Desire: A LitRPG Adventure

By: Cameron Milan

Narrated by: John Downey

Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's Summary

Ace and Vincent spent day and night in the challenges, growing stronger at a breakneck speed. Through their crazy training and lucky encounters, they have grown so strong that they stand above all others. The world watches their every move, and their actions shake the world.

Through Ace's desire to help others grow stronger so that they may protect themselves, Northrock city was born. Northrock is famed for its numerous experts, and, as a result, users from all over the world travel to live there. It is widely regarded as the safest place on Earth.

Two years have passed since the arrival of the tattoo, and after the numerous dungeons were wiped out, the world has grown peaceful once again. The future looks optimistic, and the possibilities are endless.....

However, unbeknownst to the world, a powerful user has arrived from afar, threatening to destroy everything.

This novel is the second book of the Desire: A LitRPG Adventure series.

©2018 Cameron Milan (P)2018 Cameron Milan

I desire better

Desire is one of those books that seems, at first glance, to be fairly decent but as you go deeper it begins to have some flaws. Nothing horrible, but kinks exist. First of all, Milan’s dialogue is like something from an old Hanna Barbera Saturday morning cartoon. The villain is overly dramatic and one dimensional. He goes around challenging the heroes of the world to 1) Prove his might 2) Test his mettle and 3) Kill them so that he can take over the world.

The plot is pretty convoluted, too. One of the heroes goes rogue in his own bid for the world. The heroes are very disjointed and have no clue of how to work together, and the pacing of the story is strange. There are time jumps involved and the focus of the action moves from earth to an alien planet. It’s kind of all over the place. The characters are flat and you have a hard time connecting with them.

The story goes like this, an ancient orc super warrior from another planet comes to Earth to kick butt, write down some names, and take over the planet. Unfortunately, the planet has some defenders that he has to go through first. They aren’t so easy, and he only gets to take one name before his pen breaks. The book, which while not overwhelming stays on track up until the point that the uber orc decides to team up with one of the human heroes to take over the world. Then it just becomes a fight, beat the orc, oops the orc is actually stronger than we expected or has some weird power manifest that allows him to escape and or beat the heroes before being chased off, over and over again. It was less than exciting and so overly repetitive that it was more annoying and I just wished the heroes would die and the earth would explode so that the book could be over.

The story does have some cool ideas, for example people get their powers from these magical tattoos. Each power seems to be unique to the individual as it grows, but not everyone develops high tier abilities. For example, the Asian hero, Dragon, gains strength based on the number of his followers and the territory he owns. Another is a hemomage who controls blood. Dragon has something along the lines of a million followers, and can use their power to increase his stats for a temporary time while leaving them defenseless. The orc, on the other hand, seems to have no end to power reserves or abilities. Everytime he is almost beaten a new power pops up and he manages to turn the tide. Like I say, this is very Saturday morning cartoon stuff. It really came across like a fanfic combo of Dragonball Z and Justice League Unlimited. The orc went supersayan more times than I could count, to a point in fact that I didn’t wonder if he was going to win or lose I just had to ask what new power was going to show up that he hadn’t used to that point. It was a flat story, and the only time that I felt connected to the characters or the tale was at the very end with the big planet fight by two of the heroes. What tried to be epic became a straight to the $5 bin at Walmart. The story did not grab me in the same way as the original did, and I think it is because of the villain. Villains make or break a story, and the minute the orc show up he took devilled eggs and made them into scrambled somehow.

The narration is a tough call. If you listen to the narrator he has a lot of crazy stuff to say, like the charred person became a charred corpse. Well, he was already charred and dead so nothing change from one second to the next other than someone stepped on the body and crunched it. It is the reading that comes off as flat. I can remember listening to this story, but I had no memory of how he sounded. I had to go back and relisten to the book just to pinpoint how he was. Downey was clear and pronounced his words just fine, but there was very little emotion. But there was no animus or emotion to the reading. This really felt like he just said, “I’m going to have to slog through this, so I might as well make the best of it. Sadly I have no other series to compare him to, because some readers rise to the level of their stories. I would like to say that it was a memorable performance, but I truly do not recall what he sounded like other than semi bored.




Final Score 6.9 The book jumps all over the place, and the one saving grace that I was happy to see is that it wasn’t afraid to kill off characters. If it had been more coherent I might have put it in the 7 range, or even if the dialogue flowed more realistically, or the characters had more depth. This combo tanked the whole story and made it a middle ground kind of tale.

5 of 7 people found this review helpful

So good

It's so awesome I kinda want to listen to it again right now. narrator does an awesome job and the book has awesome characters

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

Another awesome book

I love the way the author isn't afraid to skip the middle stuff. I don't need to hear a year of training, just need to know how much stronger they got. Middle stuff is boring.

Not great, barely good.

Had trouble finishing this one, was two stories rolled into one. Apparently everyone can have every power.

2 of 4 people found this review helpful

okay

The dialogue felt jerky. It's hard to describe. Plus the narrator mispronounced a few word which distracted me from the story. Over all a good story.

1 of 2 people found this review helpful

Please kill off Ace

Dear Author: Please kill Ace. He's so lame, boring goody two shoes that's only purpose is to hold back Demon. He sucks, get rid of that worthless leash.

2 of 5 people found this review helpful

very good but Too shore,

does a great job of changing or introducing new stuff to keep the story fresh. There are certain spots will you feel the story cannot evolve From here. the writer finds a way to add new features and stuff you don't think about.

0 of 1 people found this review helpful

Wellllllllllll

Nope not for me .
I'm a big fan of Rpglit, so anytime I come across some good book is like i won a lottery but this time I lost.
Book 1 and book 2 is just one book to me.
The narrator is a no no no for me is like he's reading a scary bed time story to 3 year's old kids. (Too Fake)
The first book was OK but I like going back to listening to my books again but I can't do it with this books.

1 of 4 people found this review helpful