Lucian is a sophomore in college that would rather spend time reading his favorite fantasy books alone than hang out with others. He has always taken comfort in being a loner and especially in action and adventure books that contain endless magic and action. When Vivid Corporations releases a new virtual reality game(The Savant Lands) unexpectedly early, Lucian can't help but be pulled to the game as it promises any gamer the ability to become a mighty king, a wealthy merchant, a powerful wizard and much much more! There may be dark rumors about the release of the game and the fact that it seems a little too real, but Lucian is determined to not let this opportunity pass him up. Follow Lucian as he gets pulled into The Savant Lands because who knows... it could happen to anyone.
My Opinion: 220 pages, $2.99, Available on Kindle Unlimited
*Warning: This story has a lot of technical writing issues in just about every page and in most paragraphs. Spelling, grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, paragraph structure. The thing that bothered me the most is that the author spells while, “why’ll”.
It’s going to bother some people.*
If you can get past those technical issues, there’s actually a rather good LitRPG story here. The story is by no means perfect but it is enjoyable.
The novel gets into the VR full immersion game world before the 2% mark and stays there with the main character (MC) only taking brief breaks back into the real world. During character creation, the game's A.I. tests the MC and determines he qualifies for a unique quest line to bring back an ancient dark religion. This leads the MC to get unique powers, and the opportunity to claim an abandoned fort.
Most of the story is spent town/community building and dungeon diving. The town/community building aspects use a civilization like interface where the MC can summon temporary workers or guards with mana or recruit permanent NPCs with in game money. These NPCs can be combat, magic, or even crafting focused. With physical threats abound and his constantly limited funds, the MC has to carefully manage his and plan how he’s going to build up the town.
The dungeons the MC and his group explore have a wide variety of monsters. The author stops the fights from getting stagnant by regularly giving the MC gains new powers and magical abilities that allow for new combat strategies. Even though, the MC becomes more and more powerful, he never becomes overpowered and still dies when he makes a bad decision or a mistake.
The plot in the story is rather light and serves mostly as a reason for the MC to fight and struggle to become more powerful. Early in the story a CEO is found dead after playing this game but that story thread isn’t even addressed until near the 70% mark. Instead, most of the plot revolves around the MC bringing back a dark god and the pantheon of light gods sending armies to destroy this new religion. Surviving this impending assault motivates the MC to build up his town/fort, build up forces, and seek out other allies from the dark races.
Overall, I had a good time reading the story once my brain just started to ignore all the grammar, spelling, and structural issues. However, I can’t ignore that part since the author is asking people to pay for his story and it is something that’s in every paragraph and every page of the novel. It loses a point for all the technical issues.
Score: 6 out of 10.