Vigilance: A LitRPG Adventure

Fallen Lands, Book 1

By: C Peinhopf

Narrated by: Charlie Keegan James

Trapped in a world of monsters and magic, survival is just the beginning.

When Evelyn moves to Monterey Bay for college, she expects her biggest challenges to be making new friends and surviving freshman year. But her life takes a dark and unexpected turn when she's abducted and thrust into a terrifying world of monsters, magic, and ancient secrets.

After awakening in an unfamiliar body and with a collar around her neck, Evelyn must use her wits, a positive attitude, and a spark of newfound magic to escape cultists, dodge undead horrors, and—with a bit of luck, find a way back to civilization. Unsure of who to trust and clinging to the hope of returning home, she must navigate a landscape where danger both physical and political lurks around every corner. What begins as a quest to survive becomes a journey of self-discovery, revealing a resilience she never knew she had.

©2023 C Peinhopf (P)2025 C Peinhopf

Fun adventure, no debauchery.

Vigilance introduced me to LitRPGs as a genre, and out of all I have now read, it is still my favorite.
The main character is fun and easily relatable. While her choices aren't often the wisest, they are understandable for the situations she is in and who she is as a person.

I don't want to give too much away in a review. It is a fantastic story suitable for younglings and adults alike. I quickly bought Book 2 'West Peak' on Amazon shortly after listening to Book 1 on Audible. Now Book 2 is on Audible as well, so you have no excuse to miss out on a beloved story. :)

Mostly Great

I say mostly great since this could have been an easy five star book but I'll be honest, the fact that it was repeatedly stressed that the main characters should keep the details of their identities a secret coupled with how often they carelessly forgot this was super annoying. When you couple that with the fairly obvious stuff that happens at the end of the book, it really left a bad taste in my mouth despite the overall book being wonderful. I just really don't like it when books end in a bad note like that, even when it is obvious that it is intended to set up the next one.

Despite my gripes, though, I do still highly recommend this book and I think it is actually one of the better LitRPG books I have read. I loved the characters (although there are A LOT of names to keep straight) and the world was interesting enough. I hope the next book in the series is released soon.

As an aside, the narrator was excellent. I'll have to see if she has done any other books.

among the best of the best

If you want intelligent, engaging, and clean writing, this is a superb series for you. I recommend it regardless of your reasons for considering it. The main characters can be kind of stupid, but in genuine, relatable ways. Main characters who are overly competent are super unrealistic anyway. These main characters are good people with awesome family values.

I think anyone might agree that He Who Fights With Monsters was deservedly rated very high, and curiously echoed in many other works of fiction. Even so, each work is new and unique, so it can be only vaguely helpful to reference the one that came first. This work, Vigilance, is possibly the best of works that show even a little resemblance to the former.

To explain, the reason HWFWM was so well made is that the author was not just leveraging cheap writing techniques. Travis Deveral made a truly impossible to follow path of transformation relatable. With many later works, though they may resemble his work only a little, they tend to have less relatable values and growth. With Vigilance, I feel like I am suffering less, despite nasty things happening that fill out the story. The story is written so it does not directly confront issues that otherwise would divide society and offend numerous readers. I has good setup, good story progression, and wonderful imagination. It is the kind of story I would like to read over and over to put me in a good mood, even if that were the only reason.

The dark and looming end should be anticipated, but not feared, because the second book does not prove undesirable escalation to make the story unpleasant. No spoiler! but the ending is not as bad as a skim reader might think. Enjoy!

The story and characters along with the world building.

The story was fun and the characters are hilarious and have depth to them while the world has both dark and light aspects to it

I loved all the accents done. What a wonderful voice actor ❤️

I have to submit something i didn't like? I can't I'm a people pleaser lol