Live real. Play real. Just try not to die for real.
Riff Jenkins is having a bad day. He's behind on his college tuition and is getting kicked out of his dorm. His girlfriend just broke up with him for playing computer games too much. And if that isn't bad enough, Riff hasn't been able to beat the goblin boss in Dungeon Crawl Quest despite months of trying. His brother Mack says it's a glitch-that DCQ is unbeatable-but Riff knows there's a way.
When a mysterious package arrives from the recently deceased DCQ developer, Riff finally gets his reward for being one of the game's top players: a special Grimoire and an invitation to one of LA's premiere gaming dens.
But the Grimoire is much more than it appears. When Riff syncs it to a computer at the den, he's virtually transported into the game. And his bad day just got worse, because the company that owns DCQ will be shutting down the servers at midnight if Riff and his band of misfit players can't beat the goblin boss and save the game.
Oh yeah, and if the servers go down while they're in the game, they all die for real.
My Opinion: 350 pages, $3.99, Available on Kindle Unlimited
The story starts out pretty decently. The real world section (1-12%) establishes the main character’s (MC) personality, the reason why he is sent to the game, and some sense of urgency to beat the game boss. By the 12% mark, the MC is in the game. The story is LitRPG. It has RPG progression and is set in an RPG world. Unfortunately, while the story is LitRP, it has major story issues. From the earliest parts of the in-game (IG) storyline there are these big plot holes that only got worse as the novel went on. It felt like some world/game rules were arbitrarily made and then ignored or broken entirely. Characters had knowledge they shouldn’t. NPCs acted and spoke in ways that just didn’t make sense. At one point the MC even teleports people into the game world from the real world without them even having to be connected to a VR system or having ever played the game. No setup, no explanation why it’s possible. And it just kept getting worse as the story went on, finally culminating in an ending that just magically resolves the big reason why the MC went into the game in the most wand wavy manner ever.
Overall, I really tried to overlook all the little things that didn’t make sense, but the bigger plot holes, and forced story elements I just couldn’t. They ruined the parts of the story that I actually liked.
Score: 4 out of 10
Into The Game: Dungeon Crawl Quest: A LitRPG Adventure (Wizard Warrior Quest)