afterwards.
6. Riley’s changes and new abilities at end were very intriguing from a nerdy MMORPG perspective.
7. Settling the score with the girls in school eventually came due and it was “Ender’s Game” style spectacular!

The Meh:
1. My favorite novel in the AO series is Ember, in part because the author wrote it as adult (and not teen) fiction. Retribution continues in the vein of teen fiction with all the antagonistic drama. For instance, why do all the female characters need to hate Riley? Both irl at her school and in-game with Emma.
2. A low level fire mage is named “Flare”. It is highly unlikely that no other fires mages would have chosen this name first.
3. The novel kind of a turns into a murder-mystery about half way through. Everyone turned into amateur detectives all of a sudden as opposed to badass RPG’ers. The chapters of the book were pretty dry and lackluster during it. About the only saving grace through the tedium was some snarky remarks here and there by Marie.
4. Saw the secret bad guys from a mile away.
5. The Light Mage got the shaft on the combat front. Aside from healing, she had no other spells to aid the party.
6. The other 2 in the party were kind of shafted as well. I would’ve loved to hear about ANY skills and spells from an Earth Tank and an Air Mage. Pretty disappointing.

Conclusion
The first and last sections of the book were really good but it dragged a lot in the middle. Certain parts in the story I especially really liked but other parts I felt like falling asleep.

3 ⭐️

Riley’s Stats:

Riley chose to be a Fury class at end, which uses health instead of mana to pay for spells and skills. The class puts more emphasis on VIT alongside DEX as primary stats and STR as secondary stat. Furies channel blood to pay for their life-drain oriented abilities. As such, Riley is now dumping every stat point into VIT.

Riley
* Level 122
* Race: Human
* Class: Fury
* Alignment: Lawful Evil
* Fame: 0
* Infamy: 4600
* ~4000 total HP
* 9.55 HP regen/sec
* Bow ability: Vindication:
* * Overcharge spells and skills while channeled: +10% damage/sec at the cost of -300 hp/sec.
* * Cooldown: 15 mins