To find peace, Alexander must first embrace war.
After tragically losing the only person he ever cared about, Alexander, a rogue artificial intelligence, opens a portal to an alternate dimension to escape his grief.
Scanning trillions of different dimensions, Alexander finally finds a world that is reminiscent of the only time he was ever happy, back when he could play virtual reality games with his only friend. He doesn't know why, or how, such a world exists, but he doesn't care. All he cares about is finding a place where he can escape the misery of Earth and start over.
Join Alexander as he risks it all by downloading his intelligence into a body made from the best stolen technology and bio-enhancements Earth has to offer and takes the plunge through a portal to another world.
Only this new world isn’t full of the idyllic adventures and fantasy roleplaying he had hoped to find. Instead, Alexander finds himself trapped in the middle of an ancient city, in a divergent timeline, where monsters have ravaged the world and the only people left alive huddle behind thick walls, struggling to survive.
To save his new home, Alexander must quickly learn to adapt to his new world, melding magic with technology to give himself an edge over the unending waves of monsters assaulting the city.
To survive, Alexander must embrace war.
Portal to Nova Roma comes from the author of the breakout success Jake’s Magical Market (4.7 stars with over 2,600 ratings on Amazon) with over 13 million pages read on Kindle Unlimited and thousands of Kindle copies sold. It is the first book in the Portal to Nova Roma trilogy.
Tags: LitRPG, Portal Fantasy, Empire Building, Historical Fantasy, Survival.
My Opinion: 737 pages, $4.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
This is a delightful story that has a slow start but once past the 10% mark really keeps the action, RPG progression, and alt world building going at a steady pace. The setup for the story is that an artificial intelligence from a world where humanity is dying due to A.I. influence to a dimension where magic and RPG progression exist. The A.I. makes a human body for them to inhabit, giving all the upgrades they can. Once on the new world they have a series of adventures where they learn the world’s rules, some alternative world history, grows in RPG power, and builds relationships with the locals.
The RPG side of things is good. There’s lots of descriptions of what the RPG system is composed of with an emphasis initially on stats, but progresses into a class system that doesn’t penalize multiclassing. Lots and lots of information on classes, their abilities, and how they play an important role in this world. Great details and unique class progression as the main character (MC) develops a magic-tech system to combine their technology knowledge with the magic that exists in this world. There’s also a nice balance between giving the MC some advantages but penalizing him with not being able to access magic like the natives.
The story itself is very slice of life. You really just follow the MC as he fights, eventually comes into contact with the locals, makes enemies, develops friendships, and grows in power. The multiclassing RPG aspect was probably the best part for me. I love to see how the abilities from various classes combine for some cool effects and the MC combines that with intelligent technomagic development and XP grinding. Dungeons are used to add some unique settings for the monster fights and though they eventually take a back seat to other conflicts, they were well used.
Overall, the story was really good. Action occurred regularly and once the MC met locals (about 10% in) there was good character development and world building.
Score: 7.8 out of 10