Secret of the Old Ones is a deep dive VR game, the likes of which the world had never seen.
Trent Noguero, a hardcore gamer, has been playing for a year and is about to get his big break. He is about to catapult himself into the ranks of the most powerful players in the world.
However, power comes with a price, and celebrity creates enemies. Trent has the keys to massive success, but he also accidentally painted a target on his back… both in, and out of the game.
My Opinion: 153 pages (though should be around 225), $2.99, Not available Kindle Unlimited
Blaise Corvin, author of the best-selling novel Delves LLC (http://amzn.to/2jN7BAk), has released a new LitRPG series. The author describes it as “hard LitRPG set in a Steampunk/Victorian era HP Lovecraft-type horror world”.
For the most part that’s a pretty accurate description. The Lovecraft influence is mostly seen in the some cool game mechanics where magic has an additional cost of possibly making the user go insane if they fail a sanity check and monsters attacking that same sanity. It’s an interesting and unique mechanic and I liked that characters had to be careful about how they used magic because of this additional cost.
I really enjoyed reading this story. The characters are great, there’s lots of action and adventure. The game world is set in a unique Victorian era setting with plenty of steampunk influences. There are PVP and PVE battles. The character classes are unique and theme appropriate, like artificer and alchemist.There’s epic end game loot, rare items, and an interesting storyline about what happens to a player that gets hold of that stuff when it’s worth a great deal of real world money.
The only real complaint I have about the story is that I want MORE. The author has stated that this story is a side project of his that has helped him increase his writing pace on the Delvers LLC series. He’d always intended this story to be a novella and reading the story I can see some places where he likely edited out several thousand words and summarized. This world is so cool, I want to know all the lore, all the skill builds, and all the backstory for each character.
This story is an easy 8 out of 10.