I’ve read quite a bit of LitRPG, I don’t even play video games, but I kinda like the genre, haha. Like any genre, there are the good, the bad, and the ugly. Shadeslinger is top tier LitRPG. It was very well written, and surprisingly so considering it appears to be the author’s first book! I was hoping to find more to read from Kirrin, but unfortunately, this is his first entry. Now I have to wait, dang it!
The story is kinda the same old formula LitRPG, but with that being the case almost universally, the place where it can vary is in the characters’ likability and the way the story is told. Our main character Ned is a good guy, a nice guy, a friendly hero. I like Ned. Ned is the first player in a brand new VRRPG, and the game creator isn’t too happy about the reasoning behind Ned being the first and temporarily only player. As such, he is forced to give the epic starting item to Ned, a information filled talking axe. But he tweaks the sentient axe to be a jerk, haha.
It was a fun escape-adventure book. I like picking up a book and just not worrying about the real world for a while. Just like the characters in the book. Some of these LitRPG’s go back and forth between the real world and the virtual world of the characters. They all seem to have a bit different balance. This book is pure virtual world. The character’s real lives and real world have about zero bandwidth given to them. I would kinda like to know more about the real world, but it’s not that big of a deal. It might have helped break up some of the lengthy in-game story line.
Another big star for the book from me is that it is clean. No explicit content. There are a couple PG-13 moments or light language, but it is at a minimum.