Jonathan Slate, former Marine infantry officer and the Governor of Texas, has just won his bid for the presidency. When an assassin's bullet takes his life during his victory speech, he is conscripted from the afterlife by the Lord of Light, Lucidus.
Slate is thrust into the game-like world of Somnium where he has been reincarnated into the body of a parasite and given one mission: evolve or die.
If he can channel the monster inside and utilize his military and political experience to establish Lucidus' personal army, the Scourge, he might have a chance to evolve before his many enemies find him and send him to a permanent death.
My Opinion: 481 pages, $4.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
The story starts out as a reincarnation as a monster that evolves story, a Re: Monster story, with the main character (MC) dropped on a planet at the behest of a goddess as a snake creature that has to learn how to use his RPG system to evolve and survive.
It then shifts into something like Invasion of the Body Snatcher horror with some rather gory action, and finally after the mid point of the novel shifts one final time into city building and expansion with notes of the Zerg from Starcraft.
There are well described RPG mechanics through out, though some of the later evolutions aren’t as interesting as those when the main character is just a snake like creature trying to survive the forest. Also, the city building aspects aren’t particularly detailed, but fans of Starcraft will see the nods to the Zerg.
Overall, it’s an interesting story, but I was more intrigued by the first half of the story than the last half. The last half gets a bit too big with more importance placed on expanding the Scourge territory to neighboring cities. The action there felt a little more forced and the evolution aspects just didn’t seem as important. Not bad, just not as interesting as the first half.
Score: 7.3 out of 10