The Monster Deck

A Deck-Building LitRPG

De: Nicolas Cole

Narrado por: Gary Furlong

Mark Henson is a riverboat gambler at heart.

But as a practiced cheat and card counter, he’s been 86’d from half the casinos on The Strip. In his mind, he’s always one game away from his luck turning around. That is, until The System arrives—and warps Nevada (and the rest of the world) into a digital card-based game.

When Mark awakes in the slums of Lost Vegas, a deck of cards rests on his chest. But these aren’t just ordinary playing cards. They’re Monster cards. And Mark finds himself with his own unique class: Card Cheat, giving him the ability to progress through this fantastical game world, level up, and manipulate the monsters in his deck to win (or at least survive).

But Mark isn’t the only one in Lost Vegas… and in order to find his way out alive, he’ll have to master his Monster Deck, scour dungeons for new cards, and level his class in this exciting new LitRPG deck-building story.

Welcome to the first book in the series, The Monster Deck—a deck-building LitRPG and GameLit Series utilizing a card-based magic system. Set in a parallel world (Lost Vegas), this story is a blood-pumping combination of steady power progression and survival. Perfect for fans of All the Skills and Towers of Heaven, as well as nostalgic games such as Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Magic: The Gathering. Get ready for funny characters placed in not-so-funny situations, collectable magical cards with secret powers, and tons of cliffhangers that will keep you up at night listening!

Narrated by the award-winning Gary Furlong. Gary has narrated some of the biggest LitRPG series out there: Dungeon Crawler Carl Cinematic Version by Matt Dinniman; They Called me Mad by Jpal; The Hero Slayers by OS Marrow.

©2025 Different Publishing (P)2025 Different Publishing

A Decent Listen

There are precious few titles in the Deck-Building LitRPG subgenre, so I was excited to see a new entry. That being said...

As with a majority of LitRPG stories, the MC is unfortunately an unlikable idiot and the companion is a smarmy a-hole. Sadly, this is a pretty standard setup, so I can't really say this was unexpected, even if it was a bit of a let down.

While the reader is left in the dark a lot when it comes to world building and mechanics details (on account of the MC being an idiot and just accepting weirdness without questioning anything or ever trying to actually learn about his new world/situation), the setting and magic system are interesting and unique enough to at least keep my attention and to pique my continued interest.

This was my first time listening to this narrator. He did a fantastic job with almost all the side characters, even if the actual MC and companion voices did nothing to help their liability.

Overall, it was worth the credit/listen for me.

Completely unsympathetic thing mc

The narrator did a great job today. It was what he had to work with. the MC is a gambler, a criminal. We took out a loan with a lone shark that constantly blames others for his own mistakes.
And completely unwilling to accept responsibility for his own bad decisions. i enjoy books. Where's the companion 40 messaging system is snarky. However, in this book, the companion, he is more annoying to me. And I don't sign at all. It's humorous.