A real-life game system lost millennia ago could turn the tide of a galactic war.
At first, Cullen thought the strange writing in the air was his imagination, but the power and drive to follow its quests was undeniable. The reward on the other end, too valuable to pass up.
He and his crew pullspace to a prison under siege, where the Cipher has quested him to rescue two telepaths who've seen the Cipher’s quests, too. This bounty hunter and mother-son duo of telepaths must utilize level-up bonuses and new class skills to survive in an alien jungle where the EMP throwing tigers aren’t even their greatest threat. Ha!
As Cullen recovers ancient texts which could unlock the power of the Cipher for all, they encounter reject telepaths who hunt their jungle like berserkers looking for revenge and a way home — just like Cullen. Ehli and her son were just happy to escape prison. Now they find their freedom came with a cost, like any true power worth wielding. In their race for survival, they will uncover dark secrets about her husband's death and the dangerous testing that turned her and her son into telepaths without their consent.
Welcome to Reject Jungle Dungeon. No quest is easy that involves telepaths. Even if it’s your first one.
My Opinion: 301 pages, $4.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
Full disclosure: I received an advanced copy for review. I purchased a copy when it became available.
The story is not a VR story, or a transported to a game world story. It takes place in an alternate universe where there was once an ancient lost technology that we’d describe as an RPG interface.
I was so confused by the beginning of this novel. The reader is just dropped into the story and I kept going back and re-reading sections trying to understand what was happening, who these characters were, and how this was a LitRPG story. I came to understand that three of these characters had access to an RPG interface and system so they could fulfill some forced quest to unlock Cipher for everyone. But the details of what that meant were a mystery, even to the characters. Beyond that the story felt a bit more like sci-fi or sci-fantasy.
The RPG system was light to say the least. It amounted to the characters getting classes and XP for doing mandatory quests. There are two classes, the Bounty Hunter and Ultras, but neither was really developed. They felt like general powers and less like an RPG class system. There were pretty regular notifications and the system was part of the story. However, I never got the feeling that the game system was an integral part of the story world but more like an interface or technology to advance power. Like the story about gaining freedom from the oppressive aliens would have been the same without the notifications or classes or XP and could have been replaced with just a reference to ancient tech implanted. In the novel description the author says the LitRPG crunch is a 4 out of 10, which is pretty accurate.
The story itself is fine and eventually, around the 15-20% mark, I understood the goals of the story, the stakes, and a little bit of the world building. But honestly, by that point I was a bit checked out by the confusion of the start of the novel. Not all of that went away either, as the sci-fi elements of the story were left unexplained and new characters were introduced and dismissed without enough background to make me care about them or really even the main characters. The action in the story is neither amazing or bad, just ok. The plot was a little convoluted and the RPG stuff felt really light and a little forced for my tastes.
Overall, the story just didn’t work for me. The threat from the aliens never came through well for me and the Cipher system didn’t feel impactful beyond directing the characters to plot points or as a way to give them power boosts. The sci-fi elements weren’t fleshed out enough to be interesting on their own either. There was some good world building and decent character development, but it wasn’t enough to keep me engaged with the story.
Score: 6 out of 10
Cipher's Quest: (A Scifi Fantasy LitRPG) (Ciphercraft Book 1)