Descend

Decend is a series that starts out about a group of one hundred people with a massive gender imbalance in favor of women suddenly waking up with game structured powers on an island where they are required to complete quests in a dungeon in order to obtain the necessities to survive. Pretty standard as far as harem LitRPG stories go. Still, it does a pretty decent job with the character focused stories within that. The protagonist, Jay, is a pretty decent guy that it’s pretty amusing to watch stumble through the various situations he does. The heroines at this point are pretty decent too, each having a reasonably fleshed out character. The actual dungeon diving is decent enough in terms of how the party uses their abilities and deals with the situations in the dungeon, but what makes this part interesting is that the narrative also seems to put an emphasis on focusing the interpersonal conflicts between people in the group and handles it pretty well. In combination, the two result in what feels like pretty good pacing despite the actual progress in the dungeon itself being pretty slow. The biggest issue during this portion I would say is the interludes, which end up describing in detail to the reader the exact circumstances of what is going on and why long before the protagonist or anyone in his party has any idea. It really didn’t feel like this knowledge gap was ever used properly to build up suspense or tension, rather it just seemed to take a lot of mystery out of things and made Jay finally figuring things out completely lack any impact.

The point where Jay finally figured things out, the end of the third book, is also where the series becomes terrible. Even before that, in the third book a shift away from focusing on dungeon diving in favor of essentially mediation and bond based cultivation for stat growth began. It was somewhat interesting at first, but the heavy focus on describing it in overt detail got old quickly and it quickly got pretty boring because the systems are incredibly basic, with all the extra detail just being a rambling word salad that is inconsistent and never has any significance on the plot. The fourth book focused even more on that, in addition focusing more on technological development that’s described in a pretty hand wavy way that uses too many words to say nothing, as well as adding in time control powers that allow a lot more growth to happen in what amounts to a short period of time in the story. It’s also at this point that the cast gets overtly bloated and all the new characters start blurring together as they all lack any major sense of presence or personality and the old cast also starts to behave increasingly inconsistently. Jay felt like he was having a decent character arc in the first three books, but in the fourth and fifth he just acts randomly in a much more generic and flat manner, with the author throwing around phrases in the vein of “the old Jay would have X, Y, Z” to contrast with an action he’s doing to make it seem like he’s grown, but the path from the old Jay to the Jay that’s performing whatever is being highlighted is too nebulous for it to stick. As a result, whatever investment had been built up in the cast over the course of the first three books just bleeds away to nothing by the end of the series.

It is also important to note the shift into a sci-fi like story in the last book. I say sci-fi like, because I feel it’s supposed to be sci-fi but the sci-fi aspect is so terrible that I feel actually calling it sci-fi is giving the series too much credit. There had been some sci-fi elements throughout, which had seemed interesting when they were mostly just hints, but when the narrative actually started using them in full it became clear the author has no idea at all how to do so because it’s just nonsense that just keeps dragging on and on. The shift is also really abrupt and kind of dumb. At the end of the fourth book, they’re still fighting standard dungeon enemies mostly. The first half of the fifth book is just a really long description of using time powers and cultivation abilities to push through decades of growth. However, spending all this time is a complete waste, because in the battles that follow very little of it matters. It feels like the book was actively trying to waste the reader’s time with the first half of the book, which is especially egregious because the final battles are all half assed, rushed, and unbelievably lame. The final villain straight up says, and I quote, “YOUR PUNY MIND CANNOT FATHOM THE DEPTHS OF MY INTELLECT. I ATTEMPTED TO REASON WITH YOU. NOW DIE.” And yes, it was in all caps in the book too. The epilogue is pretty weak too, with nothing surprising or interesting in the least, just basically being exactly what you’d expect without any particular details or description that stood out or made it satisfying at all.

As for general notes, the writing in general was really amateurish. The prose in general lacked flow and the dialogue was pretty stiff. The random throwing in of references also wasn’t handled all that well. There was a Japanese character named Meikiyo that was especially cringe worthily bad. The cover art was pretty good in the first three books, but strangely enough despite having a similar art style to the point I think it’s the same artist, the fourth and fifth books’ covers look pretty bad.

A decent dungeon diving LitRPG start that descends into terribly written sci-fi so bad that the whole series is not really worth reading.

6/10

Apocalypse Gates

This is a LitRPG series that starts off with a man named Alvin being ​resurrected in a full dive MMORPG with fully realistic AI NPCs, though it’s not clear when exactly this is taking place or for what reasons. The premise of the MMO is a zombie apocalypse occurring right around 2000, though it grows considerably beyond this premise in that gates appear all around the world that bring in various other factions, including fay, elves, dwarves, aliens, demons, mages, and even Lovecraftian horrors. The setting also involves the human world following normal human history up until the apocalypse, at which point game mechanics suddenly also suddenly pop into being. This sounds like a solid foundation for a story for a lot of variety. Thus, it is incredibly bizarre how utterly repetitive this series was. The vast majority of the series involves Alvin going to a new group of people who have no clue how the new game like world works, him explaining things, though in the process being an immature ego driven asshole as is his default state, and often there being someone that is similarly an immature ego driven asshole who takes offense and attacks him resulting in Alvin putting the other one down pretty easily. This happens again and again and again and again. Multiple times per book most of the time. There was so much potential with all the different settings intermixing, but it doesn’t use most of them at all really. The only one outside of Earth that was fleshed out reasonably well was the elven world. Like half the others just kind of got stuffed into the last book in a really rushed and forced manner where Alvin suddenly tries uniting everyone and thus visits a bunch of places briefly. In terms of overarching plot, there is no overarching plot. The closest thing to that could be the mystery behind why everything is taking place, but the answer to that is so dumb that I’m just going to pretend it doesn’t exist. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos? Seriously?

Even with a lacking plot, a series can do well if it has a strong enough cast of characters, but unfortunately this does horribly in this regard as well. The protagonist is terrible. As mentioned, he is an immature ego driven asshole. At first that was fine, since it also felt like the author seemed to acknowledge that and was writing him as one with his nickname of Hero feeling like sarcasm. But somewhere along the line, it feels like the author starting treating him like an actual hero, which is ridiculous because there wasn’t really any sort of character arc at all. He’s still awful, even with the light attempts at suddenly trying to make him seem more benevolent in the last two books. It’s totally possible to write a good story about an awful person, but writing a good story about an awful person while pretending they’re not is something far more difficult and definitely not done here. The heroines are also incredibly lacking. The first two, Gothy and Mousie, are just as terrible as Alvin. They legitimately fit him incredibly well because they’re all awful and deserve each other. That doesn’t change the fact that they’re incredibly annoying to read about, the relationship development was cringeworthily bad despite how drawn out it was. The rest are nowhere near as bad, but they’re incredibly half assed. They have very minimal and rushed character arcs if at all, and the relationship development is also incredibly abrupt. Six of nine were added in the last book with three of them not having a single appearance until the last book. Furthermore, there aren’t really any particularly great side characters either with closest being the AI butler Jarvis, who it feels based on how they’re handled in the last book that the reader was meant to care a great deal about, but it simply wasn’t built up nearly enough to actually payoff properly. There weren’t really any memorable villains either. Thus, all in all, it’s really hard to care about anyone in this series.

The series in general also had an incredibly rough feel like it had planned out nothing and was just throwing things around as it went without much thought put into things. There are litRPG mechanics, but they’re nonsensical from the start and constantly changing in ways that make no sense. This is explained as the devs of the game having no idea what they’re doing, but that doesn’t change the result that as a litRPG the series ends up as terrible. That this was just kind of thrown in as a way for the author to get around the lack of properly working on the litRPG aspect is further emphasized by the fact that Alvin is constantly poking at and exploiting loopholes and inconsistencies, which would be totally fine if the system was actually properly designed, but seeing him using one exploit while not acknowledging the endless others that would be just as useful if not more useful to just makes everything feel like a sham. The series also doesn’t really touch on any of the deeper themes at all. It lightly throws in some parts like characters realizing that they’re living in a game that has game developers, but doesn’t do anything at all with it, which is probably worse than not bringing attention to it at all.

The prose in the series is decent enough, though it too can get repetitive at times. It’s also bizarrely drawn out during some portions in ways that make no sense. The comedy I also very rarely found funny. A lot of it is supposed to stem from Alvin and company looking down on or easily crushing others that are supposed to be lame, but as everyone involved in most situations is pretty lame it largely didn’t work. There are also a lot of references, some to incredibly popular series like Firefly and Ghostbusters, and some to less popular series like Bob and Tiny from the author’s own previous work. They’re not used particularly well though, basically just name dropping for the heck of it.

A series with some potential but that fails hard due to weak litRPG elements, a repetitive plot, and awful cast.

5/10

The Fractured World

The Fractured World is a five-book sci-fi series with harem themes, though beyond the fact that aliens are involved there’s not much to the sci-fi until the end with the focus being more so on surviving in a wilderness inhabited by monsters. It features a normal guy named Brandon that ends up getting kidnapped by aliens and stranded in a planet with all sorts of biomes bizarrely put together like a patchwork where any advanced technology just doesn’t work at all. With a bunch of random wilderness survival information that he’d picked up from one of his friends and powers he obtains as the result of becoming the mate of a special alien race known as Zerrin, he does his best not only to survive but to find a way for him and his mates to escape the Fractured World they found themselves on.

This series has a lot pretty standard elements, but it weaves them all pretty well and does a good job of keeping things interesting. Progress towards the overarching goal of escaping and solving the overarching mysteries only really happens in the last book, but there’s always a sense of plot progression due to how the cast continues growing, both in number and abilities, and keeps advancing to new locations. The world building ultimately ended up pretty simple and there were a lot of elements that felt somewhat underutilized, but overall, I think it handled things well enough for the story it was trying to tell. At a macro level it felt pretty well-paced, though the last book did start to feel like it was getting somewhat repetitive, especially with the action, and dragging on.

The main cast have pretty good character arcs. The protagonist’s arc had some depth to it, wherein it doesn’t just involve him getting more powerful and confident as is the case with the vast majority of novels in the genre, but rather there’s some back and forth with him becoming more powerful, becoming arrogant, getting crushed and only managing to make it through due to luck and help, but learning from that and clearly growing not just in strength, but as a person. The character arcs of the others are more straightforward, but there’s good variety to them which makes each character feel well defined, and just as importantly they all mesh well together so the group overall has pretty great chemistry. I was also really satisfied with how things ended for them and what how the epilogue played out.

The series also makes good use of side characters, wherein it isn’t hesitant to put the focus on characters outside the protagonist and heroines which helps keep things fresh while also preventing the main cast from getting overtly crowded. The antagonists are decent enough, wherein most of them are cartoonishly evil but not all of them are complete idiots as is far too common in the genre. There was a certain villain that really stood out in that they weren’t cartoonishly evil at all, but rather easy to understand and sympathize with, and ultimately, I was really sad with how their story ended. I suppose that’s good from the perspective that me being so attached to them makes them a well written and overall great antagonist and it certainly did hit a pretty strong emotional beat, but at the same time it’s also kind of bad in that that really wasn’t what I was looking for in this type of story and would have much preferred a happier ending for them.

I was also a fan of the writing. It’s in first person and the protagonist is pretty witty with a constant stream of jokes and humorous one liners so the prose in and of itself is pretty fun. The author was also very good at giving each of the main characters a very distinct voice which helped each stand out and be memorable. It’s also pretty fast paced, focusing on what’s important and not wasting the readers time with unnecessary description that doesn’t matter. The cover illustrations were also very well done, in that they show all the heroines, shows them in a way that mostly matches their written description properly, and has a pretty unique art style that combined with being pretty high quality makes them look pretty great.

A well written though pretty typical survival harem series that has a great cast.

8/10

Here is a link to the first book on Amazon.

Bonded Spirits

This novel series felt really haphazardly put together. The plot is centered around a protagonist getting transported into a world with monster girls who he bonds with in order to gain skills he can cultivate. But then it just proceeds in random directions without it really feeling like there’s any sort of buildup to major events or any sort of overarching vision on where things are headed, which would be fine for a comedy series that doesn’t take itself seriously, but as this is a series that seems to be trying to have a worthwhile plot, it largely can’t be seen as anything but a failure. This issue is heavily present in the transition from book to book, wherein it feels like the author had little idea what they were going to do in the next book and thus each sequel begins with forcing things off from where they were going onto wherever the author wanted them to go.

It’s also present within the bounds of each single book as well however, in that there are a lot of inconsistencies, things just luckily happening because they need to, and characters just randomly doing things even though it doesn’t make sense for them to. The first book was the worst in this regard, though from what I understand it started off as a serial web novel and such issues are common to such a publication so I’m pretty forgiving there. The second book was a major improvement, and though it still has these issues they are incredibly muted compared to the first to the point I would consider the second book decent, so I expected things to continue to improve. Unfortunately, both the third and fourth books regress to not as bad as the first, but still noticeably worse than the second. Thus, other than a brief period where the plot felt decent, it’s overall pretty bad.

Other aspects of the story also weren’t that great. The world building was really weak and pretty half assed with things constantly contradicting what was previously built up. There were attempts to write around these at times but they were too forced to work. The cultivation and gamelit aspects were so superficial they might as well have not been there. The main characters and a few side characters have a good feel to them, with the protagonist especially being pretty good for the genre, but they’re really badly fleshed out and aren’t used properly so it’s hard to get all that invested in them. Part of the problem probably arises from how there were probably too many for the length of the series and thus most didn’t get enough focus, but the parts where characters were focused on weren’t particularly good at highlighting them either, so it’s probably a wash regardless. The villains were all really underdeveloped as well with really anticlimactic ends.

The prose is paced decently well so it doesn’t feel like it’s wasting your time, which is nice as it feels like that’s a major issue with Kindle authors recently. The prose still isn’t that good though, in that it doesn’t flow very well and is somewhat annoying to follow along with at times. The cover art is pretty solid, though pretty standard for the genre so it doesn’t really stand out at all.

An incredibly amateurish attempt at a pretty generic plot.

5/10

Skulduggery

Skulduggery is defined by the Oxford dictionary as “underhanded or unscrupulous behavior; trickery”. As such, one would expect a series titled as such to be full of intrigue, intricate plans, backstabbing, etc. with a morally ambiguous protagonist. The premise certainly sounds like it fits into that mold incredibly well. It features Wade and his companions, who live in a world where elves reign supreme and all the other races are oppressed, starting a whiskey operation despite alcohol being illegal in the search of profit and power. This series tries to fit the title at times, but it never really is for a multitude of reasons.

Firstly, Wade just doesn’t seem all that smart. A work like this needs a clever and cunning protagonist that actually manages to impress the reader but Wade doesn’t come close to that. He accomplishes things solely because everyone else is incredibly stupid and a lot of plot convenience. People can be stupid, sure, and the plot convenience is essentially explained away as him literally being favored by the ancients, which are essentially the gods, so that’s not completely illogical either. Still, watching a guy that isn’t all that smart outsmart a series of complete idiots that keep doing the same stupid things just isn’t that interesting and starts getting old incredibly quickly which is only exasperated by the fact that far too much time is spent with other characters tripping over themselves to praise him for doing so.

Furthermore, the way everything is written there’s no real intrigue, backstabbing, or twists. Even with incredibly simple plans, by withholding information on the plans from the reader until key moments they can be made to look a lot more impressive. But here, the flow is essentially always having the whole plan and Wade’s thought process explained in detail from the beginning and then things just going pretty much exactly as planned. And when other characters do betray Wade, this is always telegraphed to him well in advance before they really try to do anything, with him always putting a plan in motion to respond to them before they manage to harm him. All in all, it just never feels like there’s ever really a challenge, it’s more like everything just falls easily into his lap, which once again, yes, is explained by the fact that the ancients favor him, but it’s incredibly dull to read about.

The morally ambiguous aspect is also handled really badly. At first it seems like Wade will be a morally complex character, which obviously makes sense considering he is a former thief now trying to be a kingpin. However, this stops being the case eventually, at which point Wade and his friends are portrayed as completely good and the elves are portrayed as completely evil. I’m just as okay with a simple good vs evil story as I am with one with a more complex take on morality, but here it felt like it was trying to go for both and just failed in every way. Despite the writing always trying to play up Wade and his friends as on the side of good, they’re constantly doing pretty awful things without any remorse and justifying it to themselves and I suppose the author is justifying it to the readers in half assed ways. It’s cringeworthily hypocritical to the point it makes the cast overall pretty unlikable. And it only gets worse once the series shifts from being about whiskey to be about raising a rebellion against the elves.

On that note, the series also does a terrible job at handling the evil side of the equation. Elves are supposed to be awful enough that Wade is justified in just wholescale massacring them, but they never seem all that bad. Sure, there are some random descriptions thrown around about how they’ll kill humans just for looking at them wrong and such, but that never happens. This is despite the main cast constantly getting into situations where if the elves did kill people that easily you would very much expect them to do so, but apparently since the elves didn’t have any real evidence, they wouldn’t do anything, which doesn’t fit with how they’re described at all. As far as I can remember, there’s only one elf that just straight up goes around killing random people for the hell of it, and they end up abruptly pulling a Karma Houdini and end up as one of the ‘good guys’.

Which I suppose brings up another issue, how the story suddenly decides that all elves aren’t evil at the end but has no idea how to handle it. It is shown that some elves are actually good and uses already established elven characters in order to do so, but these characters had already been established so the writing has to make them incredibly inconsistent in order to fit with what the story needs them to be. On top of that, the cast continue to talk like all elves are awful despite that clearly being shown not to be the case, at which point they just seem really racist. Either have the happy kumbaya happy ending where everyone resolves their differences and comes together, or have characters do what they have to do for their own sakes regardless of the other side. Trying to do both doesn’t work.

It should also be noted that the world building is terrible and full of holes. I’m not one that’s constantly trying to point out the holes in how magic works so I’m totally okay with things like the elves being able to control when the sun rises and sets. But there are certain magical things like the Rainbow Keys that don’t make the slightest lick of sense no matter how you look at them and they literally are exactly what the author needs them to be at the time regardless of any inconsistencies that may arise.

Also, the way Wade handles his whiskey operation doesn’t seem practical at all. Since there’s no way the ones actually distributing don’t get caught, the reason large black markets manage to function well is that there are enough middle men between the kingpins/suppliers and the ones that actually distribute that it’s incredibly difficult to pin the kingpin and thus even if the lower ranks are dropping like flies, the business continues. Here, Wade intentionally does his best to cut out the middle men and to get as close to the distribution points as possible, but him managing to stay hidden despite that just seems impossible. Luck of the ancients and all that I suppose. Furthermore, the economics of funding a revolution through whiskey is completely impractical unless the market that the whiskey is being sold in is vastly bigger than the market of whatever nation is being overthrown, so that actually being pushed as a thing was kind of dumb, even if in the end it all came down to plot convenience.

The quality of the writing was also pretty bad. It’s incredibly drawn out for what feels like no reason both at a macro level, meaning there are a bunch of events and plot threads that serve absolutely no purpose, and micro level, meaning that there’s a bunch of unnecessary description that doesn’t contribute anything in terms of tone, atmosphere, etc. The series could easily be half as long and nothing of value would be lost.

Now as for the good parts, ignoring how grating the main cast can be in terms of hypocrisy, they were all pretty well developed for the most part. The protagonist has some decent character development and does have some pretty great moments. The heroines are also mostly all pretty awesome and have good relationship development that was reasonably enjoyable to read about. There are a good number of fun side characters as well.

If this was just a mindless action series or something like that then I think that the cast and relationships would have been enough to hold the series up. If it had the same plot but it was written in a way that it didn’t take itself seriously at all, I also think that the cast and relationships would have been enough to make the series good. However, this feels like a series that tried to be intelligently written and have depth but just failed completely. I get it, Logan Jacobs writes books at a fast enough pace that I doubt he has the time to put much thought into each one. And I think that he manages to put out pretty decent books for the most part considering that. However, intrigue is a genre that I don’t think you can half ass and write in such a manner, and thus this is a failure of a series in my opinion. Cover art was nice though.

A dull mess of a series that just feels like the author bit off more than they could chew.

6/10

The Lost Reavers

This is the second book series I’ve read by Mike Truk, and I liked the first, Shadow Rogue, quite a bit so I went in pretty excited. Overall, I’d have to say I’m pretty disappointed with this trilogy, in that despite being by the same author in the same genre and set in the same world, The Lost Reavers doesn’t seem to have much of anything that made Shadow Rogue so good. I will also note explicitly in case that it isn’t immediately obvious, that due to what they share I can’t help but compare the two and thus this review will be abundant in such comparisons.

The original basic premise is that the protagonist Hugh was once a part of The Lost Reavers, a band well known as the most powerful warriors on the continent dedicated to hunting magical beings known as the Fae. However, during such a fight, a spell not only ends up killing all of the group other than Hugh, but end up trapping all of their souls inside him. He considers this a curse, because though he’s able to call upon their power in order to become stronger than any other human, they very much don’t want to be trapped in him and are thus doing their best to try to get him to kill himself so that their souls are allowed to pass on to the afterlife. Hugh doesn’t particularly have a reason to live, but he doesn’t really want to die either, and thus he simply wiles away the years numbing himself with alcohol and such. However, when his brother, the duke, orders him to go to the border town of Erro and build up its defenses, he has no choice but to agree, and sets out to do so with his companions Morwyn, Anastasia, and eventually Zarja, in the process finding himself caught up in much bigger matters regarding the relationship between humanity and the Fae.

Hugh’s strange power set I felt had a lot of potential in terms of storytelling. Firstly, there’s a lot of potential in how it can be used in terms of combat, in that he gains the skills of the souls upon whom he calls. Both of these are used pretty well in the first book, though things decline considerably from there. The combat is the first to weaken, in that although Hugh has always had the power to call on multiple souls in order to have the sheer strength of multiple people, in the first book he still relied a good amount on the individual skills and knowledge of those inside him, but with the second and onwards he seems to solely rely on the sheer strength that calling upon multiple souls provides in order to just out match the enemy in power. His power set changes considerably during the third book, but it goes even further in the direction of just making him really powerful in terms of physical abilities so he’s able to resolve even larger issues just through overpowering them. Him being overpowered was interesting at first in that it’s fun to see an overpowered character just stomp over people underestimating them, but this is something that can get old pretty quickly if further depth isn’t added, and this did the opposite in that over time depth was taken away, making Hugh being overpowered less and less interesting.

Furthermore, everyone else’s power sets are also involve just overpowering the enemy. During the first book, it felt like there would be some complications to Morwyns combat in that she seems to just be an incredibly skilled blade user at first sight, but it was hinted that there was more to her. Ultimately, the added concept just makes her really strong and fast without anything else particularly interesting. The same applies to Anastasia as well. She’s introduced as a disciplus, a special type of magic user that can control specific properties such as velocity using formulas. That’s not a particularly unique magic system, but it’s one that is amazing when done right, though at the same time it’s really hard to do well. The author was clearly not able to handle it well, because he does very little with it, ultimately just saying that it’s a pretty weak system, before giving Anastasia completely different powers in the third book, which although definitely much more powerful, are much vaguer, and thus far less interesting, nowhere near as interesting as the magic systems found in Shadow Rogue. There are two other major heavy hitters that also join eventually, but they too essentially just really powerful without any particularly interesting mechanics or limitations. As a result of this, the action eventually becomes ridiculous, with in the final battle people flying around shooting massive spells at each other, but because it just comes down to whose abilities are more overpowered, it’s really not that interesting, and way less interesting than the tricks used to take out the antagonists in the third and fourth books of Shadow Rogue.

There being souls trapped inside Hugh also had a lot of potential in terms of his character arc. It starts off using the souls within him as a simple means of getting him to constantly confront why he wants to stay alive if it results in the suffering of those trapped inside him. As it goes on it gets a bit more complex, in that one of the core themes of the novels is the relationship between humans and Fae and how they can work towards coexistence. But The Lost Reavers are a group dedicated to killing the Fae, and thus starkly opposed to any such coexistence. The novels could have used that for a more complex character arc, wherein Hugh starts off like the other Reavers and just wants to kill the Fae that are a threat, but over time despite the bloodthirsty voices in his ears he overcomes that, and feels guilt at betraying his former comrades and ideals, but does what he believes is right.

Instead, the series just has him instantly switch to realizing that he’s always been wrong about the Fae and that The Lost Reavers have always been an evil group and him now wanting to do everything he can to protect the Fae without any build up or any actual development. How he has to be careful not to be too obvious about his change in beliefs to the souls trapped inside him is somewhat interesting, but it’s never used in a precise manner so as to do anything interesting with it, it’s just kind of something that’s hanging there and ultimately never has any major impact. There’s a final confrontation between Hugh and the Reavers inside his mind, but this felt so rushed that all it really did was highlight how underdeveloped The Lost Reavers were despite how important a role they played. I would also like to note that Hugh in general just wasn’t all that interesting of a protagonist, being way too much of the standard overtly heroic type without any depth and nowhere near as witty or amusing as Kellik in Shadow Rogue.

The rest of the main characters weren’t all that great either. The heroines started out pretty different from each other, but as a result of their character arcs Morwyn and Anastasia became more and more similar and thus less interesting and honestly less likable. It also doesn’t help that Anastasia’s character arc was incredibly rushed, as is evident in that it relies heavily in there essentially just being monologues describing how she’s changes as there wasn’t enough content to convey it more naturally. Zarja didn’t get a character arc, and was supposed to seem likable in that she’s really kind and wise, but I don’t think she was written well enough to support that. I think I would put every single heroine in Shadow Rogue above every heroine in The Lost Reavers. Everything involving the relationship between the heroines and Hugh also got way too sappy in a really generic way. The final battle involves the villain hurling insults at Hugh about how he has potential but is weak because of how he loves others, and Hugh literally says “Love was never my weakness. In fact, my true strength was the friends I made along the way”. I think the author may have been leaning into it and making fun of it himself at that point, but that doesn’t change that it’s still there throughout the novels. I suppose the ending is fine in this regard, but it’s the standard ending you would expect and not particularly exceptional.

The rest of the character’s also had major issues. One of the most prominent is that a good portion of them are just kind of thrown aside at the beginning of the third book and don’t matter at all for the rest of it. But even beyond that the cast in general just isn’t all that colorful or interesting. Shadow Rogue had prominent larger than life characters like elegant goblins and loyal war trolls. The best side character that this series has is Nyxomar who fits into that slot incredibly well, but shows up essentially at the end and thus doesn’t have enough of an impact. The villains overall were uninteresting too, being pretty generic and simplistic in their motivations, personalities, etc. Arasim I was especially disappointed by. He was referred to in Shadow Rogue as well, so I had high expectations for him both in terms of his character and his abilities, but in the end, he was a completely ordinary villain yelling out insults about killing the protagonist and raping his women with really simple powers that were beaten in a really simple manner right after they found him.

The world building and lore were also incredibly weak. This is set in the same world as Shadow Rogue, so pulling this off should have been easy, but in the end all it takes from Shadow Rogue in terms of lore is some passing references to Fortuna, The Hanged God, and Exemplars, and all it takes in terms of world building is that somewhere across some dessert that is pretty much impossible to cross Port Gloom and all the other cities in Shadow Rogue exist. What it replaces all of that with instead is The Fate Maker, a fanatical church with its own customs, biases, and corruption, that seems be quite interesting in the first book, but is left woefully underdeveloped in the end. There’s also some development centered around the background and history of the Fae, but it felt lacking in substance and too abrupt in how it just kind of popped up when needed. There’s some politics and such with the Empire and conflicts between dukes, but that too fades away completely in the third book. In the end the world the story is set in is nowhere near as interesting as Port Gloom was.

The writing quality overall I would say is still pretty great, though there was what felt like major dips in the third book, which in addition to everything else stated so far should leave it pretty clear that I think that the third book overall was rushed to the point of feeling pretty half assed. The cover illustrations are all pretty solid, with the illustration of the third especially being really good.

A series that had potential and felt like it was going to use it well in the first book, but that gets considerably worse over time.

6/10

Shadow Rogue

Shadow Rogue is a four volume fantasy harem series that chronicles the rise of Kellik in Port Gloom. One of the best aspects of this series is the world building surrounding Port Gloom. The story takes place outside of Port Gloom for a portion and there are constant references to the world beyond it, but the core of the series very much is Port Gloom, how it works, and how it can be changed. Port Gloom is a city that is essentially ran from the shadows by a crime syndicate known simply as The Family. The Family isn’t actually controlled by a single family, rather that is simply the terminology used, with those in top positions being known as Uncles and Aunts. As such, Port Gloom is very much a medieval sin city and full of all that entails, blatant corruption, mass inequality, the exploitation of the weak and innocent in the name of profit, etc. Despite all that however, it has its own type of order and balance and seems to function quite well. The narrative does a really good job of exploring Port Gloom, managing to flesh out everything from low class thievery to high class brothels, showing off all the various systems in place and how The Family influences everything from economics to politics to religion.

In addition to the specifics of Port Gloom, the series also fleshes out the lore of the world quite well and it felt quite rich for the length of the series. I was especially fond of the authors take on the different gods and religions and how they influenced the world at large. How the way characters spoke was full of expletives based on this lore I found an especially good touch that made the world feel much more immersive. Beyond that it’s pretty standard fantasy in most aspects, having the standard races like goblins, orcs, elves, etc. and a pretty basic magic system, though there are some areas where it does some really unique things which results in the lore overall feeling pretty unique.

The specific plot is centered around Kellik’s journey to rise in power in Port Gloom in order to obtain revenge against The Family. Originally, Kellik was an aspiring member of The Family that thought he had a promising career as a thief ahead of him. However, one of the Uncles of the family betrayed him and left him for dead. Thus, he begins a journey to get revenge on that Uncle, which eventually morphs into a quest to defeat The Family overall, which eventually becomes a quest to remove the influence of The Family from Port Gloom entirely. The series is pretty well structured and paced for most of it, with things moving at a pretty steady speed and it never really feeling like things are dragging on. There is a pretty jarring time skip at one point half way through, though it manages to recover from it quite well. Unfortunately, the last book is kind of rough in that it feels rushed and like it’s trying to do more than it has room to, while also spending more time on things it probably didn’t have to spend as much time on, and also wasting time completely on things that had no real purpose. The narrative goes on pointless tangents earlier in the series as well, at an even higher rate I would say, but those aren’t as much of an issue as just being somewhat interesting was enough to make them feel worth it, while in the last book it felt like those pages would have been better used elsewhere.

The core plot felt somewhat rushed, but in the end it progressed well enough so that isn’t the main issue. The bigger problem is that it didn’t feel like it satisfactorily dealt with all the characters. Kellik is a pretty fun character, in that he has a decent amount of edge to him but isn’t an annoying asshole as most protagonists in the genre that seem to end up being. His wit and constant humor definitely helps. He’s also a pretty complex character and has a pretty extended character arc that slowly builds up over the series and results in major character growth. The first three books do a really good job both in terms of the concepts behind the character arc, dealing with things like him exploring what he really wants and who he really is and the effects of others as well as his own power on that, and its execution. The last book is still good in terms of the concepts involved in that it flows pretty well from the previous books. However, its execution was pretty lacking. It felt overtly heavy handed and relied way too much on internal monologuing to convey things to the reader. Where things end up is still pretty solid, but it felt like it could have been conveyed much better, though it would require a longer series.

The five heroines are also pretty well developed, which is no doubt a benefit of all of them being introduced in the first volume. Two of them, Cerys and Yashara, have pretty short character and relationship arcs, with both of them being complete half way through it felt like with any progress beyond that being kind of minimal. Cerys I felt was developed well enough in that time and was a pretty interesting and likable character. Yashara on the other hand I felt was lacking in depth and thus a pretty weak character overall, but was decent enough as a member of the cast overall. Iris was the most interesting heroine, in that she starts out as an enigma and continues to remain incredibly mysterious from beginning to end. She has no character arc and a very minimal relationship arc, but she’s written well enough that she’s incredibly likable despite that, which I thought was really impressive. The last two heroines, Tamara and Netherys, have pretty solid relationship arcs that mostly reach their conclusion in the third book, but their character arcs extend beyond that into the final book and thus end up feeling rushed and like they needed more development. Both of these arcs involve them going through major transformations and accepting their changes and becoming comfortable with them, but it felt like there just wasn’t enough time so this was glossed over, especially in regards to Netherys. They were still incredibly interesting characters that were both really likable, but it was disappointing how the conclusion to their character arcs wasn’t handled all that well.

Beyond that there’s a pretty large and solid cast of side characters. Some of them such as Pogo and Pony who are members of the core group got fleshed out pretty well too. The overall group chemistry with them included was also really well written, wherein it was interesting in how what was built up to in the first half directly led to what was accomplished in the second half. The cast outside of the core group got fleshed out far less but were decent enough for side characters, though it was actually somewhat disappointing how what felt like were important side characters were just kind of forgotten about in the last book, such as Elsa and Maestria, which once again I attribute to the last book being rushed. Still, all in all the ending and epilogue do a good job of tying everything up and giving the reader an ending that they can be satisfied with.

The writing quality is pretty solid, and though there are some errors, especially in the fourth book, it’s never too much of an issue. The writing style I also really liked in that it uses description well but sparingly, building up atmosphere and tone pretty well without getting overtly wordy and dragging on. The action is also pretty well written, most of the time feeling like its describing things that are actually important and not wasting the readers time spending too many words describing basic actions or repetitions of things in too much detail. I also really like the cover art, though I’m kind of disappointed that Tamara never got a cover. I would have preferred Iris or Cerys getting volume 2 instead of Yashara, and Tamara getting volume 3 or 4.

A series with great world building, a solid plot, and mostly good character and relationship development, though things get really rushed in the last volume.

8/10

Alpha World

Gamer for Life is an eight book LitRPG series of novels featuring the protagonist playing a full dive virtual reality MMO called Alpha World that while still very much designed like an MMO still features human like AI for NPCs and incredibly high levels of interactivity in general. In terms of its LitRPG mechanics it is pretty solid. The only western MMO I’ve played is WoW up to the end of WotLK, and it felt like a lot of the mechanics were heavily based on that so it was somewhat nostalgic. Class design, growth systems, abilities, reputations, game play loops, etc. all felt pretty well fleshed out and designed decently well in such a way that it felt believable that an actual MMO would be designed in such a manner for the most part. There were some exceptions where the protagonist, known as either Seamus in real life or Alburet in game, clearly broke things and got major advantages from that, but that too is pretty standard for the genre and felt well written enough that it made things more interesting without making the world seem broken.

The overarching plot to the world is a decent enough plot for an MMO, even if it is a pretty standard affair. However, what made it stand out a bit is how the protagonist was involved with the story at a level that is never actually the case in MMO stories. This doesn’t actually make much sense in terms of the MMO story, as an MMO centered around a single player having a major unique role is obviously a badly designed MMO by definition, but for the purposes of this novel series it added variety with some light politics and such so even if it does feel kind of strange it felt like it was worth it. The major battles were also mostly solid as MMO battles despite the strange story mechanics, with the exception of the final boss who for all intents and purposes was just a string of absolutely nonsensical mechanics that would never actually fly as an actual raid, but it’s the last fight in a novel series so that’s forgivable.

Unfortunately, beyond that there were a number of major issues that made it really hard to get into the series. The first is that it spends way too much time on what felt like pointless action. It’s an MMO so of course there’ll be a lot of just random quests that are pretty much just grinding. This series spends way too much time actually describing these random battles in way too much detail. It’s fine at first because the mechanics to the world and such are new to the reader and random battles help them get used to it, but as it gets into the middle of the book and the random battles continue to be described in the same amount of detail, it all feels really pointless which makes pretty major portions feel like they’re just dragging on. Things get better in the last couple books, but the middle stretch is really rough.

The other major issue is essentially that the world is fundamentally broken. Firstly, a game company existing that has access to systems that can create fully realistic worlds with fully sentient AI but everything outside of that being pretty much as it exists today is incredibly bizarre. This could be written around, but none of the characters ever really bring it up so it just feels wrong. Secondly, the writing is really half assed in whether it wants to treat Alpha World as an actual world or as just a game. For example, there is an antagonistic character named Bloodmoon. The main issues in her story arise when the series begins approaching the end game. On one side there are a series of quests that are centered around defeating a major villain who is clearly evil. However, the villain too is giving their own quests that involve helping them destroy the clearly good faction. As a result of this, Bloodmoon kills NPCs, including those that the protagonist was quite close to, and Bloodmoon is portrayed as an awful person for that. She’s portrayed as a jerk from the beginning, but at this point it actually seems to portray her as a genuinely evil person beyond the scope of the game.

This just largely doesn’t make sense. If Alpha World is just a game, then what she did is completely legitimate. If there’s an option to play on a faction, just picking to be on that faction even if it is evil doesn’t make you a bad person. After all, it’s just a game and people have fun in different ways. However, Alpha World clearly isn’t just a game, as it has fully sentient NPCs including the ones that Bloodmoon killed. So that case she is a terrible person but then that would make the people running the game and giving the villain the ability to give such quests even worse but their morality is never questioned. And it also makes the protagonist and his party seem a lot worse as they are also constantly fighting random enemies, including ones that are clearly sentient, with no explanation purely for standard game rewards. So, it’s all contradictory and thematically makes no sense.

This leads into another issue with the series, the main characters. I found the protagonist incredibly grating in part because of how he was written into the aforementioned issues regarding whether the world should be treated as a game or not. On one hand he essentially seems to be looking down on those that are treating the world like a game, but on the other hand he’s fully participating in all of the world’s game like elements without actually questioning them. The plot manages to propel him into doing various cool things, but it largely feels like he just stumbles into them as personality wise, he is incredibly lame.

He and the majority of the rest of the main character’s also have major issues regarding character and relationship development. The series ends up a harem series where Alburet ends up with three wives, two other players, Karen and Fluffball, and an NPC, Stacia, with the four of them being what I consider the main characters. Alburet, Karen, and Fluffball all have character arcs that involve them overcoming past trauma. However, this is written terrible. It relies completely on succubus dream magic pushing them along which felt like a cop out. It’s not like their backgrounds or resulting character development are all that original either, rather it’s all pretty cliche, which isn’t something that I inherently have a problem with, but seeing as such stories have been written so often, I would think the author should have been able to draw on that to write something better than what was in this. It also felt like it took way too long, especially with Alburet for whom it felt like the big twist in his story was pretty obvious very early on but it spent forever before the books actually got to it.

The relationship development and romance in general is also really bad. The dialogue is absolutely atrocious and not written in a way that it’s neither natural nor beneficially unnatural, in that it completely lacks any subtlety, is incredibly stiff, and is really repetitive. And there are long sequences of such dialogue at times which just felt incredibly cringeworthy. Because of all this, I found it impossible to get invested in or like any of the main characters much. Stacia came out a bit better than the others as she didn’t have any random edgy backstory that it spent way too much time badly focusing on, but she still had a lot of awful dialogue so I still don’t think she was that great. These problems are especially a problem during the middle portions where the focus is most heavily on the characters getting over their trauma. Unfortunately, this compounds with the action being a lot less interesting, and makes the middle portions overall just really awful to read through.

On the bright side there were some pretty great almost main side characters. I found the other two-party members, Gerald and Marysue, much more interesting and likable than the main characters, though that could just be because the author spent a lot less time trying to write about what’s going on in their heads. Bob and Tiny, the minions that Alburet can summon, were also pretty great, mostly just due to their comedic effect, but that made them pretty likable nevertheless.

The ending character wise was fine, pretty much exactly what I expected from about half way through the series, though due to my lack of investment in the cast it didn’t really hit all that hard. I will state that the final twist regarding who a certain character is was handled really well, wherein I had an inkling of what the twist would be way early on from book one that grew and waned as more detailed were revealed, but it didn’t fully click until it was explicitly stated, which I think is a sign of really good foreshadowing.

In terms of the author’s style, I think that he’s more verbose than I prefer, but outside of the terrible romance he wrote pretty well. The heavy detail during battles was a double-edged sword, which made the more important battles much more exciting, but made the less important battles feel like they were just dragging on forever. There are a bunch of random pop culture references, which is perfectly fair considering the context of people from the real world playing an MMO. Some of them are actual jokes which were decent, though the majority I think are just references just for the sake of references, which don’t really do much for me but they were written in in such a way that they weren’t annoying either like they often can be. The covers for this series are strangely pretty bad. Incredibly inconsistent in terms of style, with most not being good in and of themselves either.

A book series that although having some overarching issues throughout has a pretty good start and end, but gets really bad and slow in the middle.

6/10

Arena

Marc was just a normal truck driver when he was suddenly whisked by special forces, brought before the President of the US, and told he was chosen by an alien force as Earth’s representative in a series of death games known as the Crucible of Carnage. These games were run by a powerful force with the goal of diminishing aggression between galactic civilizations by concentrating it all to a small number of individuals. Champions that did well would obtain glory and wealth for themselves, and access to advanced technologies for their home planet. However, those that lost too easily would have their planets sold into intergalactic slavery.  He’s helped by his AI turned human assistant Artemis, who has trouble with English idioms, and his aggressive trainer Grizz, who was originally a competitor in the Crucible but had lost and now only existed as a sentient hologram. He also makes an alliance eventually, ultimately including the honorable knight Nova, the seductive space vampire Aurora, the logical space valkyrie PoLarr, and the sharp sniper Tempest. He also helps and is helped by a local gang member, Fallon, and the local police chief Olivia. The stakes are high, and Marc isn’t sure at first if he has it in him, but he’s damn sure he’s going to try.

***

This series of novels has two core aspects. The first is Marc himself. He’s an interesting and pretty great character. He doesn’t have much of a character arc, most of it occurring over the course of the first couple books and simply being him gaining confidence, but it results in a personality that is likable and interesting enough. But what really makes him interesting is that he’s hilarious. He’s constantly throwing out hilarious one liners and references to things that no one understands, which just makes things even more amusing. Furthermore, the latter aspect is reinforced in that several of the heroines, Artemis, PoLarr, and Tempest, have a special chemistry with him regarding this matter, which results in it having a surprising amount of variety to it. Thus just the dialogue and comedy alone is enough to hold up the books a good deal.

That’s good because the rest of it felt pretty lackluster. Most of the characters outside of Marc felt pretty underdeveloped, seeming solid enough in terms of personality, but having no character development, little background, and weak relationship development. The exceptions to that were Artemis, who was pretty solid all around in all of those aspects, and Grizz, though to be honest that doesn’t mean as much considering the type of book this is and how I would prefer to have it more focused on the heroines. There are various side characters that are amusing at times, and some such as Hann-Abel are pretty likable, but in the end they’re pretty minimal.

In terms of plot, the core loop is interesting at first and the action is written reasonably well, and because the way things are set up matches can have a lot of variety so it feels like the loop has a lot of staying power. However, though there is variety in terms of superficial aspects, the loop from match to match starts getting really repetitive. It’s ultimately the same people using the same tactics, weapons, and abilities in the same ways. If there was an overarching plot embedded around these matches it would be more interesting, but for the most part that felt pretty minimal, with a bit here and there, but not enough to make up for the Arena matches getting dull. There definitely were exceptions to that though, especially as it approached the end wherein the overarching plot that was slowly hinted at throughout finally took form and was ultimately brought to a decent, although rushed conclusion. The cover illustrations are good, but as what seems to the norm for such books for some reason, they’re inconsistent with the text.

A series that has a really interesting and likable main character with really amusing dialogue, but mostly weak characters outside of that and a plot that is incredibly repetitive as it leads up to the finale.

7/10

Dungeon Master

There once a dark god that was cast out from the heavens and sealed away in a dungeon. This god swore that he would have his revenge, but could do nothing but wait as ages passed by. However, one day a party of inexperienced adventurers entered his dungeon. He quickly used his powers to overwhelm them, showing them that they were entirely within his power. He then offered them a choice, swear their eternal loyalty to him as his minions or face death. With no other choice, they agree, and unseal him from the dungeon, allowing him to roam free. He leads his minions into various other dungeons in order to defeat the gods trapped inside so that he may take their powers and grow in strength such that he may raze the heavens and obtain vengeance. His minions are an interesting bunch: a stubborn prideful warrior human named Annalise, a feisty distrustful rouge foxkin named Rana, a cheerful naïve catkin alchemist named Carmedy, a cold reserved high elf mage named Morrigan, and eventually a wise and curious catkin librarian named Haruhi and a reserved but passionate dragon named Heijing. While building up his strength, he trains his minions to make them stronger, and upon discovering their backgrounds and associated problems, assists them with those as well, as any good Master should.

***

This series has some interesting concepts from an overarching level. To some degree, it feels like the story of a dark god that on his way to obtaining revenge helps his interesting and varied underlings with a number of issues across many lands, ultimately forming connections with them, in the process mellowing out, and while still obtaining revenge and ruling over everything, ruling as a very different god compared to how he once was.

The problem is that this entire series feels like it wasn’t thought through at all, not just in terms of changes in direction from book to book, but just in general it isn’t really consistent with what it’s trying to do at all. It reminds me of some web novels in that it feels like the author just wrote what came to mind as quickly as possible and then hit submit without really planning things out or going back over things to make sure they’re consistent and make sense. There aren’t issues in terms of proofreading, but the problems that do arise instead are a lot worse in my opinion.

The biggest example of that is the protagonist who is completely inconsistent. At times he’s described as incredibly evil, but at the same time he’s shown as constantly having purely heroic intentions for actions he performs and the narrative is constantly trying to justify why him doing what he’s doing is a good thing, which just leads to a really strong sense of dissonance. This isn’t like a character arc thing where he changes over time, because though there may have been some sort of character arc in there it isn’t clear at all as all these inconsistencies are there from the beginning to the end. As a result, the protagonist doesn’t really seem evil at all in a way that would make him interesting, just a guy that looks down on others constantly as well as someone that gets angry incredibly easily and doesn’t hesitate at all to act on his anger in a violent fashion. That isn’t evil, that’s just a spoiled child with too much power, and that’s all he really feels like most of the time, which isn’t a compelling protagonist at all. It also doesn’t help that the narrative is in first person with his thoughts being written very in depth, far more in depth than they needed to be, considering most of his thoughts are incredibly dull, repetitive, or pointless. The amounts of times he thinks something in the vein of “I had shown them just a fraction of my power but would show them more” got incredibly grating.

And thus, just all around, it’s incredibly difficult to get invested in the protagonist at all. That’s far from the only inconsistency though. There are a lot of plot elements that are randomly dropped, things that blatantly contradict past events, plot elements that don’t have any impact at all because of how they’re conveyed to the reader, abilities and powers that it makes absolutely no sense not to use in situations being completely ignored, massive gaping plot holes constantly, and a world that is just haphazardly put together with lore and worldbuilding that just feels like nonsense. The biggest example of that would be how it randomly throws together things from our world in ways that feel incredibly awkward. Yes, it’s a fantasy world and the author can create it however they choose, but it’s just bizarre to see things being mixed and matched without any care at all. It was especially bizarre how starting in the fourth book it starts bringing in Japanese words, customs, and names randomly in a way that doesn’t make sense at all and feels kind of dumb to be frank.

On top of that, the other aspects of the book aren’t that great either. The heroines are solid and most of them, other than the ones introduced later on, are developed decently in terms of background and personality. However, character interactions with the protagonist were pretty terrible pretty universally, wherein it doesn’t feel like they have any chemistry at all, so the relationships didn’t feel like they were worth getting invested in either. Beyond the core relationships, just in general, dialogue felt really unnatural which was off putting at times.

The other issue is that the action isn’t interesting at all. The protagonist is all powerful and able to deal with anything. When writing such a character’s actions, it’s best to write in a way that emphasizes their power and abilities with quick and immediate payoffs. However, this wasn’t written like that at all, with it going into detailed descriptions of the action that really didn’t make the protagonist seem that awesome and that largely took way too long. It was the type of description for when there was supposed to be tension to the action, but with the protagonist being blatantly overpowered, there simply wasn’t any, and thus the writing quite simply didn’t work and made things feel pointlessly drawn out. This was especially true when it came to the dungeons during the first half or so of the series that were mostly all the same thing and quickly became dull due to not really having any tension, suspense, or intrigue at all to them. The problems in how the action is written felt compounded due to the previously mentioned issue with how it describes the protagonists thoughts too deeply regarding things that are repetitive or really don’t matter at all, as the end result it is that it feels like half the text in the novels is completely pointless, which is not a good feeling to have while reading.

The comedy was a mixed bag with some being good but a lot of it falling flat, though I will admit that I did find the running joke regarding “ghost noises” funny to the end. I was also fine with how the series ended in a broad sense, which was completely predictable but pretty much exactly what an ending for such a series should be, but I thought the epilogue was too rushed and didn’t really focus on character relationships that well with what I was only assume was an attempt at trying to bring things full circle instead not really working at all. The cover art was great, but was not consistent with the written description which bugged me tremendously as such discrepancies always do.

A series that has some potential to its concepts but feels incredibly poorly planned and executed.

5/10