Paragons is a good intro to a superhero genre MMO. There are some issues with it, ones that always seem to appear in this genre. It has rules that would make it impossible to believe hat this would be the most popular game in the world. First of all, if your character dies, you have to start from scratch. No one would play a game like that, no matter how good it was.
Can you imagine building a character for a year, only to lose them forever in a fight? Secondly, you don’t pick your powers or your super name, they just appear randomly. Third, you might pay for a month or longer before you actually GET powers. Plus, you only get to play one character at a time. So, randomized powers, no choice in what your super name is, no multiple characters permitted, and it takes forever to get abilities. Nope, I’d never even get that game off the shelf. Which makes it hard to believe that there is an entire network channel dedicated to events in the game itself. I always think of Warcraft, and no matter how popular it is/was no nongamers cared enough to even get a 2 mnute segment on the nightly news about what certain players did. Just to unbelievable.
That is the bad stuff, and just my nitpicking. Yeah it drives me nuts, but I guess it is needed to drive the plot forward.
The story is pretty good. It is well paced, and has some good action scenes. The charactersall have some nifty powers, and the MC is a likable guy in spite of what everyone seems to think at the beginning of the book.
As always, Jeff Hays knocks it out of the park with his vocal ministrations. It is getting to a point where I am getting books just because he narrates them.
So in all, a few issues with game mechanics, but over all a good story, with interesting characters. Read it, you won’t be disappointed.