Friendless, broken by grief, tired of the real world, Jin-ee represents the perfect candidate for the new on-site 24/7 fully immersive gaming sensation, Aethermarked. Of course becoming Phallania Trevellian is more than she ever dreamed, and more than she bargained for. From the moment she submerges into a vat of conductive nanogel and chooses her first spell, she’s captivated at the reality and wonder of the wide magical world around her, a new life so different from what she'd had in the real world.
That is, until the game refuses to let her out. Jin-ee has no choice but to become her character, and trust that the people behind the game are honestly trying to free her, rather than use her as a televised marketing sensation to drive up sales. Things take a turn down a dark path when Phallania faces down eldritch horrors, and battles fiends for her very survival. It is only then she realizes that what she thought was a game may be more than she bargained for.
Warning: Things get dark at times. There might sometimes be content that you find traumatic. This LitRPG Isekai contains scenes of torture and minor fade-to-black sexual content.
My Opinion: 557 pages, $4.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
Full disclosure: I received an advanced copy for review. I purchased a copy when it became available.
While there were good elements to the story, it ultimately didn’t feel cohesive and there were aspects that I found annoying as all heck.
First the good. The story does a good job of fleshing out the backstory of the MMO character that the main character (MC) is playing. I especially think the first memory revealed, the bit with the character playing a chess-like board game with her dad, was well done. She gets a few happy memories that help with world building and hint at the scheming type of governments. But the MMO/fantasy character also gets troubled memories that balance our her backstory. Good stuff dribbled through the novel.
Additionally, the game system is fleshed out enough that a reader could build their own character. You can tell the authors put the time in to think of a balanced system between factions.
Now for, well not the bad, but stuff that didn’t work for me or was just annoying.
The very beginning of the story, the setup for why the MC goes full immersion, was rather annoying. It felt like the author took inspiration from Charlie and the Chocolate factory and had the main character (MC) apply for a rare spot where a famous game company would pay her bills and salary and give her a free month in their first full immersion game. It was a lot of pomp and very suspect questions about her not having family and just felt so unreal it was off putting. Additionally it tries to setup that the MC will get famous from all the streams watching her, but none of that ever matters.
Thankfully that opening setup doesn’t last too long and by the 4% mark the MC is making her character and the reader gets a character sheet.
The early part of the story isn't half bad. I didn't care for the forced romance where the MC asks for the game to copy a memory of a bad ex-boyfriend (also to block her memory that she asked) to insert as her early romance but it wasn't a big enough part to matter. The MC gets her class, some backstory cut scenes, and some action as she goes on a couple missions.
What messed things up for me was the VERY predictable trapped in the game by the AI plot that shows up around the 14% mark. I mean really? The story was doing fine without it. If anything, as the story continues on, the trapped in the game part really interrupts what could have been an interesting storyline about intrigue, guile based abilities, and factions vying for control and power in this country. The MC can’t die in the game or she’ll die IRL, or so we’re told. But that setup means that no matter the terrible things that happen to the MC the reader knows she’ll never die, so there’s no real tension to the threats she faces. It’s one of the reasons I dislike the ‘die in the game die in real life’ setup. One of the main ways a gamer learns about the game system is by their character dying. It's an experience every gamer can relate to and that it doesn't exist in a story set in an MMO feels disconnected to a reader's expectation.
About half way through, the story seems to abandon the game aspect to a large degree as it introduces time travel and some other predictable twists in the story are revealed. Not to say the notifications or leveling disappears, just that the RPG elements feel more like a substitute for magical fantasy powers and not a real system where character build choices matter.
In general, time travel is a hard thing to get right and unfortunately this story doesn’t. The story ends up using them to have the MC just pop from place to place getting into trouble, revealing some new layer of the world she is in. She eventually escapes using time travel or some magical power she didn’t earn in the system that she needs at that moment.
The other story twists, which I won’t spoil, were predictable and it always seemed that the story was struggling to maintain the game elements or even a connection to what was supposed to be an MMO. Eventually, the plot holes relating to that struggle started to pile up and I just wished the story hadn’t had the game stuff at all. I especially disliked how the main antagonist was developed and handled. That the MC let the guy live after what he did to her (this is the traumatic content warned about) didn’t feel at all natural and the big ‘twist’ about who he was felt very very forced.
Also, a small technical pet peeve unique to LitRPG/GameLit: There was also no real need to show the full character sheet and its pages and pages of details every time the character leveled. Instead, just the changes would have been ok or just a reminder of some important abilities if they were going to come up. Mostly it felt like page filler.
Overall, even though there were some good elements, the story didn’t work for me. Worse, as the story progressed, I ended up not liking it. It felt like it was fighting with itself trying to decide whether it wanted to be a ‘trapped in the game’ story or a fantasy story with time travel. That plus the disjointed way time travel ended up resolving issues, pushed it past ‘this doesn’t work for me’ to ‘I just don’t like the story anymore’.
Score: 4 out of 10