LitRPG Podcast 003
Welcome to Episode 3 of the LitRPG Podcast. I’m Ramon Mejia.
The only podcast dedicated to LitRPG. I’m here to bring you the latest LitRPG news, reviews, and author interviews.
LitRPG News
The 5th book in the Chaos Seeds series, The Land: Swarm, is available for pre-order. I like the funny book description on Amazon right now:
“What happened to Elora? Where is the swarm? Did the rock giant make Richter jelly? What are the colonel's secret spices???“
Release date Oct. 12th. http://amzn.to/2czQY9y
The first book in The Way of the Shaman series is out in German. I think it’s safe to expect some new LitRPG fans from Germany soon. http://amzn.to/2c6CWgm
In a recent post on Facebook Vasily Mahanenko was asked when the next book in the Way of the Shaman series may come out in English. His response, “November”. While there’s no official release date on Amazon, he did hire a new translation team, so we may get book 4 by Thanksgiving.
William D. Arand, author of the Otherlife trilogy, is conducting an interesting experiment. The third book, Otherlife Awakenings, is finished but he’s planning a dual release with the audiobook version of the story. His narrator, Jeff Hayes, has been live broadcasting the recording process on Periscope and Twitch. It’s an interesting insight into the audiobook recording process and if you just absolutely need to get your Otherlife fix you can get a peek at the next story by watching the broadcasts.
Jayden Hunter, a admin for the LitRPG facebook group, has been communicating with Amazon in an effort to get the LitRPG listed as its own genre. His response from them is they’ll “submit your request to our department so they can take it in consideration for future improvements.”
Jayden suggests anyone that wants LitRPG to get its own genre grouping on Amazon write them at Kindle-feedback@amazon.com
There’s a great Kotaku article earlier this month that collected Instagram and Twitter photos and videos of filming down in London for the movie Ready Player One. There are set pictures, videos of Steven Spielberg directing the cast. It’s a great glimpse into what the world of Ready Player One may look like on the big screen. https://kotaku.com/a-look-spielbergs-ready-player-one-shoot-1786239986
New Releases and Reviews
4d6 (Caverns and Creatures)
This is a collection of the fourth six short stories in the Caverns and Creatures series. It includes the following titles:
Djinngle Bells ,Genital Harpies, The Unwashed Asses , B.Oar Guests , Wight Trash, and Probing the Annis
My Opinion: The Critical Failure (Caverns and Creatures) series is among the funniest LitRPG series I’ve ever read. The short stories that the author is kind enough to write add value if you’re a fan of the series or if you just want a good laugh. The fact that he also bundles his short stories to save his readers a few bucks is nice too. All the short stories are available on Kindle Unlimited but so are the collections.
Dragon Web Online: Inception (Electric Shadows Book 1),
The story starts off with the main character, Adam, in custody, ready for execution being interviewed about how he destroyed a world. They play him up as a real villain type. He’s recounting for the viewing audience the story about how he got to the place he is and of course he starts at the beginning. Then it shifts to him and his brother Karl enter a new VR world to make money to pay for their mother's medical treatment but things don’t go as planned.
My Opinion: A wonderful beginning to a new LitRPG series. I personally don’t care for the scenes where he’s being interviewed by Xi Shao. I get that the author is setting up the corporation as a manipulative villain and creating emotional ties to the main character by persecuting him but it just doesn’t work for me.
I absolutely loved the story once they got to the VR game world. It was interesting to see a VR system that assigned a character class according to the actions a player took instead of letting them choose one in some menu. It made the choices players made feel like they had a real impact. The story has great action scenes once you get to the game world and I thought the relationship between the brothers in the story was believable.
The story feels shorter than it actually is and only tells the story of how the character started in the game world and got his class. So I look forward to reading more about this world.
Dragon Web Online: Inception (Electric Shadows Book 1)
Awaken Online: Catharsis -Audiobook released
We interviewed the author Travis Bagwell recently and I tell you I really enjoyed the book. As an audiobook the story is just as good and David Stifel, the narrator, is amazing.
Daily Grind, 1st book in Mirror World series -Audiobook released
Enjoyed the story when I read it as an e-book. The narrator, Kyle McCarley, has a bit of a high voice for my tastes but he does a good job.
http://www.geekbytespodcast.com/reviews/2016/8/11/author-interview-alex-osadchuk
Digital Haven -Online Only
The modern world fell into a deep depression and few options remained for the suffering lower class. The global economy crumbled under a growing energy crisis and overpopulation led to the creation of a virtual frontier known as Teurilia, the first full immersion virtual reality. Teurilia introduced a world of adventure and exploration leaning on human nature for greed and power. The world, built to be a realistic role playing game offered players nearly unlimited freedom and became wildly popular around the world within weeks of initial release.
Originally intended to be a temporary relief from the real world, the world’s governments soon realized the potential of virtual existence with the release of technology to permanently transfer consciousness from physical bodies into virtual ones. Supported by economists of the world and political power from the United Nations, Teurilia received limitless funding to support the migration of millions of new citizens. Eric Williams like many lower class citizens immediately saw the potential of a new life in Teurilia and signed up for the migration program within the first week of its announcement. Eric always dreamed of grand adventure and Teurilia was his golden ticket. This is his story…
My Opinion: A really good adventure story where the main character chooses to transfer his consciousness permanently to a VR game world. He gets a pretty unique skill/class pretty early in the story but is not overpowered. Great action scenes.
http://royalroadl.com/fiction/4843
Clockwork - Online Only
This is a story about a normal high schooler who was framed and sent to jail on fake charges. Becoming depressed he was further thrown into despair when the culprit caused his family harm and took his sister's ability to walk.
Finally reaching the end he experienced a mental breakdown and lost his speaking ability to everyone and only reacts to his family.
Follow him as he remakes his life with his little sister in the world of Etheria as a form of rehabilitation. Will he talk again or never again. Will he trust others or will he lived a closed life. Only time will tell
My Opinion: A action oriented LitRPG story. The main draw for me was that the main character didn’t chose the popular human race as his game character. Instead he chose the steampunk version of the robot, the clockwork race. It allows for some interesting story opportunities.
I’d highly recommend skipping the first chapter, ‘Jailbird’. It just establishes the characters sad sad backstory and that he’s being forced into the game world as part of a punishment for a crime he didn't commit. Also note that his younger sister is there with him. The chapter doesn’t make complete sense and goes on for too long. Chapter 2 is where the story gets into the game world.
http://royalroadl.com/fiction/2276
Alistair’s Great and Powerful Startup Dungeon - Online Only
The Great Golden Hero Thorian the Fair is dead! Ok, Great might have been a little much… and the only thing Golden about him was his armor. Fine! Thorian was an ego driven maniac that killed thousands of Adventurers in the pursuit of glory. Now that he has died the God of Rebirth is judging his soul and determined that the only creature Thorian can inhabit is a Dungeon Demon. Devoid of his divine luck and stripped of his power, the newly made Dungeon Demon Alistair must struggle Fang and Claw to build his new home. Sometimes cosmic justice exists and it’s a kick in the head.
My Opinion: A pretty good fun story about someone from our world reincarnated as a dungeon. He builds up his dungeon and faces off against adventurers who come to loot him. It has community building aspects and I’d recommend it to anyone that liked the game Dungeon Keeper.
http://royalroadl.com/fiction/7023
Music Credits
"Blip Stream" "Mighty Like Us" "Big Shift" "Vivacity"
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/