Maulkin didn't know dying would mean a new eternity of dungeon delving, monster slaying, and glory hunting. If he had, he wouldn't have been so worried about kicking the bucket on a date gone even more wrong than usual.
Reborn in the wild world of Amaranth, Maulkin finds himself in a hulking demi-human body with a sword of a size to match. Marked as an Eternal, a fledging immortal of boundless potential, Maulkin soon discovers he's been given a mission by the elder pantheon of this new realm:
Grow stronger. Ascend to godhood. Spread chaos in their name.
Oh and fend off that inbound apocalypse, if he can find the time.
Who wants an easy afterlife anyway?
My Opinion: 613 pages, $4.99, Available on Kindle Unlimited
The story leans a bit more towards fantasy than the other major LitRPG work of the author, Ascend Online, and there is definitely a bit more wand-waviness when it comes to crafting and occasionally spell usage. But on the whole, it’s a good story full of action-adventure, a little romance, a good power progression, and lots of good world building.
The three main characters (MC), Eternals, have a good balance of personalities and powers without being pegged into particular classes. The addition of later characters to the group add good variety, even if they feel like anime personalities (Tsundere and others). The characters all have full personalities and those that are native to the world do a good job of filling in cultural perspectives, and histories which include unpleasant truths about the world and their peoples which made the characters feel more real.
Action is a major part of the story and there’s hardly a chapter without some kind of fight. One of the MCs even gets grumpy and antsy if he doesn’t get to beat up something regularly. The fights are well thought out and paced well and are good reads.
The RPG stuff is interesting. It’s not nearly as deep and logical as the system used in Ascend Online, but has some interesting and original powers available to the Eternal characters. There’s actually a bit too much openness sometimes which leads to a little wand waviness in solving problems with intentionally undefined to unexplored options. Additionally, the rules for the powers are occasionally not followed with the healing Restoration power being the prime example of saving multiple characters from death one after another, even if it is supposed to have a long cool down. It felt a little like a tool to stop characters from dying, even though they’re supposed to be immortal and just preventing random respawning until a respawn point was unlocked. Other powers, like the crafting one, felt like they were a little wand wavy since it allowed one of the MCs to magically create items in great detail, even when it wasn’t reasonable that he would know how it was made, and the how to make aspect was automatically downloaded into his mind. But beyond those things, the mechanics were fairly solid with health being shown regularly, and good descriptions of the powers used. Decently crunchy.
Overall, despite a few small issues with the game mechanics, the story was good. Really enjoyed the action-adventure, world building, and character development.
Score: 7.6 out of 10