What do you do when the world as you know it changes dramatically with little notice? When the Natural Laws no longer apply in all cases and the only thing to explain why is a “System” that seems to have access to everyone in the world?
Marc's home from college on break, spending his time laughing about some of the crazy news stories he's found online, and gaming. When a message appears in his line of sight, blocking out absolutely everything else, he nearly freaks out. The message warns that the world has been in a variant Natural Laws beta test for millennia and that it's about to revert to the norms.
Deciding that even if he is insane, it's not going to hurt anything to try to prepare, he settles in to do so. Despite the atrocious lack of skill the System has with the English language, he manages to work his way through enough help files to get a clue of what's coming. After sharing his discovery with a few friends, they all start to prepare together.
Once the change begins, the small group races to create a Safe Zone, an area where monsters will not spawn and where they can gather other survivors in an attempt to rescue as much of the town as possible. Along the way they discover that the new System can award classes that resemble those of the games the group has played, as well as magic for those capable of grasping it.
With monsters spawning throughout the town, everyday animals being mutated into dangerous creatures, and a System that desperately needs English language lessons, they'll do their best to save as many of the local residents as they can.
My Opinion: 544 pages, $3.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
A fairly standard RPG Apocalypse story. It has regular action, an RPG system that gives levels, loot, classes and there is base building. The characters honestly succeed a little easily early on considering none of them are trained fighters but gamers. The young adults also get their base up and running within a day or so without being high level. The apocalypse aspect is the least interesting as besides one jerk that gets killed it's not that dark or apocalyptic.
The action is fine, the base building is thorough and is used well and becomes a big part of the story. There are plenty of RPG aspects, in personal class development, and particularly base building. The MC also has a couple of unique classes and it’s neat to see how he develops it. The romance aspect felt a little forced and unnecessarily drawn out, but it wasn’t terribly off putting.
Overall not a bad story, just nothing too surprising. If you’re a big fan of base building you’ll like that aspect of the story a lot.
Score: 7.2 out of 10
Enter System (Natural Laws Apocalypse Book 1)