When Aaron and his friends got sucked into the virtual reality game World of Ruul, they quickly realized the only way out would be to acquire all eight soulstones and beat the game.
Unfortunately, they’ve somehow managed to incur the wrath of the Skeleton King, an ancient warrior whose vengeance can only be quenched by blood and death.
Now, if they want to survive long enough to find those soulstones, they’ll have to find a way to stop him.
My Opinion: About 559 pages?? (No Amazon page number), $5.99, Available on Kindle Unlimited
Full Disclosure- Got an advanced copy to review. Have since picked up the story on Kindle Unlimited.
Aaron and his group are stuck inside the virtual world of Ruul. If they die in the game they die in real life, or at least what’s left of them does. Now they have to collect all the pieces they need to reforge the one weapon that can defeat the Skeleton King.
This is the Undead DLC for Soulstone
Especially in the beginning it felt like the author wrote this while binge watching The Evil Dead or maybe The Walking Dead since the Skeleton King’s realm name is Prince Glen.
The Skeleton King has the same issues that Soulstone: Awaken has.
Still don’t really care about the characters in the group, except George the smack talking rabbit. He’s pretty awesome.
There are the same game mechanic issues, where the characters can pull a ‘Neo in the Matrix’ and get the exact power/ability they need to overcome a situation. Though this happens a lot less often than it did in book 1.
Aaron, switches from a Rogue to a Necromancer in the middle of a battle.
New character, Sabre, who got frozen in the game in 1982 is a nice addition to the cast. Though she seems to know to many modern slang terms.
About the 65% mark the story takes a turn and as the beginner city prepares to defend itself from the Undead King and his horde, the story turns into a Warcraft style resource gathering real time strategy thing.
Aaron becomes the mayor of the town and he has to direct the citizens to gather and manage resources. He also gets to decide what buildings to make, what type of walls to build, where to assign unskilled laborers to gather resources, what items crafters should make, and can even recruit new labor. It’s rather cool.
Honestly, the RTS elements in the last third of the story saved the novel. Before that it just wasn’t working for me. For me, the RTS elements became the most interesting part of the story and the game rules used were 100% understandable and constantly followed.
Soulstone: Skeleton King gets a 7 out of 10.