Blake Frostdeth dreams of becoming the first player ever to recover Captain Ravencrest’s cursed treasure. To do so, he must collect three clues. One big problem: each clue is heavily guarded by high-level monsters and lethal traps. After failing repeatedly to retrieve the very first clue, Blake gets so discouraged that he nearly calls off the quest. All seems lost until he lucks upon a young Shadow Dragon that he raises as a pet named "Ravage". With Ravage at his side, Blake may now stand a chance to become the first player to set eyes on the legendary treasure.
My Opinion: 358 pages, $3.99, Available on Kindle Unlimited
From Garrett Boggs, the author of the funny novel Warscapia (http://amzn.to/2na64r5).
At its core, this is an adorable story about a boy and his dragon. They adventure in this game like world to solve a puzzles and get the amazingly unspecific treasure.
The story takes the Ready Player One story hook of a secret treasure hidden away by a series of clues and challenges and combines it with pet raising in a fantasy game world. It was enjoyable.
Liked:
MC is likeable most of the time, except when he gets a little whiny, but thankfully early in the story he gets a dragon pet that can slap some sense into him, literally with his tail.
The dragon pet Ravage is more interesting than the MC.
Skill based game system with levels, and stats. So you can level up any number of martial, crafting, or magical skills as long as you put in the work.
Didn’t like:
It’s not really clear if this is a VR game someone is playing or if this is a fantasy world ruled by RGP mechanics.
No references for some of the numbers used for skills and stats. How does having a 200 in one stat compare to having a 50?
The gamer speak early in the story that seemed out of place. If this is a world with RPG mechanics why would people use language (Noob, Leet, Gamer tag names) from earth video games? It’s a small world building inconsistency that just stuck out in my mind.
Score: 7 out of 10.