Beginner Quest

A LitRPG Cultivation Series

De: Nephilim Night

Narrado por: Neil Hellegers

Given a second chance at life, now he must play for his life. Betrayed by those closest to him, Viktor's soul couldn't move on for decades. Pitied by one of the Gods, he was given the chance to participate in the next round of bets between the gods. It was an eternally violent game known as Towers and Rifts.

The world he found himself in was nothing like the one he'd spent centuries cultivating and becoming stronger. He was right back at the bottom along with everyone else but for the knowledge he retained.

The day the tower spawned, everyone was given access to a strange and game-like system he only knew about from memories of the body he inherited. The first order of the day: to heal from the horrible wounds that came along with the new body and to tackle the "Beginner's Quest" everyone was given.

Viktor was at the top before he died the first time so he knew what it was like to be powerful, in control, and a warrior without an equal. Nothing would stop him from getting to the top using this second chance he'd been given.

Experience the start of an epic LitRPG Cultivation Fantasy Series perfect for fans of authors like Tao Wong, C. M. Carney, and M. H. Johnson.

Towers and Rifts is filled with cultivation, measurable power progression, crunchy stats, loot, immortal gods, intriguing characters, and everything lovers of all progression fantasy, GameLit/LitRPG, xianxia, and xuanhuan expect.

©2021 Nephilim Night (P)2021 Tantor

Average

Wow…. My wife died a horrific death and now I must avenge her! Wow that woman is hot…

"Traditional" values

I'm sad to think that there's likely a burgeoning market for this type of fiction, which I think of as better fitting in the seventies or eighties than in the twenty-first century.

This from somebody who self describes as listening to low brow fiction assumed at teen boys as a source of stress relief.

By "traditional" values, I refer to notions such as divided gender roles where men protect and practically own their wives, where such protection is more about the man's status than the woman's well-being. (I think these are more common in fiction than they were in real life, although I guess there are still "honor" killings so I'm probably out of touch.)

I listened far enough that it started to seem like perhaps the main character is going to improve and might later seem less sexist, but I also listened far enough that I cannot respect the story.

Solid story and better than most LitRPGs

Definitely not perfect, but I'd still recommend it. Looking forward to the next book!

Semi misleading.

Great narrator, I believe that's why I kept listening.

I think it's about a third of this book involving really cringe outer and inner dialog about the MC checking out/flirting with a support character.

It's nothing x rated or close to the horrid harem type story lines most of this genre has... but it's a huuuuge part of this book.

I'd have really enjoyed this story without the cringe attempt at a lite romance novella.

Still giving 3 stars for story, because I am listening to all of it, and if you can stomach the strange romance attempt, you'll probably enjoy.

meh

I actually dropped this, there's barely any cultivation/progression but supposedly the MC is the only cultivator but it is never explained how the others advance on power and somehow they get stronger than the mc also if you going with the reincarnation give the MC something to making stand out a little but nope he only gets his memories before he dies and they are supposed to fuel his rise to power again but NOPE again he meets a girl and boom all his rage is gone

Want to like it, but

Getting to the end soon, and I still don't know what the internal conflict is. Sure isn't related to grieving his wife or moving on. 100 years is the excuse, but for him it was 20 minutes before he moved on to the buxom babe. So much alpha bde, and not enough of anything else

great first book

i liked it. a mix between your classic cultivation and western culture. id like to see more mechanics explained and stuff. but overall worth your credit and time

romantic fantasy

author spent half the time having a romantic fantasy. very minimal world building or character building.

Confusing

The story rambles. it doesn't make a lot of sense and there are multiple sub-stories. I will not be going on with the series.

Sigh...

If this had been a light novel with a ridiculously long title like "I was a murdered cultivation god that swore revenge and was reincarnated as a yakuza boss at the start of the gamer apocalypse", you'd know a little better what sort of story you were going to get with this book (Spoiler: gangster soap opera / social power fantasy), as well as a better idea of the "quality" of that story would be (spoiler: bad / ridiculous). Let me break it down to the salient points:

The Basics
- The power structures and hierarchy is very much "I'm stronger than you, so give me respect and obscene, or I'll end you,"
- The dialogue uses overly formal non-standard sentence structure with a weird amount of foul language poorly crammed in.
- Details of HOW anything gets done is entirely missing and instead you're fed soap-opera level drama to pad the empty spaces.
- The entire thing is basically a really basic power fantasy wrapped in soap-opera padding, and sprinkled with LitRPG elements.
- The LitRPG/Cultivation elements are afterthoughts that simply facilitate an easy-to-digest way to explain the "powers". If you were interested just for the genre, look elsewhere.
- Neil Hellegers is a BAMF of a narrator, so his performance alone let me stick it out as long as I could, but I did end up discarding the book after 6 hours, with 3 hours left to go.

The Details
- The MC has his wife and kid murdered, reincarnates into another world full of revenge in his heart...only to immediately fall in love/lust with the literal first woman he meets - a literal ex stripper that runs a multi-building Ryokan (traditional Japanese hotel) "in the poor district" with no customers in sight, but is stocked for the apocalypse and has a very suspicious amount of petty cash for some reason.
- His murdered wife and child that set him on this path of revenge (that goes literally nowhere after being the set-up for the reincarnation element)? He seems to promptly forget about them entirely as unimportant as soon as he moves into the ex stripper hostess's room (literally within 24 hours of meeting her) and promptly moving in the gang members (and their families) that he inherits after murdering their boss to pack the Ryokan with dependents because minions are good to have, I guess?