A terminal disease. A fantasy universe. A chance at immortality.
Derby Baldwin is dying.
Rather than spend his last few months in agony, he joins Mythic Online, a virtual world that hijacks his brain and prevents him from feeling pain. The best thing he can hope for? A peaceful death.
When he learns he can cheat death by defeating an in-game god, Derby's life suddenly has purpose. He recruits two friends, and together they pursue their enemy. Can he defeat the god to save his own life? Or will the disease take him before he succeeds?
My Opinion: 228 page, $2.99, Available on Kindle Unlimited
Derby, a terminal patient who decided to upload to game, wakes to find himself hung from a tree. He cuts himself down and goes to look to see who did it, so that he won’t have to worry about someone coming after him. Instead he finds two NPCs that become allies on a journey to challenge the God of Life to a duel. If they win, they can restore their destroyed world. But Derby secretly wants to use the wish to get immortality.
That’s the story. It’s setup by the the 20% mark, with the bit about challenging the God of Life to a duel and winning a wish learnt at the 46% mark. Though it’s also in the novel description. After that you can honestly skip to the end (92%) to see the duel and get the story resolution. Everything else in between isn’t really important. I’m not saying it’s not entertaining sometimes. There are some ok fights with a range of monsters. A few interesting little sub-stories. But there’s not real character growth for Derby. There are no event that makes him into a better man. He has moral issues with choosing between a selfish wish of immortality and saving a world of people from the onset of the story.
Game mechanics - There aren’t a lot here. This is LitRPG. The author has a light leveling system he tries to incorporate. When you kill something, you get physical chits that can be traded to innkeepers and others that will raise your level and let you increase your stats. They literally have to give you a piece of paper to make the changes official. Characters can learn special skills from mentors, but only one per mentor and only if they want to teach you. But other than the moments when someone is updating their level or learning a new ability, the rest of the novel reads like a fantasy story. It’s fantasy story--level---fantasy story---level, new ability---fantasy story---level. The level up moments are consistent and the characters do grow in power, so again this is technically LitRPG. But for me, all the other parts read like a fantasy story which isn’t entertaining for me.
Overall, i was bored most of the story. It was neat to see an author try to meld super light RPG mechanics realistically. Giving each component a physical requirement. But ultimately I read LitRPG because it makes me feel like I’m in my favorite RPG games, and this didn’t do that for me.
Score: 5 out of 10