City of Champions Online: Complete

By: Stuart Grosse

Narrated by: Lisa S. Ware

Length: 18 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's Summary

Having found the tragic truth that an art degree is worth less than the paper it is printed on, Jacquelyn Jones is frustrated with her dead end work as a graphic designer for a marketing firm, finding new ways to try and convince people that this week's 50 cent off sale is actually worth driving to the store. She's tried other VRMMORPGs, but they've all been fantasy-based, with a couple sci-fi games thrown in. But she wants something more, something Super.

Superhero VRMMOs have had a...subpar reception in the past, in part due to the fact that the nature of most MMOs makes for fairly unheroic tales. After the couple hundredth time blasting the same group of mooks from the same faction on the same street corner of the same city, using the same powerset as everyone else because you only have a few options, it is hard to think of yourself as a hero anymore.

But then she heard about City of Champions Online. For the first time, a developer partnered with a tabletop RPG maker to use their system to create a VRMMORPG, and it was one of the systems designed to be used with superhero games! And despite the name, there was no getting stuck in the same city as all the other players. The game world was a detailed replica of the real world, down to having some of the same shops and restaurants in town. She could be whoever she wanted, whatever she wanted.

Now, she just has to find a way to become the heroine she's always wanted to be.

The world of CoC is not a happy one, but it is not grimdark, either. It is like the world we live in, but with superheroes and game-like elements, where the ones regarded as heroes aren't always the most heroic amongst us. While the main characters in CoC are not as...extreme as those in my other stories, and at least try to be heroes, there is material some will find disturbing.

This is a compilation of Issues 1-5 of City of Champions Online.

©2019 Stuart Grosse (P)2019 Stuart Grosse

This is what Supherhero Litrpg is

The first book in this series is some of the best writing I have ever read. The second book is still solid 4 stars. After that is sadly felt more ahh 3 stars. However the first two books alone are worth a credit. I pray the author will have some more litrpg come out.

Team building and power point usage was great.

This unbiased review was left in trade for a free copy of the book.

Good book

The book was good, the only annoying thing in the book was all the “jabs” at trump. (I’m not American so I don’t care about your political views) Please keep real world politics out of fiction, no one read or listen to fiction to have to deal with real problems. But other than you forcing your political views on us the story an narration was really good.

A Grab Bag of Sub-Genres and Themes

This book was given to me for free at my request and I am providing this voluntary review.

I will be honest from the get-go - I did not find this book to be an enjoyable read. Notable themes include: Vampires, Neo-nazis, old gods, demonic rituals, power fantasy, sex-fantasy, and rape fantasy. As other reviews have mentioned, I also felt the main character was oversexualized. Sex was not just a part of the book - it felt shoehorned in at every opportunity. Rape was a recurring sub-goal of the villains encountered, to the point where it became a predictable part of the story.

For a supposed litrpg book I felt like there was less focus on the litrpg side of things. Though the story itself supposedly occurred within an rpg-type game, it was mostly used as a prop to allow the writer to include as many sci-fi and fantasy sub-genres as they could into a series and still have it make 'some' sense.

I can't say that I will be reading any other books by this author.

Main character is way to over powered.

The way this vampire is over powered is ridiculous she makes Goku look like a slacker. All her opponents are so one dimensional with no brains or idea how to fight. Not one fight is ever a challenge to he. She doesn’t have plot armor she has plot invulnerability. Basically feel like she is playing with nothing but hacks and cheat codes on.

she destroyed it

I finished the entire book but it was not easy. the story had amazing potential. the narrator would have been better off monotone. I would love to say that the southern accent she gave the mc is what did it ,but sadly no its worse. she made the mc (a poc) sound like white trailer trash. this carries over hard to other characters. As a born and raised southerner it is like nails on a chalkboard to hear someone try to lay that accent on too thick. one character is supposed to be Hispanic in some form but sounds like you guessed it some form of exaggerated white southern with a dab of entitled. please buy the book do not get the audiobook I beg you

Oddly original - amazing narration

This is an odd story that I totally recommend to listen in the audio version. It's really the best experience for this book series.
The common tread is the online game world, though there is also a real world mentions at some points.
Our heroine, a black vampire in the game, creates a group of vigilantes/heroes to "save" the game from players that want to bring back a new Reich on the first book.
This is a collection of 5 books each with a slightly different theme and sometimes recurrent enemies. Sex and rape themes are recurrent too.
This story as strong language so it's not for everybody, and not for young adults. It follows the line of films like the one of Joker's girlfriend, but with no crazy in the mix.
As I said the narration is the strong point here, so grab the audiobook if you intend to read this story.

The last book I'll ever try from Grosse

This is a bit better than Memoirs of a Supervillain, but only a bit. There is more cast diversity, even if the characters are thinly developed, there are at least recurring characters.

On the surface it appears this is a cast of strong female characters, but it is in actuality a disguised male gaze fantasy. The main character is hypersexualized from the go and just gets tiring, the other main cast are also over sexualized and constantly suffering "wardrobe malfunctions"

Grosse is obsessed with rape, if the protagonist he is writing isn't a rapist, every antogonist he writes is, they may be other things as well but every enemy encountered if rapist, He seems to think there is no way for a series involving women to be interesting if there isn't constant threat of imminent raping going on.

We also spend a lot of time being made aware of every male characters oversized cocks shortly before they are mutilated sometimes to regrow and then be mutilated again. If a fight occurs you can rest assured we are going to hear about a great deal genital strikes, no attack is to small or large to focus on the genitals.

Grosse's Puerile attempts at humor is obviously directed at teenagers, even though a great deal of the content should be for mature audiences,

There were some parts of the story that I liked, mostly the idea of this book being written by a better author, but some of the fight scenes, and the concepts around the character creation, and setting are quality ideas, if unfortunately being abused by this author.

The narrator was passably good except she continually mispronounced the gaming and anime pop culture references, If you are the target audience of this book you should know how to pronounce saiyan, freeza and yandere.

There is more to say about this book but I think that's enough.

** I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.**

Lots of Action... Great Narrator

"I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review."

At over 18 hours, this audiobook offers a lot of content for a credit; much more than the average title in this genre. I found the story to be interesting, it reads like a series of short stories. It's an interesting concept, but some of the stories were less interesting to me; it was somewhat hit or miss. It is fast paced and absolutely funny at certain points, which I appreciated.

Narration was very strong, Lisa did a fantastic job and really made the story sing. I'd definitely recommend that folks seek out other projects that she's worked on. Funny, good accents, and did a great job establishing personalities for each of the characters.

Entertaining if Overpowered Superhero Story

This story was definitely entertaining as the author went full bore into the superhero genre with the idea of separating it out into issues that build on one another and the kinds of various heroes and villains that would inhabit a VRMMORPG kind of world. The story was pretty good, standard villain of the issue fair where the main character and her colleagues and allies find an evil which might have far reaching consequences if they succeed and then fight them over the course of the issue and win (though the wins are 100% and the villains remain a potential future threat which is interesting). The villains (or just bad guys) are an interesting mix of domestic terrorists, worldwide terrorists, supernatural threats, and in one case tradition and pride. At times the story is lacking a little, but it's made up for by some pretty great fight scenes and hero-villain banter which is awesome. The narration is great and definitely added to everything.

I received the review code for this audiobook at my request and am voluntarily leaving this honest review.

Not a bad idea

I think this book was a good idea, and I think it could've been really great except for the emphasis consistently being put on race. I made it 3.5 hours into the book and had to stop because of how race keeps coming up in the story. If it hadn't been for that, I think I would've really enjoyed it.

*I requested this book and am voluntarily leaving this review

a nice super hero fantasy story.

a good story about super heroes dealing with real world idiots. the problem is that it doesn't distinguish itself from what is reality and fiction and says everything is reality even though it's a game the good thing is that it doesn't take it seriously unless some sicko does and then everyone has to work together to stop those idiots from ruining the game.

Lacked subtlety at times but good overall

The combination of litrpg and super powers worked well in general, but the author didn't make enough use of the game mechanics and progression seemed overly generous with the main character simply picking up new powers whenever they needed something new. Despite the somewhat haphazard progression, the main character was an interesting one that helped to draw me into the book, the supporting cast did their part too with interesting characters and a wide range of powers with many that were out of the ordinary for a comic book setting.

While the author had a number of clear themes he wanted to push with this book and most of them added to the story, I think a little more subtlety at times would have worked wonders, sometimes less is more, reusing a Trump quote verbatim for a character to establish them as racist felt a little lazy as the same thing could have been more effectively accomplished with a bit more originality from the author as then it wouldn't have clouded the message.

The narrator was well chosen for this book giving a particularly strong performance in helping to bring the main character to life while providing a suitable range of voices for the supporting cast in a manner that helped to enhance the book.

Overall, an entertaining listen and the decision to split it into separate books worked well and helped the pacing, but I would recommend skipping the excessively long character sheet recap at the end of the book which was over half an hour and really didn't work as part of an audiobook. (I'm sure it is fine in a text edition)

[Note - I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.]