The future lies within our minds...
Paralyzed in a workplace accident, Lox’s life is looking bleak. He can't even use the cutting-edge hardware that would allow him to play in the full-immersion-games that have become so popular. This all changes when he hears from New Universal Frontiers, the company with the best game out there: World of Magic.
They offer him the ability to use their hardware despite his injuries, but at a cost... he can never leave the game.
Once in the game world, Lox quickly realizes that there is a lot more to this new realm than just a game. Given a class that everyone thinks is useless due its inherent dangers, Lox begins a long and painful series of trials, some of them explosive, almost all of them dangerous as he masters his magical abilities.
As Lox explores the depths of this world's magic system, he soon discovers there is a lot more going on here than anyone ever expected.
My Opinion: 371 pages, $4.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
This is a mix of dungeon diving and lots of magical theory. I mean lots of it too. The main character (MC) is uploaded to an RPG fantasy MMO world. He gets the class Magical Engineer because he was an engineer on earth. He spends quite a bit of time playing with the fundamentals of his class, the combining and organizing of magical aspects, to create new spells with near endless combinations of effects. He experiments, fights monsters, and when his spells blow up or just aren’t effective enough to kill his enemies, he dies and is resurrected at a chosen altar he is bound to. He also has a mindscape where he can practice and go to learn fundamental truths about himself. There are some interesting aspects to this part of the story but not much is done with it. The story is supposed to shift to the MMO setting after the 25% where the MC meets two other players and goes on adventures with them. Though I’ll also note that for an MMO, there aren’t many players the characters interact with and not much of the stuff you’d expect from an MMO.
For the most part this is a slice of life story with a big emphasis on magic and class theory with some regular action and questing. It’s good if you like magical theory and spell casting. But there’s no real character development. The MC is the same person at the end of the story as he was at the start. By the end of the novel, it felt more like a DnD game with a small group of players instead of the MMO world that the characters were supposed to be in. There was little to no interaction with other players, no PvP, no guilds, or other things you’d expect to see in an MMO. Though there were vague threats about high level players that took delight in torturing people that had been uploaded permanently to the world or issues resulting from streaming their adventures, none of that amounted to anything. In fact, it seemed like a lost opportunity for some interesting conflicts.
There are some sub-plots about the MC fully integrating into the world and losing all the game stuff, but that’s backtracked fairly quickly. Also a small bit about the MC awakening NPCs into realizing they can actually be real beings. Again, not much done here with either potentially interesting story thread.
Overall, it's an ok story. The biggest draw is likely the magic and class developments for the MC. The actual adventures are fairly linear with no real repercussions for failure but there was a decent variety and semi-regular action.
Score: 7.1 out of 10