LitRPG Podcast 029
Hello everyone, welcome to episode 29 of the LitRPG podcast.
I’m Ramon Mejia. I’m here to bring you the latest LitRPG news, reviews, and author interviews.
Before we begin we want to give a quick shout out to Jeff Hayes, our newest Patreon Supporter, who’s pledged $10/month to support our podcast. Thanks Jeff. If you want to support us on Patreon you can find us at https://www.patreon.com/geekbytespodcast
New Releases and Reviews:
Continue Online (Part 5, Together) (Volume 5)
The Trapped Mind Project (Emerilia Book 1)
Arcane Emperor - Royal Road
Life Reset - Royal Road
We’ll begin with LitRPG news
(Play Music 2)
LitRPG News
Author of the Ascend Online LitRPG novel, Luke Chmilenko has started his own patreon page. He’s offering some pretty nice rewards to supporters including early chapters of both Ascend Online 2 and a new work Hell to Pay for supporters at at least the $2/month level.
https://www.patreon.com/LukeChmilenko
Kieron Uchee’s LitRPG novella (about 106 pages) is up for pre-order for $2.99. It’s the story of Anon, a casual VR game player, who after questing and exploring, finds the game is starting to change him. It will be available Feb. 15th.
Magic Dome Books has released some new chapters of their upcoming LitRPG, The Crystal Sphere. The full novel is set to releases in March, so this is going to have to suffice to wet your appetite
https://magicdomebooks.blogspot.ru/2016/12/neuro-new-litrpgfantasy-series-by.html#c_3
Audiobook releases
Going Rogue (Spells, Swords, & Stealth) Book 3
Sigil Online
Interview with Aleron Kong about the upcoming 6th book in the Chaos Seeds series. He answers a bunch of my questions about his book, the state of LitRPG, and audience questions. It will be episode 30 of the podcast.
Upcoming LitRPG:
The Land: Raiders -Chaos Seeds Book VI (Jan. 29th, 2017)
Spawn Campers: A LitRPG Adventure (The Crucible Shard Book 2) (Jan. 31st, 2017)
Nagant Wars: The Pawn's Dilemma (Jan. 31st, 2017)
Dungeon Madness (Book #2 The Divine Dungeon series) (February, 2017)
The Beginning (Dark Paladin Book #1) LitRPG Series (Feb. 7, 2017)
Questing (Feb. 15th, 2017)
Viridian Gate Online: Crimson Alliance (Feb 17th, 2017)
Spetsnaz: A Permadeath LitRPG LitFPS (Feb 28th, 2017)
The Crystal Sphere (March 10th, 2017)
Awaken Online: Precipice (March 31st, 2017)
The Karmadont Chess Set (The Way of the Shaman: Book #5) (April 2nd, 2017)
Onto New Releases and Reviews
(Play Music 3)
New Releases and Reviews
Continue Online (Part 5, Together)
Since stepping through the gateway to Continue, Grant has been many things: a dying hero, a malevolent imp, a robotic space explorer, and felon seeking redemption. Now he’s added a new role to the list—married man to a virtual woman. In his mind, nothing could be more perfect, but his newly wedded bliss is in jeopardy.
Trillium pulled the trigger on a digital Armageddon and the games have changed. Virtual people are being hunted down then deleted forever. Players’ characters are removed if they die three times. The AIs have a plan to fight back and protect their citizens by storing as much data as possible into a haven, including Xin’s.
To help secure the survival of his friends and wife, Grant will seek the secrets to salvation left behind from the game’s first heroes and programming team. Along the way, Grant reunites with old companions, sets aside past grudges, and pulls out every trick he’s ever been taught to help him in the race against digital death.
Failure means Grant will lose Xin a second time, but success may cost him even more.
My Opinion: 407 pages, $3.99, Available on Kindle Unlimited
At the end of book 4, our player Grant finally gets a happy ending. He gets the girl and saves the world, at least temporarily. Book 5, the last book in the series has Grant racing to find a way to help all the A.I’s in Continue Online as their world is deleted. I can’t say more about the story without spoiling things but books 4 and 5 absolutely wrap up the entire story and make sure to include just about everyone from the other books. I’m honestly a little sad to see the series end.
The author states in the back of book 5 that he does plan to return to this universe, but not until about 2018. Instead he’ll write some non-LitRPG stuff for a while. Book 5 gets a recommendation from me and the series as a whole gets a big recommend from me. It’s one of the most emotionally deep LitRPG stories.
I just want to say a big Thank You to Stephan Morse for taking us on this amazing journey. I know not everyone is as in love with this series as I am but truly enjoyed going on this emotionally epic trip with Grant, Xin, and everyone else.
Continue Online (Part 5, Together)
The Trapped Mind Project (Emerilia Book 1)
Austin Zane had it all, fame, fortune and an asteroid mining company. He'd spent his life doing what others said was impossible.
He no longer recognized himself, some big shot CEO hundreds of floors above his engineers, his friends falling away as he worked, some jealous, others blaming him for their shortcomings.
Thankfully the VRMMORPG Emerilia gave him an escape, not to go and become an adventurer, but to escape Earth, to work with his hands and make something.
He just wanted peace and quiet, to build a house, do some fishing, to take some time to find himself once again. What he found out instead was a cause, he found out the biggest lie of his life. He found out the truth about Emerilia and the lies of Earth.
His life, his world since the day he had been born was shaping him, molding him and making him ready to play Emerilia, he'd broken the barriers that the AI's placed on his life and became something never seen before, he became a bleeder. Someone that the AI's controlling simulate Earth and the Emerilian prison overlooked.
What's the best way to control slaves? Make them think that they're free.
But what happens when they realize the truth?
My Opinion: 516 pages (160k words), $3.99, Available on Kindle Unlimited
Michael Chatfield originally published the story on the Royal Road and it’s now on Amazon.
Austin, the human CEO of asteroid mining company longs into the full immersion VR game Emerilia. There he becomes Dave, the half dwarf, a guy just looking to build a home and relax. Little does Dave know that the real world is actually a virtual prison created by Aliens to manage the rebellious human race and the Emerilia, is a reality forged with advanced tech to mimic early earth’s MMOs.
This is a fun story. Lots of crafting, skill exploration, and town building. There’s still fighting sometimes but it’s not the emphasis of the story. The main character becomes the only human to be made aware of what’s really happening with the game and it was interesting to see what he did with that information. I also liked that the player’s magical ability to conjure objects based on his real life familiarity with those objects. So while he hypothetically can conjure beer, his first attempts taste horrible because he’s not really familiar with the brewing process and all the component parts.
It’s honestly a nice change of pace to read a story that doesn’t focus so much on combat. I’d give it a 7 out of 10.
The Trapped Mind Project (Emerilia Book 1)
Arcane Emperor - Royal Road
Rainer, an amateur arcanist and college student, sought to create a new spell far surpassing the magic of the few he inherited from his grandfather. Yet the interference of an unknown event during the casting of his spell led him to be thrown through space and time.
Where status screens were accepted as normal and class distinctions were quite clear. Leveling and achieving a class beyond a simple farmer or peddler was an affair of life and death combined with years of hard training. Goblins were not the fodder that they should be, orcs filled bedtime stories in order to scare children into behaving, and a dragon? You might as well pack up and move to another country.
He, however, enters this world with the rare and powerful class of the Arcanist. How will the recently ardent seeker of magic find greater heights, or will he land in deeper depths?
My Opinion: 238,000 words, Currently 46 chapters, FREE
A person from a world where magic is rare creates a spell that takes him to a monster filled world where he can finally be the arcane mage he’s always wanted. Fun, combat oriented story with some interesting skills like sleep learning. Something I could have really used in college.
https://royalroadl.com/fiction/8463
Life Reset - Royal Road
After being betrayed and cursed by an extremely rare spell, Oren, a once powerful and influential player, found himself as a 1st level Goblin!
Without even a fraction of his previous power, he vows to somehow pull through and revenge those who betrayed him.
His greatest advantage are years of personal gaming experience and thorough knowledge of the game's world.
But first, he has to figure out to survive long enough playing what is basically a low-level fodder monster!
My Opinion: Currently 14 chapters with weekly updates, FREE
Such a fun story. It’s basically the story of a high level player being forced to start over as a goblin, one of the weakest races in the game. It’s an interesting look at a game from the monster’s point of view. All the game mechanics are really well thought out and interesting. Great story.
https://royalroadl.com/fiction/8945
That’s it everyone!
If you enjoy the podcast and want to support us you can find out all the ways to do so at litrpgpodcast.com/support
Thanks for hanging out with me today. Until we can hangout again, remember to go read some LitRPG!
Music Credits
"Blip Stream" "Mighty Like Us" "Big Shift" "Vivacity"
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/