Meh, it was fine

The book makes a bad first impression with the friend of the MC being some dirty old man who just wants to party and get girls, but that character does settle down and we get into a decent story but with problems. At least problems for me.

So for me the best part of a LitRPG (and actual RPG games too) is the beginning. Learning the world, the mechanics and how the characters learn about it and interact with it. This series kind of skips all that with a time jump. There are better places later in the book for time jumps but I guess the author just wanted to get to the leveled up character so we miss the early stuff. We do miss other stuff with later time jumps that characters talk about, which only left me thinking “Yeah that sounds like it could have been interesting, too bad we skipped it”, but then i would not want this longer than it was.

Mostly the story was fine and not really annoying except the main neckbeard… I mean antagonist, and really he was just a cartoon who we are apparently supposed to see as a cartoon supervillian (seriously, right out of the Incredibles) so he was fine. The really annoying thing was the one woman with him early who was supposed to be his lead, she just made me want to slap her (or the author for writing her so pathetic). I mean she doesn’t need to be like the original Sara Conner, but can she at least be an adult human woman that can identify the neckbeard in the room? Ah well. Other than that I thought the story was fine. It was people stuck in a video game grinding up their skills to face down some toxic player in a video game.

Characters: They were fine. Would I really like to hang out with these people? Meh, their fine. I wouldn’t leave the room, I guess. You know unless bad guy or his “girl friend” showed up but that’s generally a given with bad guys.

Narrator (s): Meh. They were fine. They all spoke clearly, but i am amazed that you can have a woman narrator doing the women parts yet it is the most generic woman voice ever and is the exact same voice for all the women. Might as well have had the male narrator do a fake womans voice, though I don’t know that this particular guy would be up to the task. The males narrator did do some voices but did not seem to have great range and his MC just kind of had a sleepy quality though the story. Again, both were fine in a generic kind of way, neither were a detriment to the story. oh and sound effects added nothing, but didn’t distract so they to were fine, if unnecessary.

Summary: Meh, It was fine. I am not sure if I will continue with the story. I hear it is a trilogy with an actual end, but do I care enough to get to that end? Maybe if the other two books go on sale or I run out of other stuff. Kind of like a TV show you turn on and are aware of who everyone is and what they are doing, but are not really invested in. I am sure some people will like it, so if the authors summary sound good you may want to give it a try…especially if its on sale.