EDGE Force: A clandestine organisation that leverages the best and brightest humanity has to offer to defend against the threats that can't be fought by normal means.
JD Rideout is a washed-up writer with the best years of his career behind him. Nursing the wounds of a marriage breakdown, his kids are the only thing keeping him going.
When JD wakes up on a tropical island in the middle of the Whitsundays on Queensland's Central Coast, chained to the ceiling, he knows something is very wrong. He feels like a character in one of his novels.
Those who fight for EDGE Force unlock the ability to level up and gain powerful skills to help them fight against threats to our reality.
JD is given a pistol and an axe, along with a new callsign: Hatchet. Uprooted from his life and forced to fight for the fate of the world, Hatchet may just be planet Earth’s last line of defence.
As Hatchet, he’s tasked with fighting back against a shadowy cult that has reappeared after 15 years in hibernation. But fighting the cult isn’t the only thing that drives Hatchet. These cultists are using the essence of an ancient entity to reshape reality into whatever their twisted imaginations can bring forth. This entity is reaching out to Hatchet too, propelling him towards an epic showdown with the forces of the Fellowship of Cosmic Truth.
During the course of his mission Hatchet encounters an unexpected ally - a German Shepherd dog named Kaiser - who might just be smarter than Hatchet. Kaiser has his own reasons for fighting the cult and the two form an unlikely alliance.
My Opinion: 379 pages, $4.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
The story starts out as an action LitRPG story with horror elements. So, Resident Evil with action RPG skill trees. It has a very efficient opening and it doesn't waste time on a long winded multi chapter explanation about why the main character (MC) is there. The MC is kidnapped, assigned an RPG interface and system and he has a mission to solve. Then a basic run down of skill trees and the MC is off on his adventure. Which mostly amounts to killing off zombies and cultists and fighting towards rescuing some woman as a quest. A rather good start to the story.
About 30% the story takes an odd pause as the MC gets some mystical vision that let's him talk to the fictional character he'd written. The section explores a bit about the nature of reality and simulations. It was interesting I guess but it also really felt out of place in the story and was a definite speed bump in the action. It sets up a system that’s developed later to explain just where all the monsters are coming from and a kind of ‘power of the imagination’ magic system that has nothing to do with LitRPG and is more of an urban fantasy element.
On the game mechanic side of things, it's an action RPG skill tree system with various branches that can be invested in: Edged weapons, Automatic weapons, Handguns, Stealth, etc. Familiar stuff to any gamer. As the story progresses and the MC levels he can invest points in the trees to unlock better powers that help him take on bigger foes. I'm a crafting fan and while this story does have it, it's a simplistic version. With trash broken down into crafting components then magically used along with some upgrade materials to make new stuff. No real knowledge needed, just button pushing. There are lots of notifications and detailed information throughout the story. However, because of the other story element, the one where the MC gains power rather rapidly and magically because of the ‘power of imagination’, his progression sometimes feels unearned and there are several points in the story where the MC frankly shouldn’t have won, especially when he’s saved by the power ‘plot armor’ that keeps him from truly dying. I mean it’s a funny gamer/writer joke but it did ruin how important the game stuff felt.
Overall, the story has good action and lots of notifications. But for me, the RPG stuff felt like it didn’t matter after about half way through the story. The ‘power of imagination’ element where both the enemy and allies sort of magic their way through conflicts and get powers with no basis in the RPG elements just sort of ruined things for me.
Score: 6 out of 10