A game world that is both exciting and realistic (from a game design and balance perspective).
A story that takes you through every step of story progression and character development.
A narrator that knows their stuff and takes performance seriously, while still entertaining you. I’m looking forward for what’s to come.
While not perfect, I consider this my new gold standard for LitRPGs. The game mechanics seem like a real developer put thought into this and maybe even tested or theory crafted. At one point I wondered if they used a RNG as they wrote some of the story. There are few things that stood out as “OP”, and it was a superb pleasure in relation to most litRPG books I have read.
Story wise, I do think further exploring/detailing the main characters’ emotions/interactions would have been beneficial and not caused Too much drama. However, there was enough of that and character development to conclude this is probably laying groundwork more than anything.
I heard about this book from a Travis Baldree interview, and I am glad I did.
One last note for litRPG readers: Stat sheet and item stat reads are a thing, and they weren’t too annoying. They didn’t just keep adding new stats and abilities to each character sheet read off, and I was actually interested in some of the item stats.