The Tower of Ruin is a solid LitRPG novel, though I must acknowledge a few flaws first. As others have noted it is on the short side, basically covering only the first level of what is supposedly a massive tower. The opening chapters introduce several characters that you’d assume are important and then never seen again, at least for the rest of this volume (though there is a reason for that, and I assume we shall see them show up again in later volumes, it just could have been handled a bit differently I think.) And my final complaint (though again most of these are minor issues) is that so much is left unsaid. No explanation of how the people got to where they are or where they are from. Now I’ve read a ton of LitRPGs so much of it I understand though I still would like to know how the people got into the world, but if this were a person’s first foray into the genre they’d likely be totally confused as to what is happening, and I’d have expected at least some questions to be answered prior to the ending of the book. Though the book is listed as Volume 1 it feels like there is more to the story that happened before where the book starts. That being said the ‘game’ mechanics are well done, the action quite engaging, the story definitely has my interests, and I look forward to having more revealed. The book is narrated by the incredibly talented Travis Baldree. He’s narrated a ton of books, quite a few in the LitRPG genre, and as always he does a spectacular job. I can definitely recommend this book and hope the saga continues, unless you’re someone just starting to check out the LitRPG genre in which case I’d say there are more ‘user friendly’ places to start.