A new world of magic and violence. One crazy starting bonus. Major downside: No thumbs!
Carl was a regular construction foreman. Not the worst, not the best, and definitely not the thinnest. Even so, he didn't deserve that heart attack! He really didn't deserve being reborn into a magic-filled, dog-eat-dog world as a dragon.
To be fair, it’s nice to be at the top of the food chain. Now Carl just needs to learn how magic works, which monsters are safe to eat, and why his hoard is so important to him. Dealing with everything changing is hard enough, but he has enemy dragons incoming, hostile environments, and foes constantly trying to get bragging rights by taking down a dragon.
At the end of the day, Carl needs to learn how to build a life worth living in a world where might makes right.
My Opinion: 471 pages, $4.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
This is a transported to a fantasy RPG world story where the main character (MC) ends up as a newly hatched dragon. It develops into a dungeon core story, except there’s no core but a dragon hoard.
The story gets into the RPG fantasy world immediately and the first 10% just follows the MC around as he fights the creatures trying to kill him and gets his bearings on this new world and with his new body. Then about 15% in, the story takes a sharp turn into kingdom and dungeon building and stays firmly there. The MC gains minions, helps them move into a new lair, gets a hoard that unlocks his kingdom/dungeon building and the game mechanics shift to this type of building. With traps, illusions, and deception being the biggest themes of the dungeon that the MC and his minions have to defend. As the treasure hoard grows so do the options for buildings in the dungeon.
With a monster MC, there’s a fine balance between keeping the monster aspects so as to be interesting and making the character relatable by humanizing them. In this instance, the story definitely leans a lot more towards humanization and the MC is basically human with occasional body control issues and a newfound taste for uncooked flesh. The MC’s powers are definitely dragon bases as are his racial evolutions. But his thought processes, actions, morals, and internal monologues are very human.
The RPG side of things is well done. There are lots of levels for the MC to gain and he increases his stats, gets new dragon powers, and upgrades his racial evolutions. There are also dungeon and kingdom-building mechanics in the story. All done well with the author providing enough information that the reader can speculate about what they’d do to build the ultimate dungeon.
Overall, it's a pretty good dungeon master story with fun and interesting RPG progression for the MC and his minions.
Score: 7.5 out of 10
Master of the Hoard: A Reincarnation LitRPG Adventure