Sylum Shattered: A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure

The Whims of Gods, Book 3

De: S.I. Waxman

Narrado por: Soneela Nankani

Wrathful kings. Dark gods. Conniving guards.

None of them will keep Tess from what little normalcy she's managed to find.

After being thrust into a foreign city under a false identity, things are finally starting to settle down for Tess. Now, her biggest concerns are celebrating her birthday and making it through her second semester of classes.

Of course, not everything can be so peaceful. Between her days of idle crafting and building up her settlement, Tess is put through brutal training and forced to battle her way through vicious dungeons. Even so, she would do anything to hold on to the quiet life she's found for herself.

When a king amasses an army against her and a guardsman plots to do her in, however, Tess's resolve will quickly be put to the test.

All the while, a door begins to shatter.

Sylum Shattered is a classic LitRPG novel with character levels, classes, and stats, ideal for existing fans of the genre and newcomers alike.

©2025 S.I. Waxman (P)2025 Podium Audio

Awesome!

A fantastic continuation of the series. lots of shenanigans abound. hard to review without spoiling it as sooo many plot lines start and ends. still not a fan of Cal but love the book and you will too

new obnoxious character

Alora is basically my limit for annoying secondary characters, the addition of Nula immediately makes me want to DNF this book and set the entire series on fire.

Fewer Loose Ends

So, I'll be the first to admit that the Sylum part of this story is a bit slower paced. It's all about training and Tess slowing improving.

But it's also about learning to recognize when too much is too much. I enjoyed her growth and the recognition of her issues, but the ending left me crying from how things ended up. And enraged.

The series itself seems to be on the slower side in general, and it's both it's strength and weakness. still love it though.

Poor planning?

Lots of good, but way too much annoying. The guardsman and his skill is just lazy writing. The distractions and delays that lead to loss of momentum are just as well thought out as a Dragon Ball charge up scene.... Four hours left and it just keeps getting worse. You would think the author was giving up on the series and trying to just close it out but there is apparently another one. I doubt it will turn around in time for me to even try it.

main character is failing up on everything...

I think I started this and put it down six or more times. The MC fails up throughout the book. Can't seemed to get a hint and it seems to cost her everything. She is a therapist that can't diagnosed anyone even herself. She makes so many mistakes that this book should be called, My Own Worst Enemy... Usually I'm excited the more books are in a series but I'm sure this is the last time I'm giving this series a chance.

Not my fault

In a vacuum I enjoyed the characters and the magic and the world in general.

TESS IS SUCH A PAIN THOUGH! She has NO social skills and negative decision making abilities, but everything works out and the bad things are never her fault.

Example. She needs to get a trade contract for her settlement, but she knows basically ZERO about trade, and she knows this. So her friend who is a noble tells her she'd get someone who knows how it works to help her out. Great right? Well Tess goes out on a shopping trip and decides to just swing by the merchant guild and poke around. She by chance runs into the guild master, accepts a meeting with her, and then IMMEDIATELY agrees to sign a trade contract without reading it and taking the word of a merchant on goods she KNOWS are super valuable due to them needing specific rate conditions to get, being told they're NOT that valuable. All for the reason that the GUILD MASTER claimed she couldn't meet with her personally again for many months if she didn't take this deal. Not realizing, apparently, that the GUILD has more merchants than the MASTER.

The guy her noble friend hired then storms in because by chance he was around and by chance he has a skill that told him what Tess whom he never met before was doing and he instantly starts tearing the bs in this contract apart. He gets a proper trade contract and prevents Tess from screwing her people she's responsible for for upwards of 6 months. You would EXPECT this lawyer basically to go off on Tess for her stupidity. he does not. in fact he praises her and says it was very fortunate she did this so he could squeeze more out of the deal than normal. He doesn't even mention how rushing into making a trade deal could've been real bad for her settlement.

Furthermore Tess seems ALLERGIC to just asking people who know more than her for help or advice. Any help has to be literally forced upon her and despite having 2 people who know everything about her circumstances, going on 3 actually, she never ONCE asks any of them for advice on completing her class trials. that's basically a test she can take to make her magic powers stronger, and she slams her head into them for MONTHS literally dying over and over again and does not once ask anyone for their input. They could have at least informed her that it's possible to quit these trials BEFORE getting killed.

If Tess was just a regular flawed person making dumb decisions, she'd be a great character, but 2 factors make her infuriating. 1 is the never getting called on her BS.

2 is far worse. We know ONE THING about Tess prior to getting reincarnated. SHE WAS A THERAPIST? That is ALL we know about her other life in THREE BOOKS. She was a professional therapist and quit for unstated reasons. Despite this, she looks at a skill she has called Trauma SUPPRESSION and just decides it means Trauma CURE. Baby's first therapy session is literally "Don't bottle up your problems, it's not healthy"

And this is literally all she does! This skill evolves and basically becomes a literal gate holding her traumatic memories inside, so she can LITERALLY SEE her trauma causing CRACKS in this door that keep getting bigger and bigger, and she just keeps ignoring it. When her skill got upgraded, it first was turned OFF. Wanna know what happened? Literally all she could do was SCREAM. For DAYS straight. She knew this, she could see the literal cracks in her psyche, and her noble sponsor literally asked her if she needs a therapist, and she says "Nah it'll be fine"

LICENSED THERAPIST PEOPLE!

Near the end of the book this trauma skill is given a sort of mind control undertone that just forces her to not care that she's being tortured and to just delete her self preservation. So even THIS is being made out to be not her fault. It's everyone ELSE that just doesn't understand HER or some nonsense.

This book's climax is the king whose daughter ventured off with her and literally disappeared from the universe came to attack her city because Tess WOULD NOT GO TELL THE KING WHERE HIS DAUGHTER WAS and kept treating him like he didn't matter. A KING! WHOSE DAUGHTER WAS SNATCHED BY A GODDESS! AND SHE QUITE LITERALLY RESPONDS TO HIS MESSENGER ASKING ABOUT THEIR PRINCESS WITH "Eh, I'll go talk to him in like a month. ish."

So when her people are attacked and many are KILLED on both sides Tess gets instantly forgiven by the bartender friend she totally screwed over and ignored instead of talking to her and explaining the circumstances. Yeah, Tess's trauma skill breaks so she's basically a vegetable at the end, so she's the victim and nobody can blame her for anything cause she's had a tough time.

I used my monthly credit to get the 4th book JUST TO SEE if someone would finally call Tess an idiot. Audible just deleted the downloaded book off my phone and stole my credit. Screw this series, I'm just done.