The Apocalypse Is a Side Quest: Book One

De: Liam Lawless

Narrado por: B.J. Harrison

Sometimes the best way to save the world is to ignore it completely.

Nathan Lee has exactly three talents: overthinking social encounters, avoiding responsibility, and farming in video games. When the apocalypse hits, he accidentally dumps all his rare skill points into… fishing. Just his luck.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the kind of apocalypse he can dodge by hiding in his room. Humanity has been ripped from Earth and dropped into a colossal multidimensional dungeon—a nine-realm gauntlet straight out of a nightmare. Legends armed with [Gigantic Sword of Doom] and [Fireball Barrage] are fighting to carve a path home. Nathan? He’s busy maxing out [Ability to Sit Quietly in a Boat]. He’ll leave the hero stuff to someone who doesn’t get queasy at the sight of blood.

Too bad the universe has other plans.

On his first day in the tutorial, he accidentally deletes a monster from reality thanks to a system bug. Then he feeds a snail radishes and gets a rare skill. Now he's taking down ogres with his fishing rod!? It turns out that side quest rewards and weak classes are more powerful than anyone expected.

So grab your tackle box and buckle your overalls. It's sink or swim in this side-questing calamity!

©2025 Shadow Alley Press (P)2025 Shadow Alley Press

Nice

Happened upstairs n this series at random and thought I’d give it a go. I wasn’t disappointed. Looking forward to more!

Glad I was wrong!

I had very different and somewhat disappointing outlook for the book and series as a whole. I thought that it would be like another all fishing/cultivating book series like Heretical Fishing. Was so glad I was wrong after a few chapters in! It became a grade A book and held my attention from morning till late night, love how op the MC is with just one hand literally saying to old saying “ I’ll take you with one hand behind my back!” Ahahahaha. Looking forward to book 2 and hoping it keep up with this book!

loved this book got hooked in the first chapter

I think this book has great story and I love it can't wait for book 2.

Weird MC, I like it

Great story so far, I like the fact that the story progression is constant and not stilled at any point.The fact that the MC is a coward, raging psychopath and heroic is just the cherry on top.

A reasonably good listen

At first I thought he was stealing heretical fishing. That said, it’s different enough that maybe he took some ideas but he diverted just fine. I enjoy the characters and the unique way the MC has to figure his way through things. I’ll listen to the next one when it comes out.

This isn't a story.This is an event

This isn't a story. This is an event. The has a really good main character, and the psi characters harmonize with that character so much. They fill in the areas that he just can't accessed it himself. Especially when it comes to the dark side, he's fighting so hard But there's something more important, and that's how they deal with the amputees that's the main character has, and played for sympathy. It's just a part of his experience, which makes it so much more powerful. And when he gets his prosthetic and the way he gets the prosthetic, set things up for the next book, the only problem i'm having is that.It'll probably i want this series every month. This is the one you spend your credit on. If you really want to support a great writer, I do wish she would do some collaborations, though, with some of the other great authors, jonathan brooks, I.'m mentioning you

The start was fishy, but overall a solid first book

Honestly, I wasn't a big fan of the story until after our main character left the tutorial. Once he does, the story gets far more interesting. To me the story is at its strongest when the side characters start getting involved, and other systems are introduced.

Overall, I am looking forward to book 2.

Also, this is nothing even remotely close to Heretical Fishing. For the sake of clearing up the misconception, fishing becomes his combat art. if you want to know how that works, then give the story a shot.

Naration was solid as well.

An uncut gem

Performance
Great, although most non humans sound like Alec Guinness's Obi Wan Kenobi. It made me trust them a little less, not sure if this was intended. They do tend to have a true from a certain point of view vibe so it might have been.

Story
Solid start, meh middle, solid ending. I liked the story the best when the apocalypse felt like a side quest and least when it was the motive force of the plot. Overall it's a little bit of lazy evil system a la Deadworld Isekai, a little bit cultivator and a lot of LitRPG.

Characters
The MC is good, although he changes a lot over the course of the book (mostly from trauma mixed with moments of enlightenment.) The side characters, even the main cast that are on camera for half of the book, are very 1D. Through development some of them upgrade to 2D but their early dialog is ruff. All elves hate orcs, all orcs hate elves. The mushroom people are fun, although still Planet of Hats biased around contract law / bureaucracy.

Tropes
Go Mad from the Apocalypse
Cosmic Horror Story (subverted)
Planet of Hats
The Gift
One-Armed Warrior

An interesting concept, but very 1 dimensional

I wish this was a fun as the title and cover made it seem.

I was expecting a fun, humorous story with either a smart or light hearted main character that focused on fishing or fishing related objectives in a crazy world.

I got a idiot MC who just kept making stupid mistakes, and not in a comedic way. Fishing was more of an after thought in most places...

The fishing pole and harpoon used as weapons could have basically just been a reskinned regular weapon. The interesting way of using the fishing pole in combat got patched out after the first time it was used.

Finally, the side characters were extremely one dimensional for most of the book. Just... disappointing.