Yesterday Altai was a war hero. Today he is a prisoner who chose exile to Rhapsody instead of death. This planet, the Range, knows no mercy. Here, thousands of prisoners fight each other for a place under the strange, cold sun. Here, the leftover alien biomechanisms and out-of-control Terran war machines roam in the ruins, and human life is measured in virtual experience that can be exchanged for armor and implants.
Surviving in the Limbo slaughterhouse, upgrading to the tenth level and getting into the Green Zone is all any dead man can hope for. Except not everyone succeeds. Altai will have to make a lot of effort just to take a breather, and remaining high in the audience’s favor is something worth striving for. After all, the Range, among other things, is the most popular reality show, one of the few where everything is real, and death...death only raises the ratings.
My Opinion: 347 pages, $3.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
Full disclosure: I received an advanced copy for review. I purchased a copy when it became available.
Definitely patterned off of survival action multiplayer games with some RPG elements. Early story is about scrounging for basics like food, clothing, shelter, and anything to defend yourself from other prisoners and survivors in a derelict world filled with destroyed building, trailers, and vehicles. Big emphasis on killing/defending self from other survivors and prisoners for XP to level and to gain resources.
The beginning of the story was a little wordy with unneeded background information and quirky internal dialogue making some paragraphs pages long. But once other players, survivors and prisoners that are sent to the world, come into the picture and we get descriptions and dialogue, the story gets good. There's a good consistent tension from the survival premise and the constant expectation of being hunted adds to that. There’s also loads of action in the story.
There's also a story thread with the planet's players being watched by subscribers and a Mega Corp building television plotlines by manipulating, bribing, and coercing gangs. This means viewers can donate coin to players they like, who can eventually spend it if they survive. It added a nice bit of variety to the influences that propel the action.
The game mechanics were surprisingly simple and well described without being an info dump. They also lean more towards a Apocalypse survival shooter with levels. So levels don't confer stats or affect the player on a physical level. Instead, higher levels unlock features like the System store where viewer donated or quest earned coin could be spent on implants, weapons, armor, food, and other items to survive. Levels also gain a player access to other areas of the world. Also, killing higher level players means more XP and likely being able to scavenge better gear, which has its own description but no stats beyond durability and threat.
Overall, the story is pretty fast paced once the other players are introduced and the MC starts interacting with them. There’s hardly a chapter without action or tension and the bad guys are appropriately terrible and its good to see them get beaten. The RPG stuff, while not deep or impactful on a physical level, was enough that power progression came through. A good read if you like action apocalypse type stories with a little hunger games-esq side motivations.
Score: 7.7 out of 10