Punished for his toxic online behavior, Chad faces a thirty-day sentence of full-immersion therapy designed to improve his anger issues. For his endless trolling in real life, he's forced to play the most hated race in Isle of Mythos so that he can finally experience what it's like to be on the other side.
To make matters worse, the heroes sent to rid the world of evil aren't heroes at all—they're violent felons on their own twisted paths to redemption.
Now, Chad must survive his one-month sentence in a world where anything goes.
My Opinion: 274 pages, $4.99, Available on Kindle Unlimited
This is a trapped in the game story, where the main character (MC) is sentenced to 30 days as a troll in a full immersion VRMMO, for toxic behavior online. A troll becoming a troll. The action adventure side of things in the story is well done. There is good pacing, dungeon crawling, the fights are well thought out and described, and there is some nice character development for the MC. The only minor complaints with the story would be how rushed the last act of the story felt. I would have enjoyed a little more struggle for those final resolutions. Also, I would have personally liked to have seen a more striking cultural POV for the trolls. There is still some nice backstory for the race, but they felt a lot like a normal human barbarian tribe and not uniquely monster outside their appearance.
On the game side, things are mostly really good. There are loads of detail about the MC’s race, class, abilities, and the various skills he learns. The class choices the MC makes feel a bit planned out, but still contain good gamer reasoning and progression.
There are a few places in the story where things break down and feel a bit wand wavy. Story moments where it feels more like a fantasy story and less MMO. For example, when describing the trolls ability to manipulate magic, it’s described as imposing one’s will or suggestion instead of any hard coded RPG ability with set boundaries. Same for some cursed weapons, and spells. But the one that threw me off the most was when the MC talks to some NPC humans when he has a severe penalty to his reputation, but somehow still convinces them of his point. The reputation thing was made a huge deal of in the story yet, it didn’t ultimately end up mattering to the story. But these are only minor things. On the whole, most of the RPG mechanics felt like they were integral part of the story.
Overall, a nice entertaining story. Making the MC a troll adds some variety to character progression, though I would have loved to have seen that aspect pushed further. Still, good stuff.
Score: 7.3 out of 10