Two weeks before the trial of Atticus Arching, his radical followers, the Infinite Assassins, decide to take the law into their own hands. Using the bodies of innocent online players these unkillable assassins target the entire prosecution team, including the only witness in the case, FBI Special Agent Daniel Roan.
Escaping by the skin of his teeth, Roan is forced to go on the run. Hounded day and night by the assassins, he finds the only way he can strike back is to go online and infiltrate the very group that’s after him.
The only problem is that they only take the very coldest of killers and Roan is forced to become everything he hates: liar, thief, murderer, Assassin!
My Opinion: 412 pages, $2.99, Available on Kindle Unlimited
The setup of the story is both interesting and annoying. That the bad guy from book 1 has arranged for the murder of everyone involved in his conviction is neat. But that the main character (MC), Daniel Roan, has to go back into the game to investigate is annoying. The premise relies on every police force, the FBI, and everyone else being bad at their jobs. There’s not a single shred of physical or digital evidence for multiple murders? Sure.
Putting that aside, most of the story is a good fantasy action story. There’s good pacing and an increased level of action in the story.
The MC goes back into Daggerland as a rogue with the alignment Lawful Evil. He finds his thoughts influenced by the game immediately and doing things he would never normally do in life. The longer the game goes on, the more evil he becomes. While I personally don’t like how the character develops and find it kind of a cop out to blame the game for that evil development, I’ll admit that the sci-fi concept of a game changing the minds of it’s players an interesting concept. It just reeks of the excuse, ‘the game made me do it’ to justify the MCs evil deeds.
On the downside, the RPG mechanics in the story are minimalized compared to book 1. Essentially what you see the most is the character sheet for the MC and XP gain notifications. However, most of the XP notifications are ignored by the story and I feel like most of the game stuff was added into the story after it was written. 90% of the game portion of the story feels more like a fantasy action story. For some people this is a good thing. However, for anyone expecting a new super detailed game mechanic system, this is not that kind of story.
Additionally, like book 1. The detective aspect of the story setup in the beginning of the novel practically doesn’t exist. Much of the story feels like straight fantasy portal fiction and occasionally the MC mentions a game thing or that he’s looking for clues in a game to real life murders.
Overall, the fantasy action aspects of the story are really good. The game mechanics are consistent in the story. The story is LitRPG, but those game mechanics are not anything to write home about and are minimized. For me, the detective aspect is a complete disappointment as is the direction the main character develops, especially at the end.
Score: 6 out of 10
Infinite Assassins: Daggerland Online Novel 2 A LITRPG Adventure