Jack Jensen is a middle-aged nobody who lives a lackluster life in an even more uninteresting town. Having sampled every job the small town of Merrill, Wisconsin has to offer, he has excelled at nothing but growing his beer gut and his luxurious curly, chestnut brown hair. His life is one of unrealized potential and lack of direction.
Things change one morning when his brother, an Army Major, lands his helicopter in the parking lot of Jack’s less-than-profitable gaming store in a desperate bid to thrust the perennial slacker into the role of saving the country, the world, and even more unlikely, himself.
My Opinion: 320 pages, $4.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
The opening of the story was honestly a little off putting. It didn’t quite make sense why the military couldn’t send well trained soldiers into the other worldly portal and a regular guy could just cause he played games. Also, the opening relies a bit too much on 80s pop culture references, like the authors felt like that was a trope of the genre based on Ready Player One or something.
The beginning of the story really doesn’t have much focus either. The first part is spent over complicating why the MC is on the RPG world, yet when he gets there he doesn’t do much. There’s one brief fight but mostly a bunch of notifications for doing basic things like starting a campfire, bandaging his wound, or cooking. Then there are just random adventures that don’t have much to do with the main quest to save earth except to get his gamer friends into the world.
But push past that and once you actually get into the new world the story improves. After the 30% mark, there’s some direction where the MC and his friends work towards some goals. Which in this case is mostly finishing quests and searching for more pearls to get more of the MCs gamer friends into the world. At this point it feels like the author’s find their pacing and have settled into what kind of story they want. A balance of RPG notifications is found, the action-adventure becomes more prominent, the quests become a bit more cohesive, and dialogue/banter improves as the MC gets his friends in the game. It’s still not a super deeply plotted story, but the slice of life adventure gets a bit more focus.
The game mechanics are regular and should be pretty familiar to any LitRPG reader. You can tell from the character creation section that the authors are pulling more from a table top experience for the story since the character has background traits that influence him and add bonuses. There’s regular skill and level gains with the MC choosing a rogue class, though his class doesn’t really mean much since he can learn any skill he wants to including weapon skills, bardic instruments powers, and gatherings skills. The combat notifications took a bit away from what could have been better combat (this does lessen as the story goes on). Which brings me to another odd complaint. There’s a lot of bonuses/skill perks that the MC gets for doing basic things. There’s some story justification attempted, like the MC suddenly knowing how to sneak because he hunted with his grandpa or getting a special skill for first aid cause he was a scout. It’s background information that feels shoved in to justify new powers that the MC really didn’t earn in the story. The sheer number of notifications does lessen as the story hits the midpoint of the story thankfully.
Overall, it’s a decent story. It takes a while for the authors to find their footing, but it happens as the story leans into the action adventure more.
Score: 7.3 out of 10