Joseph

I want to rate this lower, but I can't.

Revisado: 04-28-25

Just a heads up, DNF with slot 1.5 hours left at 1.5X speed.

I wanted to rate this lower, I really did. It features one of the tropes I despise most in fantasy fiction (a power that'll make you lose your mind if you use it too much).

The trope is extra worse in the LitRPG genre. What are we even here for if not go live vicariously though a protagonist progressing, kicking ass and taking names?

Unfortunately, the existence and prevalence of this trope dragged the the entire story down for me. I couldn't stand it, I hated it.

So why didn't I rate it lower?

Honestly, because it's competent enough (and Travis Baldtree). I can't, in good conscious, give a competent story a one star because it doesn't align with my personal preference. That feels... wrong, gross.

I CAN warn you away though if, like me, you hate that 'protagonist losing his mind' schtick, along with a weepy, overly broody protagonist (the two are obviously linked).

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Surprisingly great

Revisado: 04-14-25

I honestly didn't know what to expect when picking this up - most LitRPG these days feel like a crapshoot, but this one turned out to be surprisingly great.

I loved Will as a character. Though I personally prefer my MCs to be a bit more psycopathic and badass, the fact that the author wrote one that was more grounded and 'everyman,' while also still making him a badass deserves huge props.

I think my only issues are that the LitRPG elements felt really tacked on and meaningless (what does 8% extra damage even mean?!), and that the worldbuilding fell a little flat.

Can't wait to see where the next one goes.

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Promising start, then fell off. Hard.

Revisado: 03-31-25

First, just because you point out how stupid it is to use real world pop culture references and idioms, doesn't make you any less amateurish when you have you protagonist CONSTANTLY doing so in your fantasy world.

I hate this style of writing dialogue even when everyone understands the references. I extra *despise* it when it makes no sense. It feels embarrassingly self-indulgent and, as I already said, amateurish.


As for the story itself, I enjoyed the first half, but pretty much everything after Arlo comes out of the Creation dungeon is a massive clown show. New characters introduced by the dozens is bad enough, but it felt like the story lost all direction at this point, with Arlo just going along 'just because.'

I found myself questioning why everything was happening, why Arlo was doing any of it, all the time. If I were the author's friend or editor (after cussing him out for my first critique), I'd ask them to take this first draft back to the story board and come up with some motivations and goals for Arlo to strive for beyond 'I want to raise my base stats to 10.'

Aimless and directionless. Honestly, I maybe could have patiently held on for such 'contrivances' like a plot to show themselves if I weren't so annoyed by the dialogue.

Alas, I tapped out with a few hours to go. I might finish, I might not.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Unfathomably, embarrassingly, painfully cringe.

Revisado: 03-11-25

I could go into what happens in this story, but honestly, it would just be a waste of time. I'll only go into how it ends, or rather, the words that come out of our hero's mouth - in the most painfully serious way possible - when it does so.

He delivers these lines with such heartfelt emotion, and with such conviction, that I felt *literal* pain, my body was cringing so hard.

I'm not being hyperbolic when I say the hero *literally* screams into the big bad's face that he was going to win because of the power of friendship and love. I'm not paraphrasing, I'm not being hyperbolic, these words actually came out of the hero's mouth - with such conviction and pride that it was *painful*, because I could tell the author was proud of it.

That one scene is enough for me to drop this series entirely, if it wasn't finished already.

This writing is too cringe for Saturday morning cartoons, let alone fantasy for adults.

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Nevermore was a mistake.

Revisado: 03-10-25

I don't understand how you can build a universe with myriad factions, literal endless possibilities for set pieces and a whole cast of characters across the multiverse... then spend several books on what's essentially a training montage, where *nothing* in Nevermore actually matters.

Dungeons as a concept in all LitRPG need to be yeeted into the sun. Too many authors spent too much time playing WoW. Instanced content makes sense in an outdated way for video games, to a point, but in the real world? Nonsense.

Every bit of character 'growth' that happens/happened in these last two books would have felt infinitely better had it happened with actual stakes, in the pursuit of something meaningful - instead I'm being forced to listen to Jake... rack up a high score? Are we serious here?

It's such a massive let down because this is my favourite series, or at least it was.

Now I'm just depressed.

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Hard noped out of this

Revisado: 01-21-25

The characters in these stories just didn't feel real to me.

Finch acts like a moody teenager all the time, rolling his eyes and groaning constantly while doing absolutely nothing about what's annoying him.

The first book had a really annoying child sidekick, but hey, she's a kid, kids are allowed to be annoying (even if I rather not read about it).

Seeing the blurb for the second book and realising the kid would be taking a back seat, I moved on with a little more confidence.

The spirit... is even worse. Somehow even more annoying and ridiculously naive than the literal child - so much so that it utterly strained credulity. The spirit had a conscious and was sentient in the first book, why, when it inhabits a body, does it revert to a literal child, completely unable to read social queues?

Why was this even decided as a plot device? It completely detracts from the actual cool shit in the book.

Then I hard noped out when Finch froze like a literal teenager when the spirit says 'pussy.' I've never, in my entire life, not even from my own *mother* (who despises cursing), ever seen a reaction to such a benign word more intense than an eyeroll - maybe a scoff or sneer if the context is vulgar enough. Finch doesn't do any of these things, he literally freezes as if the spirit brought up his dead brother, as if she said Lord Voldemort's name.

It was the moment I hard noped out, but to be fair, I wasn't enjoying myself before that, so maybe I'm just overblowing that incident. It was just the first time I felt like the author's gender reached out and smacked me in the face, and it completely pulled me out of the story.

Maybe this is what women feel like when male authors write female characters? I couldn't say - but Finch always just felt... off. I wrote it off in the first book because he was still getting over a tragedy and opening up again, but literally every interaction with the spirit in this book just felt... way too cringe - less like a grown-ass man and more like an anime protagonist.

I won't be continuing with this series, but judging by the reviews, either everyone else is crazy, or I just have much, *much* higher standards for what constitutes good writing and character development.

Maybe unreasonably so, I dunno.

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When cliffhangers backfire

Revisado: 12-13-24

I can't remember a time I've ever felt so disgusted and enraged by a (competently written) book in my whole, entire life.

A large portion of this book is literally the Games of Role 2.0. Just imagine if Harry Potter 7 revolved around the Triwizard tournament. *Again.*

To make matters worse, the book ends with the biggest FU I've ever experienced in fiction.

This isn't a web serial, it's a novel. You know how I react when someone drops a cliffhanger like that on me? One so severe and ameteurishly handled that it's basically a 'DNF'?

I give a big, genuine FU back.

I'm done with this series. Long run time, and Travis Baldtree is always a treat, but maybe 3 hours of it were interesting, the rest outright insulting.

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This book was a disaster for me

Revisado: 11-19-24

I kind of know what I'm getting into at this point with this genre of fiction, but there's a limit that I'm able to tolerate before my immersion is broken and I'm stuck in a perpetual state of eye rolling.

Sen is just an over-emotional, unstable, schizo child. I'm struggling to empathize with him because his reactions are so OTT, that's it's hard to relate - it also makes the times when he goes full robot all the more ridiculous. It's either rocketing in reverse or 100km/h with this guy.

I wasn't a fan of the constant false equivalencies either, disguised as 'deep' philosophical insights. It just felt very surface level, like the author had a debate with himself without ever challenging his own thoughts - it shows.

Finally, Sen's 'realisation' in this book as to why he's as talented as he is is just disastrous, and why I'm ultimately stopping this series.

There's *nothing* like cheapening your protagonist's achievements to get me to stop caring about your book.

It's readable, but no longer something I want to read.

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This is my jumping off point.

Revisado: 11-03-24

I loved the first book.

Second book became little too corny for my tastes, with everyone being uber melodramatic and the 'inner darkness' thing becoming a bit much, personally.

Third books takes everything I didn't like about book two, and ratchets it up to about 9000.

Everyone's crying all the time (and the silliest, most benign platitudes too, not from stress etc), the dialogue is hyper cringe and corny and the 'inner darkness' became even more unbearable.

First, this just isn't how real people talk. It's so OTT that I'm constantly being drawn out of the narrative by how cringe everything is. Imagine someone creating a parody of a dramatic scene, this is how the author writes such scenes, except everything is hyper dramatic all the time, and he plays it completely seriously.

It's incredibly hard to take his 'inner conflict' seriously when they're constantly throwing themselves into situations the group as a whole aren't ready for, only for the 'internal struggle' to start. 'Use my power, or they'll all DIE muahahahaha' - seriously? We're doing this again?

And the dwarf cursing (MY OKRAMS'S BEARD!!!I!I!J!J!I!J!IJ!) every time whatever the MC's name is gets lucky loot for the THOUSANTH time. This bit was old after the second time... it. keeps. happening.

Ultimately, this is just very poorly written slop that I couldn't even turn my brain off for to enjoy. Way too annoying, cringe with characters that feel like parody.

I'm done here.

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esto le resultó útil a 4 personas

Pretty great

Revisado: 10-10-24

I love me a crafting litRPG.

This one is almost entirely to my tastes too. Pretty badass MC, no real, stupid characters, good, but not ridiculous stakes, satisfying progression...

My only nitpick is one I have with most of these 'regression' type stories.

Oftentimes, when characters lose powers in some way, they tend to 'think' at the level they were too. If I could change one thing about this story, it would be to better show his experience during fights. He shouldn't be getting distracted, he shouldn't just blindly charge in.

His mind should be his deadliest weapon, instead he leans far too heavily on borrowed power.

You wouldn't even need a massive change to fix this. instead of 'Scourge' gifting him boosted strength, it's not beyond the pale to think an incredibly experienced fighter could manipulate his inherent magic to a level sometime at his tier should never be able to. I don't know why he needs a title for this, makes him less interesting.

Regardless, I'm looking forward to book 2.

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