Some Book Recommendations
So I found some books that I really enjoyed, and I thought I’d make a separate post about them. It’s actually two series, both by the same author, Daniel Schinhofen.
The first thing I will tell you is, don’t worry about the covers. He’s kind of famous for having bad covers. The cover from Apocalypse Gates looks like a flat lit Doom 1 level.
Anyway.
The series I really liked is Binding Words, the first book of which is Morrigan’s Bidding. One of the things I liked about it was the book is very good at laying out the rules of the world the MC finds himself in. This might seem like a minor point, but the rules of this world are quite important, and some books don’t do a great job with set up. I will admit, I also like the fact that the MC is kind of OP, even though (and I don’t want to spoil anything) there’s not a lot of action in the first book. I’m sure some of you are like “How is he OP if he’s not kicking ass?” Ah, see? You gotta read it to find out.
One caveat – you guys know that I like the slice of life stuff, right? I mean, if you’ve been reading Grrl Power, you’ve probably figured that out. That said, by the time I got to the third book in Binding Words though, even I was like “I don’t really need to know what they eat for every single meal. It’s okay to skip ahead a few days.” But don’t let that dissuade you from checking out this series. I’m definitely snapping up the next book when it comes out.
After finishing all the released Binding Words books, I jumped straight over to a new series he’s working on called Aether’s Blessing. Or… the series is Aether’s Revival. Book 1 is Aether’s Blessing. It’s fairly different from Binding Words (though there is at least one common theme)
Some of you may be familiar with his other series, Apocalypse Gates and Alpha World. I have tried to read Alpha World on numerous occasions, and I can’t get into it. It’s not because the writing is bad, but I just cannot get into books that are set in video games. I just can’t bring myself to care about what happens, because no matter how it’s set up, whether it’s VR, or the character’s brain is trapped in the game or whatever, there just aren’t any stakes for me. If a horde of demi-liches are about to sweep the last bastion of humanity, I can’t help thinking, “Yeah, but what happens if some developer patches the game and now all the liches are covered in Mt. Dew branding like a NASCAR driver, or are accidentally flagged as neutral?” or “What if a janitor trips over the power cord to the server?” And also, what if the main character does defeat the horde of demi-liches? Do they just respawn the moment he turns his back so other players can take them on, thereby lowering the stakes even further? It’s a bad set up for a book. If an author wants to put game like stats in his novel, then just have the character wear some sort of contact lense that scans everyone’s strength levels, or make it a spell, or have aliens rip out everyone’s eyeballs and replace them with cyber eyes that give them special skills and make them duke it out on a planet full of dinosaurs. It’s just lazy writing IMO to make it a video game.
I’ll probably try again to read further into Alpha World, and maybe I’ll get to a point where I can ignore all the game stuff, because I really liked the two series I recommended above, but man, it’s tough. “Oh, he finally met a girl that’s probably going to be a love interest… but has he? Or has he met a lookup table with some clever dialog trees?”
Anyway. I liked his other books and maybe you will too.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Thanks for the reviews. I figured out that MC is Main Character. What does OP stand for?
Overpowered. Sometime One Punch Man. But that’s synonymous. In this case, Overpowered.
It’s one of my favorite… well, it’s not a genre, but I like OP MC’s. When it’s done right. It’s super easy to mess it up.
With respect and understanding towards your inability to get drawn into the plot of stories set in video games…
I still have a series I want you to try reading.
“Stork Tower”
7 books out so far and the plot just keeps getting deeper and darker.
This is not a lighthearted series. It takes place both in the real world, and in multiple games accessed via VR capsule technology.
It is definitely a LitRPG while in some of the games, but others are entirely different.
It’s….I honestly can’t think of a better way to put it than to say that it’s utterly unique.
*Please* at least read the free sample from Kindle. (And if you have KU, it’s free.)
The series is definitely slice-of-life as well, but it’s a pretty dystopian life.
And that’s readily apparent from the first book alone.
I’ll also recommend the series *Dark Elf Chronicles* by Dave Willmarth, because it’s post-apocalyptic inside a video game. Fairly short too, as the author finished at book 3 and is now 4 books into his *Shadow Sun* series.
I forgot two other series — both by the same author, though one is already complete:
“Emerilia” is not what it would seem to be at first glance. Without spoiling much, the ‘game’ in question has far-reaching influences on the continued existence of Earth.
“The Ten Realms” is a Military/Fantasy LitRPG set in the reality of the same name. 5 books out, book 6 probably later this year.
on the topic of OP MC’s done right, try this: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/16946/azarinth-healer is fun in that the OP lead is totally not obnoxious, which does happen quite a bit.
Not as OP but I can’t recommend the bobiverse series of books enough!
https://www.goodreads.com/series/192752-bobiverse
Yeah I find myself enjoying to stories about o p protagonist on that site call fork this life and odyssey of the unrivaled
Coming a bit late, but I’ve got a recommendation for you, DaveB:
There Was No Secret Evil-Fighting Organization (SRSLY?!) So I Made One MYSELF!
What a mouthful. So Japanese high school boy realizes he has a superpower: telekinesis. At first he can only move cookie crumbs with it, but training and exercise does improve the weight he can lift, along with distance and visibility conditions. He trains diligently with expectation of being called to secret organization to fight supernatural threats. But by the time he realizes that isn’t going to happen, he has already graduated high school and university, and is working his ass off in a black company. So he decides to call it quits and create a secret organization himself, along with the supernatural threats to fight against.
This is a little more serious take on super powers. Female lead is described thus:
“Sixth, she had chuuni notebooks that were so serious that they were beyond laughing at. Even at 23 years old, Shiori Kaburagi was still writing in notebooks of make-believe. Or so you’d think, until you realized that the contents were so technical that they could all be published as proper scientific dissertations. For example, included inside were, in the case of a zombie virus outbreak, projections of the spread pattern of infection and conjectures for possible ways to identify the source of infection. In the case of being summoned to another world, what would be her chances of survival, and deliberations on the possible effects on her body in the case of the other world having different laws of physics.”
Novel itself don’t go too deep with such boring trivia, and is considerably closer to Grrl Power. Protagonist is resistant to make a public entrance with his telekinesis. He understands that his whole history would go under the microscope and made public. When arsonist attacks a cafe, protagonist goes to hide under the table before realizing he’s got a telekinesis barrier around himself at all times (in the shape of his body, unlike Sydney’s sphere). Such details are many, protagonist is seriously OP, but he’s a coward who just wants to have fun and play around with his superpowers. In other words: superpowered chuunibyou. There’s also a side story about a CIA agent investigating espers, super powers, and other supernatural.
Two novels translated (from Japan) so far. I have read them and I like them better than Michael-Scott Earle’s novels. (I don’t mean Earle’s novels are bad; they just don’t do it for me anymore than virtual worlds do for Dave)
If you are willing to give another shot to a LitRPG book with game stats and the whole ‘stuck in the game immersion’ gimmick, I’d suggest taking a look at one or both of Eric Ugland’s series, “The Good Guys” or “The Bad Guys” … he does a great job with both the tropes and the telling a good story aspects (there are six or seven books in the first series and three in the second, neither series is at its end). Another good series with stats and game like development, and an inclination towards cultivation, is “The Ten Realms” by Michael Chatfield (at six or seven ‘realms’ / books at this time). His “Trapped Minds Project” is also quite good, though I enjoy the Ten Realms books more. Also worth looking into is Aleron Kong’s “The Land” series and Vasily Mahanenko’s “The Way of the Shaman” and “Dark Herbalist” series.
If you’re inclined towards strong, rarely challenged characters, take a look at Christopher Nuttal’s “Schooled in Magick” series… which is at 18 or so novels at the moment, with spin off stories. And in sci-fi, try Laurence Dahner’s “Ell Donsaii” series, also in the teens. Or Mackey Chandler’s “April” or “Family Law” series, also sci-fi.
A small handful of books to read if you find you enjoy what I’ve recommended. If you read ‘all of that’ … its about 80 novels… so even if you read as quickly as I do, it’ll keep you busy for a little while. :) I hope at least ‘some’ of it turns out to your taste.
Hah, I bought “Schooled in Magic” several years ago but never got around to reading it. Thanks for reminding me.
I hate that there are so many books set in video games, because I’m probably missing out on some otherwise entertaining stories, but I just… A novel is already fantasy, and I’m obviously okay with that level. But the make believe of a video game within a novel is just too much. I just can’t make the stakes feel real.
The decent ones are just like any other decent fantasy, sci-fi, or even super-hero comic or prose. If the STORY is good, the gimmicks are transparent. If you write a super-hero story about the powers, its mostly going to be clunky and tedious once you get past the origin and discovery of the powers. LitRPG is the same… its really just fantasy. It just has another layer on top that gives gamers a way of connecting to it and feeling like they’ve got an inside perspective.
That’s no less valid than the various fantasy novels where someone from our world gets sucked into a world where some key piece of knowledge or a physical object they take with them gives them some advantage over the natives. All those computer programmer finds a world of magic where their programming skills make them an amazingly powerful wizard come to mind…
The “Schooled in Magic” series is one of those sorts, actually. Not programming specifically, but the main character introduces the Industrial Revolution to that world over the course of the books.
The level of transparency is what makes these particular stories I suggested worth suggesting… yes, there’s an element of gamer detail to their interactions. But they’re also interesting characters in a good story, told well. That’s more important than the gamer details.
I’d recommend the webcomic ‘Not a Villain’. It’s NOT LitRPG, and the characters aren’t stuck in a game. It’s just that after a war, rampaging selfcontroled warbots, and several world wide disasters with the collapse of civilization, the world wide virtual reality system is just about the only form of communication or entertainment for most people. The problem is you have to pay to use it. Most isolated people can’t afford it unless others pay to ‘follow’ them, the have successful performances, or sell virtual goods/ services. One of the best ways to get the money is to have a popular character in ‘the game’ (which DOES have rpg leveling, but doesn’t affect anything outside the game). The MC is a hacker that unintentionally started the wars etc. but is now trying to fix her rep.
Neither Apocalyse Gate or Alpha World really grabbed me when I tried reading them, but I second your recommendations of Binding Words and Aethers Revival. The author has really improved over the course of his writing.
Why you no come out, book 5?!
When it comes to LitRPG (Stories set in virtual reality) it may be better to think of them as set in an alternate reality instead of a computer-generated one. Personally I loved the Alpha World series. The stakes are but they are personal stakes for the MC rather than for the virtual world. I believe if you come at it as an alternate reality rather than a virtual one then you will have no problem getting into it. Besides, if you think about it, any world created by an author can be considered a “Virtual” one. A poor author can make the whole world stale with no consequences, and a great one can make the world come alive. I would hate to have you miss out on an excellent series like Alpha World.
Yeah, that’s why I keep trying to get into Alpha world, but I can’t get over the fact that the Evil Lord Whatsit can be defeated in an instant by external forces. Still, I like his other books enough that I may take another stab at it.
i have problems with alpha world as well but i think you would like apocalypse gates as it addresses all the issues you complain about… devs can be asses in that book.
I actually gave AG a shot, just because I needed some audiobooks to listen to. It wasn’t my favorite series, but I enjoyed it enough. I was able to set aside my issues with the premise partially because of the involvement of the devs. I’m waffling on whether I want to try AW or not. I’ve tried reading book 1 several times and I couldn’t get past the setup. I’m considering it just on the promise that I like Shinhofen’s other books quite a bit.
If I might suggest, the one that actually works best for this ‘world is a game’ is the stuff by William D. Arand/Randi Darren. It’s a world in a game, but the premise is more or less:
1) The entire crew is in stasis pods in a damaged spaceship. The medical server that helped keep their brains from frying during stasis has been irreparably damaged, and the officer’s section of the ship was blown to smithereens in the same incident
2) The remaining tech guy on the ship used the game (which was originally invented for therapy in the first place) on the remaining ship servers to keep everyone’s brains functioning consciously, the ship is holed, and anybody ejected from the stasis pods is going to suffocate, assuming they survive the reintrigration process. Without a medical server there’s no backups for their mental data, so if they die in the game, it basically wipes their mind clean.
3) The protagonist, being the last IT guy, is trying to figure out a way to actually bypass all of the bullshit and access the ship systems, hopefully directing them towards home/safe harbour in some manner
I can’t really go into it more than that, but the author actually does find ways to make the stakes believable in ways that make sense, and even as he expands and interlinks the rest of his series, it works well.
I might suggest starting with another of his book series. Either one of his new urban fantasy series, or Supersales on Super Heroes, which is where I got started with him after you introduced me to MSE’s books.
basically, to cover your points
1) The server is isolated in a way that makes rescue unlikely
2) There’s no admins around patching things
3) also gets into some very interesting transhumanism stuff about AI and their position as living, thinking beings or not as the series goes on, it becomes less about the human beings (what few you encounter) and more about the NPCs ‘awakening’ and becoming fully sapient/realizing that they’re creations of a simulation.
Sounds like the anime Overlord, to me. Guy playing a VR MPORG decides to stay logged in until it shuts down, and ends up stuck in it with a bunch of NPCs who start developing personalities and minds of their own. He ends up having to try to conquer the world because his NPC’s expect it of him, and they’re powerful enough in their own right to take him down if he didn’t humor them.
I appreciate the suggestion, but I’ve tried to read Arand/Darren before, and I wasn’t able to get into his stuff for other reasons even before he revealed his worlds were all interconnected/VR. Specifically Super Sale on Super Heroes and Wild Wastes.
This is probably more my problem than his, but I find I don’t do well with books that introduce a lot of characters quickly. SSoSH was really bad about this, and I kept losing track of who everyone was by 2/3 of the way through the 1st book.
It would have been helpful if instead of writing “Daria entered the room.” he wrote stuff like “Daria entered the room, hefting her sword over her shoulder while her other hand brushed her red hair away from her eyes.” Then I would be “Oh. Daria is the redheaded swordswoman.” Understandably, that can bog down the pacing, but at least doing it at the start of a scene to help remind a reader who everyone was would be immensely helpful.
My inability to track large numbers of characters is why it was important to me to have the Who’s Who widget on my own comic, because even if you’re great at keeping track of a bunch of characters, I can have someone walk into a page that I haven’t drawn in 6 years, and everyone will be up to speed at a glance.
I will say, I do appreciate attempts to raise the stakes of VR worlds, the easiest being that if you die in the game you really die, but it still feels lazy to me. Instead of making it a game, just make it so everyone in the world can call up a stat screen for some reason.
MSE’s Tamer and Space Knight books have that in the world, along with explanations for it, and in Neven Iliev’s Boxy Morningwood series (the first LitRPG book I ever read actually), everyone can just pull up a stat screen and has levels. It’s never explained in the story, but it never bothered me. Maybe the god of games allows for it or something.
Okay…so having read some if not all of Arand/Darren’s and Schinhofen’s works (Kindle Unlimited FTW) you have to approach it from the right angles.
Arand/Darren – Other than the first series about Runner himself, in all of the remaining series, none of the MCs realize they are in a virtual world. (Almost forgot Remnant- MC knows he’s in something like a game, but a mindwipe makes it impossible for him to capitalize on it.) In their minds they are living in a very real world, in these the video game aspect is never discussed. For all of the MC’s the stakes are very much life and death to them, including dealing with an extensive cosmology of multiple afterlife planes. I look at it like the RL theory that we’re living in a Matrix style simulation. I find his handling of the Harem aspects to be amusing, in his it’s very female driven with the poor MC along for the ride.
As for the external forces bit… after Runner’s series, Runner appears but is bound by unstated rules that prevent him from stepping in and just cleaning house. Doing so would cause God level AI’s to defect to the big bad guy Hacker loose in the system. This would turn the entire multi-existence into a hellscape with the developing self aware AIs trapped as the playthings of a sick minded psychopath.
Schinhofen- Alpha world was an unusual read…there are points it becomes hard to suspend disbelief and move forward. Not offensive just very drawn out and unrealistic sometimes. Apocalypse Gates is bizarre in the sense that it’s mostly about the MC exploiting the VR world’s mechanics to survive. It’s a series I read waiting for the next book from one of the other authors. Binding Words is perhaps the best of his books. Over powered MC bound by rules that prevent him from truly exploiting himself to them fullest, very real sense of risk to the MC and his lovers lives. Just wish the series would start working towards a goal soon. It’s still very much a slice of life thing ATM.
MSE- Read a few before his purge from Amazon. After the purge, there was nothing in his stories that made me miss them to the point of buying them separately.
Also… years ago you kinda dismissed Hero System Champions games as too easy to exploit. Obviously they didn’t hold it against you. In a new release the specifically call out Grrlpower (and you by extension) as one of the new wave of non-corporate super hero comics telling real stories.
Wow! That’s cool about the Champions call out, I didn’t know that.
For the record, I didn’t dismiss Hero systems as being easy to exploit – that was actually my favorite aspect of the game, hah hah! I like OP heroes if you haven’t been able to tell. Also I’m pretty sure this was first edition rules and some of those loopholes have probably been taken care of by now.
Yeah…there was a Kickstarter for a retro-retread of the first 3 Champions editions for fans. The intro has a long section were they talk about how Superhero comics have gone from newsprint filler to corporate media. In the list of modern webcomics doing it right is Grrlpower.
I ran a number of games of old hero games – it’s not that the game isn’t ever broken, it’s that it’s a “point buy system”… basically, your GM has to be the one to decide what’s balanced and what’s not. As opposed to DnD, where everything is pre-packaged.
The only way point-buy systems can’t be exploited is if they are highly restrictive on what you can buy and and what level. HERO suggests limits, but it’s not like there aren’t loopholes… or people who blatantly ignore them and take advantage of new GMs! -grrr-
er. by HERO I mean Champions.
Never really thought of the Runner/Zeus/Omega Zero Zero conflict as a game. Seems more like a VR set up for some level of social research that gets damaged by a runaway AI takeover. The leveling aspects seem as if they were added in later as part of the conflict, to allow evolution of characters capable of higher end fighting as part of the main (though mostly hidden) conflict.
I was enjoying his work, and was able to enjoy the first ‘world’ where the MC knew he was in a VR world. And then the Wastes series concluded with the reveal that IT was another VR construct, and from all appearances the author was going to that same well over and over again dulled my anticipation.
Currently enjoying ‘Warrior’ series from M.H. Johnson. Almost gets bogged down in ‘wuxia mechanics’ but the storyline is engaging enough to get me through the mud.
I kind of liked the meal seens in the binding words,it`s always good to think of food mmm baconnnnn.
So schinhofen came out with the first book of another series similar to binding words, suited for luck, which is a pretty decent read. The wild west with fantasy elements is always a setting premise I enjoy, and can’t find enough of.
Yeah, it’s good too. I’m glad he didn’t get too deep in the weeds with the poker stuff – although I did put down the book to watch a quick video on how to play holdem.
“No capes, Darling”.
Edna Mode – the Incredibles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNUbPRj9TGM
Lurker appearing to do a book shout out: MOG’S WORLD
All your qualms about video game based books? That is the direct premise of the book. Like, Lichs all being “accidentally” marked as neutral may or may not ACTUALLY be a plot point – it has been a while since I read it. I don’t recall. In-Game Economy nonsense (and how it IS nonsense) is actually a key component of the plot for sure.
I think you’d like it.
Last Panel almost shows a “kiss/kill” dyanmic.
I’ll probably read the entire series but as the genre goes (OP MC harem is a genre? ) I put it at the bottom of the list. Three Square Meals and anything by Michael Scott Earle or DaveB, beats it hands down. I think the MC is a bit of a pussy. I mean sure he kicks ass and with his skill set he’d better be able to, but the overlap of his meek personality, coupled with assertive nature, and creativity is a bit of stretch. still the books are engaging and like I said, I’ll read them.
On the video game book series front, what do you think of LionQuest by MSE?
I have to spoil something to talk about LQ.
The only reason I gave it a shot was because I saw MSE on some youtube LitRPG interview where he basically said that there’s a question in the books as to whether it’s actually a video game, or if the player is somehow being projected or “Avatared” or dimension hopped or something into another world. Reading the books while assuming that was the case made it totally fine.
Ever read “Confessions of a D-list Supervillain”? Set in a world of superpowered heroes and villains, the protagonist is an underdog with a stubborn streak a mile wide and the antagonist is basically a less competent Ironman.
Yeah, it’s one of my faves.
The sequel & prequel for that is also fun.
I love the exploration of what differentiates heroes and villains.
OP heroes becoming villainous and villains cheating to defeat them and achieve the heroic outcome.
For a LitRPG that happens in video game I can recommend Awaken Online by Travis Bagwell.
I can also recommend Drew Hayes, he has For a LitRPG that happens in video game I can recommend Awaken Online by Travis Bagwell. He introduces the main character Jason and develops him before introducing the game ‘Awaken Online’ and how it works. So by the point he starts playing the game I was already invested in Jason’s struggles. In addition much of the conflict is against other players, so not all of the stakes depend on a developers whim. Also there might be some slight slide into villainy.
I can also recommend Drew Hayes, he has written a super hero series called Super Powereds which is about group of university students going through hero training. It should be on Kindle Unlimited.
There is a spinoff called Corpies which is about disgraced hero Titan that takes a job overseeing a team of corpies. Corpies are super-powered emergency responders which are funded by companies for publicity and advertisement. But they are seen as lesser, corporate versions of heroes. There is also an interesting PR discussion in the book that might give you some ideas.
Drew has really irreverent and informal writing style that is fun to read.
He has also written super villain series (not set in the same universe) called Forging Hephaestus which presents the Villain Guild as necessary part of the superpower ecosystem (at least from the Guild members’ view).
I’ve tried reading Super Powereds several times, but I can’t seem to get past the first few chapters. I’m not sure why. I think it’s because it’s third person and hops around without introducing a clear protagonist. I know I should force myself further into it. But right now it’s on my “wait till I run out of more pressing reads” list.
Super Powereds can be kinda rough to get into. It doesn’t start very strong given that it was a web serial and Hayes has improved immensely since he started.
It might help to get invested in the world first by jumping into Corpies(doesn’t really spoil stuff too badly), and now that you have same stakes in the world it may be easier to do the forcing part. Because you really do have to get past the first 3rd or so of the book for it take off. Or was in the first quarter or first fifth? Well either way it is a decent chunk to force yourself through. IT is the one I have not reread. 2,3, and 4 are fine for rereads, but 1. . . oh boy. I can’t blame folks for having to force themselves through the start of it.
Schinhofen, I have mixed feelings on. The Harem aspects tend to turn me off and his character archetypes can be off putting for me. At the same time I tend to find his works interesting. Not interesting enough that I had memorized his name. So I hit up Suited for Luck without realizing it was ‘that’ guy, maybe because of the cover. Probably for the best. I think it might be the work of his I have enjoyed the most so far and if I had recognized him as the one behind Alpha World it may have been put much lower on my list than it was. Though I haven’t tried Binding Words or Aether’s Blessing yet either, so I may be judging him unfairly here.
I’m currently reading Alpha World. I really like it. The reason I like it is because, as usual, the main protagonist has a schtick. And what Alburet’s schtick is, is being *nice* to people. Real, Virtual, in between, doesn’t matter. He sets up a guild who’s main tenets are (if I may quote Wil Wheaton.) ‘don’t be a dick’
One of the earliest in this Genre was a series called “Guardians Of Flame” by Joel Rosenberg. A group of people are playing a tabletop RPG and get pulled into the world. It is dark and brutal, but a really good series. Starts with The Sleeping Dragon
Matt, have you ever read “Quag Keep” by Andre Norton? As far as I know, it’s first one of this genre?
IMO it needs more stuff to establish that it’s a collage. The classical method is to have the panels randomly askew, but that would work less well in a digital age…
Apollo being a character made the first panel slightly confusing
Belatedly: Last Human, by Zack Jordan. It’s extremely good, deals with transhumanism and questions of sentience, and is the best read I”ve had in a while.
If you’re into military science fiction, I have a story in the anthology ‘Space Force: Building the Legacy’. Along with a bunch of other great writers. https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B088SZS5J6/
In the Urban Fantasy genre, I also have a story in the anthology ‘Supernatural Streets’. Again among a group of great writers. https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B08FR583Z9
I’ll drop another recommendatin here for Mil-SF – the Four Horsemen Universe. Lots of authors, but the main 2 are Chris Kennedy and Mark Wandrey. There are over 30 books out in the universe already. Good starting place is Cartwright’s Cavaliers, by Mark. (I also am the designer of a cardgame about to release im that ‘verse, Four Horsemen” Omega Wars. So I might be a little biased… but I was a fan of the books BEFORE I was asked to write the game, so…)
a comprehensive calendar so i could tell what went where might let me read these again because i got the first like 6 and then all the sudden there were 20+ books
There’s a Reading Order here:
https://chriskennedypublishing.com/the-four-horsemen-books/4hu-suggested-reading-order
As I recall – and the ‘verse is up near 50 now as I recall. You have some catching up to do :-)
For LitRPG, have you checked out Aeleron Kong’s “Chaos Seeds” series?
For Urban Fantasy/MilSciFi, check out the Kurtherian Gambit series by Michael Anderle – 20+ books, several spinoff series from other authors.
Not a litrpg, but still a decent male power fantasy that follows a lot of similar tropes, I would recommand the Daniel Black series (first book is “Fimbulwinter”).
There is sex and technically a harem, but unlike most harem series where expanding the harem become the main plot point (a reason why I like most first books of Darren/Arand but was disappoined by their sequels), here the sex and harem are secondary to the plot and don’t distract from it.
General plot : MC is isekaied to another similar world by Hecate the Greek Goddess in order to protect her last remaining priestress and given magical “cheats” to help him.
This other world is very similar to our own, but magic and gods exists, and the Asguardians have won a war against the Olympians, killed or enslaved most of them and are now the pantheon in control of most (all ?) of Europe (other pantheons and forces are also mentionned).
The first book starts with the MC summoned while Loki has recently been freed from his prison, allied with the Titanes GaIa, and triggerred Ragnarok, beginning with the titural Fimbulwinter (a magical winter that will last for years)
The MC has first to survive, and later he become a powerful force amng mortal, starting a phase of faction/base building, but at the same time he cannot really take a side in Ragnanir : Gaïa would like to exterminate all humans and most other intelligent species, make it hard to ally with them, but on the other side the top asguardians are mainly big rapist jerks, and would immediatlly be against the MC if they learned he was serving Hecate, bu at the same time the Asguardian are the worshipped pantheon in all of Europe outside a few hidden cults, so he cannot act openly against them or it would turn most civilian against him.
It’s not great literrature, but it has surprisingly good world building for this kind of story.
I’ve had that on my wishlist for at least a year. Probably should check it out.
Finally read it! (Or listened to it) It was pretty good!
his other book perilous waif is even better! but he has slowed WAY down all the sudden.
I will add a note for the ‘Dungeon Bound’ series (only two so far) from Bastian Knight. Solid writing and storyline, and the erotica portions are short enough that you can scroll past them in a few pages if they aren’t your thing.
Just wanted to suggest this in response to the OP: Free Guy is EXACTLY what Dave B was complaining about, and yet somehow I suspect it will be 50 shades of awesome. https://www.youtube(dot)com/watch?v=7dAzhvffROE
I would say that in art and writing it isn’t the actual specific PLOT that’s an issue no matter how contrived or inorganic it may be, it’s typically the EXECUTION.
Almost anything done well, is a different beast from something ground out by a hack.
Well, the problem I have with video game books is that the majority of story antagonism and character progression happens in a game. Something like Ready Player One is fine, because there’s a story taking place in the real world, and the events in the game affect the real world.
What I can’t get behind is the guy who becomes the most powerful archmage and defeats the dread Null Lord or whatever, except, no, he didn’t, because you’re really reading a story about some schlub in a VR Couch.
From what I gather from this trailer, this is a story about an NPC who becomes aware that he’s in a game, and is fighting to change his reality. It’s not as dramatic if the game shuts down, because all the NPCs, even the self-aware one are all just data somewhere, and there’s nothing to say another company couldn’t buy the rights and restart the server or something, but I don’t think anyone is going to go watch this movie for the life-or-death-but-not-really drama, they just want to see an action comedy, and it looks like it will probably deliver in that department.
Found this series a month after the first one was published. I must say the author has been doing this annoying cliff hanger shtick in every one. Finished the latest the day after it was released, and…. I’m hanging by my very short finger nails, and eagerly waiting for the next one!
Because no one else has posted this, and I have knowledge on flags and Heraldry on which flags are based:
The Louisiana Flag is Azuze, a pelican in its piety respectant, when written in Heraldic terms. That means it’s BLUE (of whatever shade of blue you prefer), with a Pelican feeding it’s chicks in their nest. Respectant just means it’s facing the viewer.
In Medieval times, folks seeing a pelican feeding it’s chicks didn’t get good looks at the process, so someone came up with the idea that the pelican chicks were being fed on it’s mother’s blood. A whole religious myth sprang up of the ‘piety’ of the pelican mother, who gave of her own blood to feed her chicks, even as Christ gave up his blood for people’s sins. Yes, we can laugh at it now, but that myth was so prominent that you can find the “Pelican in her Piety” carved on church walls in England and France, and on many Coats of Arms for British and French families.
Which explains why it’s on the flag of a former French colony, now a US State.
Got some suggestions for you as well. Some of these are fairly old now, but still a good read.
The Wiz Biz, by Rick Cook. It’s about a computer programmer who gets sucked into a world where magic is real. He then learns to ‘program’ magic.
Myth Inc series by Robert Asprin. Basically a magic novice and his adventures. He also has a ‘Phule’ series I like as well, it’s scifi-ish.
A book series I cannot remember the name of MC or authtor, but it’s about a guy who gets sucked into a world where magic is real. He uses poetry, Shakespeare and TV commercial limericks to cast spells.
Armor by John Steakly. VERY good book. Scifi. Highly recommend that book.
Latro series by Gene Wolfe. Ancient Greek soldier gets hit on the head during battle, and now he only has memory for a day, then it resets, but he now sees and talks to the gods.
The Phase series by P. Anthony? There is another that I too am trying to remember… accidentally summons a drunken dragon by requesting an ally that has a light. Any ally, “…so long as he’s equipped with fire!”
This is going to bug me. Subscribing to replies in case someone else gets it.
Being observed in the act of committing a crime makes one a Person of Interest. This inevitably leads to charges of Resisting Arrest, and opportunities to Assist with Enquiries with the occasional Fall Down the Stairs.
I strongly recommend Dungeon Crawler Carl. The first few chapters of book 1, and all of book 2, can be read free here https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/29358/dungeon-crawler-carl Book 1 is on Amazon, either for purchase or free in KU: https://www.amazon.com/Dungeon-Crawler-Carl-Gamelit-Adventure-ebook/dp/B08BKGYQXW
The summary as written by the author:
The apocalypse will be televised!
A man. His ex-girlfriend’s cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible.
In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth—from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds—collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground.
The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.
Only a few dare venture inside. But once you’re in, you can’t get out. And what’s worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it’s game over. In this game, it’s not about your strength or your dexterity. It’s about your followers, your views. Your clout. It’s about building an audience and killing those goblins with style.
You can’t just survive here. You gotta survive big.
You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that “it” factor, you may just find yourself with a following. That’s the only way to truly survive in this game—with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy.
They call it Dungeon Crawler World. But for Carl, it’s anything but a game.
Long time reader first time posting/commenting.
I was tempted to make this recommendation in the past. I enjoyed a military sci-fi series called the Lost Fleet. I’m bad at talking things up so I’m just going to paste its summary from wikipedia:
The Lost Fleet is a military science fiction series written by John G. Hemry under the pen name Jack Campbell. The series is set one-hundred-plus years into an interstellar war between two different human cultures, the Alliance and the Syndics. The protagonist of the story is discovered floating in a suspended animation escape pod one hundred years after he made a “heroic last stand” against an enemy fleet. In his absence, he has been made into a renowned hero in the Alliance, but his legend and actions are used to justify poor tactics and decisions. Awakened after being discovered during a secret mission that turns out to be an enemy trap, he is suddenly dropped into the role of fleet commander and expected to live up to the legend that has grown around him.
It’s a bit harder on the sci-fi scale than it seemed like you preferred which is why I held off on recommending it before.
Since people are recommending web serials I’d also really like to recommend my favorite super hero serial Worm at https://parahumans.wordpress.com. It’s really good and creative. I would say more but, like I said, I’m bad at talking things up. The initial site link i left has a decent intro. The setting, characters, and and powers are all super interesting.
The bad things about it IMO are just that it takes a while to get into and it’s LOOOONG. It’s sort of the author’s first big project and it shows in the first few arcs. However, if you get past the Leviathan arc it really takes off.
And then, for a final recommendation, based on the article I’m commenting on, it sounds like you might actually like Re: Zero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re:Zero_%E2%88%92_Starting_Life_in_Another_World. It’s a solid fantasy with the MC being both horribly OP and UP at the same time. It’s best experienced blind so I don’t want to say much about it other than format. It’s got a pretty good Light Novel (the original format but i haven’t read it), a manga, and you can find the anime adaptation on Crunchyroll. And it is Glorious! ^^
Enjoy! Or don’t! You do you regardless!
Hi, new commentor. You mentioned that you like slice of life, and many folks here have mentioned a lot of the litrpg and isekai related stories. One that you may love is The Wandering Inn. Basically folks from modern day Earth are being dropped into a game-like medieval magic filled fantasy world where there are hundreds of different races. There is a Class, leveling and Skill based system in this world. So, once you either pick or are granted a class, you can start leveling, becoming more powerful and along the way you are granted skills.
The story primarily revolves around a stranded young woman who becomes an [Innkeeper] and how she effects the world around her using modern thinking and understanding applied to a medieval setting. I’m not doing the description justice, but trust me that this story is good. So good you will laugh out loud. You will cry. You will have every range of emotions that a story can pull out of you and you will become amazed at the sheer output the author gives us, and addicted.
The good news, the Author (Pirateaba) publishes their work for free as a web serial, so there is roughly two chapters every week. And there are about 7 million words now. ITS HUGE. It’s one of the longest running stories in English history. There are also 2.5 out of 7 published chapters on Amazon and an audio book of the first chapter with more on the way. But, like I said, it’s free and online.
As mentioned, this is slice-of-life and the whole story so far hasn’t even filled up a year of time. I will admit, the first chapter is a little rough, but if you stick with it, you will be caught and amazed by what the Author has given to us. Note, I am not the author or affiliated in any way.
https://wanderinginn.com/
First chapter: https://wanderinginn.com/2016/07/27/1-00/
Enjoy!
Correction: Volumes and chapters. 7+ Volumes. 2.5 published Volumes, etc. weekly Chapters.
I’ve listened to the first volume’s audiobook, and am about 5 hours into the second one, but had to take a break from the world for a while. I mostly like it, but I feel as though maybe 5-10% of it could be edited down a bit. I know a big draw of the story is a non-adventurer trying to make it in a dangerous world, but sometimes I wish Erin would man up a little sooner.
So how big is Hench Wrenchs contract from the way she describes it its got to be like a thousand pages long
I recently found series on Kindle Unlimited called Witch of the Federation. I really enjoyed the series. Magic with aliens and starships. The starships are powered by magic. Worth a look.
I’ve recently started writing a LitRPG book. Mind you I don’t ever expect to be published, or for anyone to ever read it, but writing a book is a bucket list item for me. In my story the stakes are raised as the “game” takes place in the real and physical world. The basic idea is that aliens come down and turn the surface of the Earth into one giant holodeck with every person on Earth competing for the prize of not dying when said aliens nuke the planet.
Okay, so, my issue with books (and other media) set inside video games is twofold. One, as I’ve mentioned, there’s rarely any real world consequences to anything that happens. Real world in this case being the reality the players inhabit in the book.
Obviously it’s all fiction, but people playing video games in books is like writing a book about someone reading another character a book. Why add that layer of padding unless what happens in the game or the sub-book has a direct impact on the ‘real’ characters?
Like, I don’t really care about the grandpa and the little kid. Just tell me the story of the Princess Bride – unless, I don’t know, the grandpa IS the Dread Pirate Roberts or Inigo or something.
Your story is people playing a VR game in order to survive the world outside the game. That’s better, it’s like Ready Player One, where what happens in the game has a direct impact on the ‘real’ world, but it still strikes me as… sorry, there’s no way to say this without it sounding insulting to your story and the entire genre of fictional characters playing video games, but it strikes me as lazy storytelling.
Here’s what I mean. Why have John Carter find a portal to Mars and have to really interact with aliens and jump all around and bang alien princesses when the writer could have instead had him playing a videogame of him doing all that stuff? Or instead of saying there really is magic in the world, Rowling could written the books with Harry spending all his time playing VR Hogwarts. You see how any story told like that immediately loses impact? Imagine if all of your favorite movies ended up with the main character sitting up from a VR couch and going, “Huh. Welp, time for lunch.”
I just see a lot of books where instead of coming up with an interesting premise, the writers go “It’s a video game” because they want there to be a skilltree and crunchy upgrading and lots of item stats. (Which makes for tedious audiobooks IMO) So there’s no real lore in the book, everything can all be written off as some freelance writer submitting snippets to the dev team. “The Elves of Evertree hold a ceremony once every 100 years to…” No they don’t. It’s just a text file. No one sits around asking “Well why did Saruman hybridize orcs and goblins instead of experimenting with trolls” when the answer to any lore question is “Cause that’s what the developers of the game within the book decided.”
Look at something like Tamer. Aliens abduct beings, put cyberware in their heads, and now they have a UI and powers and levels. It’s a story with LitRPG lite stuff in it without the insulating layer of video game nonsense, and this way, the abducting aliens can become part of the larger story and be antagonists in later books, instead of the biggest threat to the world being a brown-out. But now that the idea of videogame as a premise for books exists, there are some potentially decent stories that use the setup as an extreme shortcut instead of putting thought into, I don’t know, the God of Games allows the inhabitants of Edenwyrld to see their stats and his worshipers can even scan others, etc etc, because everyone wants to gamify their stories, which in and of itself is totally fine.
So, while your story does have ‘real’ world impact of the game, which I appreciate, personally I’d want to go with something like the aliens give humans artifacts or “Sparks” or whatever, and for every other human they defeat, they can upgrade their spark and that gives you upgrades and stats and powers and anything else you want to make the RPG-ness as crunchy as you want while turning Earth into a planet wide battle royale, with the upside being that the aliens wouldn’t even have to nuke the planet when it’s over. Just pave over strip malls or whatever and they’re ready to move in. Oh, and also burn a pile of 7 billion dead humans.
Well, perhaps I didn’t describe my story well enough, which in itself is a sin for a hopeful author. My story isn’t VR, at all. It’s out in the real world. The participants have a device grafted onto their arm that directs nanobots in their real flesh and blood bodies to give them abilities that they use against holographic enemies. But these conflicts take place in the real world.
So say you want some supplies? Well, you are going to need to go on a dungeon raid in the local Wal-Mart that has been overrun by goblins.
Also, the aliens aren’t interested in taking ownership of Earth after the competition is over. They aren’t interested in the rock, they are interested in finding warriors. They are one of a half-dozen Kardeshev type 4 civilizations that have taken up residence in our reality after destroying their own universe. These type 4 species have realized that they are too powerful to have direct conflicts, so have designed a game in which they pressgang lower species into fighting on their behalf.
After they find the best warriors on Earth they will turn it into a new asteroid belt.
Re: Overly detailed meals.
I picked up a book by the name of HMS Unseen years ago, about a British submarine. I forget the author, but dude LOVED exposition about food. I’m not talking simply having a bunch of scenes set during meals (there were, though, dozens) but he’d go into excruciating detail about *everything.* The food, its history, how it’s prepared, when/how often the character has it, when they first had it, what it pairs best with, best wine to go with it, what other things are close, and on and on…
Whenever you saw a meal get mentioned, you were in for a good 20-30 pages on it. Reading reviews of the author’s other works revealed that this was a thing he did in all of his books. And he got a lot of criticism for it, one person saying if he wanted to write for Fine Dining magazine so damn bad he needed to just do it and stop living out the fantasy through his books.
That sounds excruciating.
I do not remember if i did say thank you for these little book recomendations, i have tried binding words, but atm i am stuck in a place where the main char is doing stupid, so i will someday get back to it, someday.
I don’t recall a point where the MC is being stupid in that series except for a few points where he’s being dense about prospective harem additions mooning over him, and that doesn’t really get bad until book 3.
I think you where the one that recommended Elliott Kay series “Good intentions” and i totally love that one, and I have binged it and are waiting for more now. :)
Binding Words #6 is out?! Woot!
tl;dr