Angus Bjornson only ever wanted to do one thing: to continue crafting exquisite weapons and pieces of armor for his loyal customers. Unfortunately, after one accident too many that leaves the old blacksmith completely disabled, it would seem he has no other choice but to hang up his hammer.
However, that would be underestimating the stubbornness of the self-made man. Fearing he’s not going to stop until he ends up dead in his forge, Angus’ children offer him a virtual rig that connects to Imperium Games’ many universes.
After choosing a fantasy-based world called Alterwelt, Angus—now known as Hephaestus—quickly learns that he can make use of his lifetime of experience by disabling the Auto function and playing on Manual. His skills allow him to create unique items that beat everything sold on the market. But Hephaestus has a long way to go before he can afford his own in-game forge. Moreover, he only ever learned to work with steel while here he has access to metals as strange and exotic as azuraneum, veridium, orichalcum…
Still, that might be the least of his problems. After he’s made a few sales and starts to get some recognition, Hephaestus realizes that there’s a reason the market is oversaturated with crappy items. As it turns out, a greedy guild enforces a monopoly on the crafting and they’re ready to do anything to keep anyone—lest of all a lone blacksmith—from digging into their profits…
My Opinion: 293 pages, $3.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
This is a good LitRPG crafting story once you get past the 40% mark of the story. Before then, all the crafting descriptions are still good, but the rest of the story around it left something to be desired. But once the main antagonist shows up, after the 40% mark, the rest of the novel is quite enjoyable though there are still a few wand wavy moments.
First, I’ll say that I liked all the detailed descriptions of the main character (MC) making stuff. It's definitely the big draw of the novel. There’s lots of the MCs thoughts that went into each crafted weapon or piece of armor along with detailed descriptions of the actual process to make the item by hand.
However, especially in the beginning of the novel, other parts of the story felt a bit at odds with the actual game mechanics of the story and lent itself to feeling like the MC gained power he didn’t earn. The MC is a master blacksmith, and apparently every type of crafting, before he ever enters the game. He chooses a realistic mode that lets him use those IRL skills to craft fantastically powerful items that he uses to accomplish his goals. The MC gains a powerful forge that costs tens of thousands of coins. Did he craft items and sell them until he could save for his own forge? No. Did he research what the community needed and fill that gap? No. Instead, he was handed a fully stocked forge by some person he'd know for a few hours. But because he’s given such a huge bonus, and the reader doesn’t ever see him struggle to learn anything about crafting, it feels like he gains power he didn’t earn. This gets better as the story goes on but it was a big drawback for me when I was first reading the story.
Combat, when it's not done by the MC, is decent. But because of the odd duality in game mechanics of realism versus normal MMO, the one occasion the MC did fight felt off. In addition to being a master blacksmith, the MC is also a reenactor for martial sword fights and other medieval fighting styles. In the realistic mode this gives him a huge advantage against much higher level opponents and it made the levels feel unimportant to a degree. Thankfully, the MC fighting isn’t a big part of the story and disappears after the beginning of the story. Still, it felt off.
I was initially turned off by the non-crafting aspects of the story. Whether it was the MC fighting an opponent almost 20 levels higher and kicking his butt, or the odd way the 70 year old MC’s kids argued with him over who he was associating with in a VRMMO, it felt off. I honestly thought about putting the book down, but I’m glad I pushed through. Because after the story the antagonist shows up at about the 40% mark, the story really takes off. It focuses fully on the crafting aspect, which is the best part, and the obstacles and antagonists all become related to that. The control the antagonist has over a game world seems a little far fetched sometimes but he was dislikable enough that I wanted to see the MC win.
Overall, I ended up really liking the story. It does lose a little on the review score because of the beginning of the novel, which some people won’t be able to push past. But for me it was a good read with lots of crafting which I’m a fan of.
Score: 7.4 out of 10