Imagine waking up in a world where you could do whatever you want - be whoever you wanted to be...
Imagine being told that you must save this world from the apocalypse.
Given this chance, what would you do?
Would you complete quests, level up, use your skills wisely and be the hero you were chosen to be?
For Travis and Natalie, this question did not have the same answer.
Two different lives. Two seperate journeys. One dark, unforgiving world.
Escape your life.
Embrace the darkness.
Enter-
Dungeons of Perdition.
A never-before-seen world where anything is possible-
But everything is at stake.
How far would you go to save everything in existence?
A fresh, nail-biting LitRPG adventure. Guranteed to keep you turning the pages till the end.
The clock is ticking. The apocalypse is here.
My Opinion: 235 pages, $3.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
This definitely has some technical writing issues, even in the novel description. While there are spelling and grammar errors, the part that bothered me more was some of the formatting. Dialogue is stilted and awkward. Partly because one of the main characters (MC) isn't a gamer so she goes through this longer than needed question phase about basic gamer stuff. Additionally, there's a lot of text from the game god/game AI. Its not 100% clear but it's a separate character that talks to the MC in her mind about game stuff and answers question. But it's not formatted as dialogue or internal dialogue. Instead there are lines that break this game god's dialogue. It really messed with the flow of the story and my reading experience.
The story itself tries to be dark. The novel starts with one of the MCs wakes up in a cell in an asylum and told that she has to play this game or she'll be stuck in the cell forever. She’s also told that when she dies she'll go to a different version of hell before she respawns. She has to escape from horrible creatures and the asylum she finds herself in. It's supposed to have this horror vibe but doesn't quite pull it off.
There are other narratives for other players but they're more for background than anything. Though a second narrative for a male MC becomes more prominent, he really just does some quests that have a minor supernatural bent.
By the 30% mark, the story almost loses its earlier promise of a horror theme. While I suspect that might change later in the series, in this book all the quests are pretty tame and only have a weak supernatural theme including ghosts, shadow demons, and some others creatures. Even the threat of a hell like afterlife isn’t realized since none of the MCs die in the story, though in their backstories they may have.
Game mechanic wise, things lean more towards survival Horror game mechanics. Though there are levels, quests, health, stamina, stats,and XP.
Overall, I like the idea behind this story. I appreciate the author's attempt to write something dark and but the actual execution didn't work. The writing was stilted, dialogue felt awkward, and horror aspects weren't tense. Heck, outside the opening the horror parts don’t pan out at all really. It’s just a miss for me.
Score: 6 out of 10
Before Apocalypse: Dungeons of Perdition - Book 1 (A LitRPG and GameLit Adventure)