A Game, played between Gods… where the playing field is the world itself… and the pieces, living beings.
A young man caught unwittingly between… in a strange world, without allies or help… must battle for survival…using his wits and magic alone.
Pawn or Player… his fate is his to decide… which will he prove to be?
Accidentally summoned from Earth to the world of Myelad, Kyran becomes embroiled in a thousand-year war between the Gods. Through no fault of his own, Kyran earns their ire and is trapped in Crota, an abandoned city haunted by undead, and infested with all manner of beasts and monsters. To escape the Gods’ trap, Kyran must become a Player that even the Gods would learn to fear…
My Opinion: 223 pages, $3.99, Available on Kindle Unlimited
*Note: There are minor formatting issues noted: A persistent grey background, and sometimes heavily shrunken tables. The author has said he’s fixed it, but the corrections may not have pushed to everyone.
This is a pretty good slice of life story about a guy accidentally summoned to a RPG game world to partake in a game of some trapped gods. That last part doesn’t really come into play in book 1 but is setup for the series. This novel is mostly about how the main character (MC) survives on this hostile world, figures out best to use the RPG progression system, and levels. He is dropped in hostile territory, starts out at level 1, but has to figure out a way to beat monsters that are level 7 and higher.
The game mechanics in the story are pretty detailed and there are lots of notifications, character sheets, spell descriptions, item descriptions, and loads of info about the game mechanics. Even more important, the author does a good job of describing the MCs reasoning for choosing one power over another that gives insight into his gaming choices and preferred play-style.
The only real minor complaints about the story: 1) It takes an awfully long time to get to the RPG game world. The main character (MC) doesn’t get there till about the 30% mark. Everything prior to that is either setup of the premise or details about character creation. 2) The author introduces a lot of characters in cut aways from the MCs story. But most of those characters aren’t ever seen again, at least in book 1. They may be developed later in the series, but here they just feel a bit abandoned. Neither issue ruins the story or anything though.
Overall, a fairly fun slice of life story about a guy dropped into an RPG world and seeing how he survives.
Score: 7.4 out of 10
Crota (The Gods Game, Volume I): An epic fantasy, LitRPG and GameLit novel