The story isn’t too bad but there were too many cheap gimmicks used that prevented me from becoming invested in the outcome. Chief among these gimmicks was the authors use of the passage of time. The way obscenely long periods of time was employed was completely unbelievable.
I get that the author tried to get around this by constantly reminding the reader that 10 years feels like 1 minute ‘when they really think about it’ but come on. When your characters casually make plans to go level up for 40 years so they can get strong enough to challenge the villains like it was only a minor inconvenience, you aren’t being edgy or new. You are asking the reader to suspend disbelief to a level that I find very difficult. That is longer than half of the main characters have even been alive. In today’s age where people get impatient if a website takes 3 seconds longer to load than usual, to make plans that stretch into decades is so unbelievable it is turned into a gimmick.
The constant huge leaps forward in time was handled poorly. To begin with, I was invested in the main character and interested to see how he developed as a player, the new and cool abilities and loot he discovered. Unfortunately, after the first jump forward in time, all of that was tossed overboard. He had new abilities that came outta nowhere, been places and done things that were never adequately explained. It was like meeting a friend from school again 10 years after graduation with no contact in between. Yeah its technically the same person but they have had so many experiences since then that you feel like you barely know him. All of the character building was trashed because of that.
The lack of psychological impact to the characters living in a hellish place for 40 years was completely ignored. The prisoners that were trapped in prison and periodically tortured by a psychopath for 70 years, yeah not very much lasting trauma there, so no biggie.
One of the funnest things about RPGs is loot! I am disappointed to say it was poorly handled in this story. Besides a cool set of gear received when he killed his first world boss, all loot was treated like it was just an accessory and of little value. Yeah, not a deal breaker storywise but as a gamer myself, this left me wanting more.
Also, I wish the narrator Laurie Catherine Winkel had more than 3 voices. There was such a great cast of female characters in this story and somehow she managed to make them sound the same.
I will say the villain was spot on though. He was completely believable and had me despising him through the entire story. Excellent job with making a genuine villain that we all dislike.
TLDR: it was an okay story. It aspired to be more than what it was but fell short. The misuse of several story elements made it feel gimmicky. I wouldn’t recommend paying full price or even using a credit for this book. However, if you just need something to keep your mind semi-distracted and this is on sale for cheap, go for it.