Gamers everywhere share a hidden desire deep in their hearts— that their mundane, humdrum world be replaced by the ones they play in. When freakish storms envelope the Earth, people start disappearing without a trace. Wild theories abound; is it aliens, spontaneous combustion, or perhaps quantum entanglement? The only ones who might know are those who have vanished.
An average group of gamers is setting up to start a new campaign. The storms rage across the world, but they only care about the game they are about to start. Little do they know that they would be next to disappear from the face of the Earth.
Shifted to a different world, the group of friends find that the gamer’s dream they had always harbored has come true, but not in the way they would have hoped. They are not there as themselves, but as the level one characters they had been preparing to play. Standing on a road with smoke rising in the distance, they would soon be given their first quest— but not the one they would have chosen.
(This series contains dark themes, including but not limited to: suicide, torture, slavery, and worse.)
My Opinion: 392 pages, $2.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
Full disclosure: I received an advanced copy for review, but purchased a copy when it became available.
A much more combat heavy novel than the author's other series. The novel still has the good dialogue and banter that the author is known for. There is No Sex or even romance in this one. But this is very much an action adventure story.
I’d say it leans a bit more towards fantasy portal fiction but still manages to bring the tabletop RPG stuff through without notifications or character sheets. It has characters talk about the class powers, spells, and game mechanics they recall from when they made their characters. Then regular references to their powers in story by name.
The story is rather dark in a few places with several characters not surviving the first book. I was initially very put off by the large cast and found the beginning a little hard to get through, but by the 15% mark the seven main characters are broken into three distinct groups which made it easier to get to know the characters. There are also lots of references to other LitRPG authors if you can find them, which I thought was cute. Though I don't appreciate the terrible things done to poor Fibble, I mean Fubble.
Overall, it's an entertaining story.
Score: 7.6 out of 10