Forced to work together while trapped in a game, alliances are forged and love is born from the ashes of old resentments. Redemption is possible for one, but another is doomed to follow a dark path.
This is a novella of almost 22,000 words and is Book One of the Avatar Online Series.
My Opinion: 69 pages, $0.99, Available on Kindle Unlimited
The first LitRPG short story written by W.D. Nix, is a mixed bag. On the game mechanics side, it’s pretty light. The story is set in the beta version of an MMORPG and a character levels once. Additionally, there a look at the skills one character has. It also, quest notifications. But that’s it.
However, the author freely admits that the story focuses on the relationships between the characters. I’d agree. The dynamics between characters is the focus of the story. Redemption for a brother, a fall from grace for another, long standing emotional issues for one of the women in the story and her best friend that is fiercely loyal. Good ideas.
There are some places I think could focus more on RPG mechanics, and action instead of character development but that’s a personal preference. I would have loved to have seen a character creation section where the options for what’s possible where shown. I would have also liked a little more consistency about the game stuff. In one scene in particular a ranger character suddenly has the spells of a mage. This might be a setup for something in a later book but in this one it doesn’t make sense because it hasn’t been established that cross class skills like that are possible. Instead, it’s justified with ‘the game must have read my mind that I play mages sometimes.’
Also, there are just too many scenes where the character, Logan, apologizes for who he was instead of showing who he is now.
Overall, not a bad story but it just falls short for me of good. If you just have to have tons of stats in your LitRPG, this is not the story for you. The author says he plans to develop the game mechanics in the story more in future stories and I hope that’s the case.
Score: 6 out of 10