Difficulty: Legendary

LitRPG, Book 1

By: Gregg Horlock

Narrated by: Guy Williams

Length: 2 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

In the world of Re:Fuze, anything is possible. Fortunes can be made, and the unlikeliest of people can find glory in a land of swords and magic.

With low Job Qualification (JQ) scores and two years of national service looming, Eric Templeton knows he is doomed to a life of poverty. When he is given a chance to enter the game, he knows he has the opportunity to save his family from their desperate situation.

But when he enters the game, Eric isn't spawned into the newbie camp of Blundow. Instead he is sent to the darkest regions of the map, filled with creatures beyond his level. He stumbles across a conspiracy that no newbie should ever see, and he knows that he can't hope to survive.

©2016 Gregg Horlock (P)2017 Gregg Horlock

Mc is annoyingly stupid MC

Author makes his protagonist a giant fucking retard in order to further the plot. He sees the technicians dont give a shit, he only gets one shot, so what does he do when he finds himself in an extremely dangerous situation? Starts making a bunch of noise... Then he gets screwed over countless time, because he's a "good guy" (he really just a gulible dumbass). An annoyingly stupid MC.

its the beginning. a lot of beginning.

we are made to feel sympathy for the main character's plight, and there is no payoff in this story. only a couple of mystery nuggets and more expected betrayal. very cutthroat with no relief.

Dismal narration makes Legendary difficult

This was a tough book for me to review. I keep trying to find a really good short Litrpg story, something that in under 5 hours to listen to and be amazed by, and so far I keep coming up short, no pun intended. The issue that I have is that the story is pretty decent, but the narration is of such meh quality that it lowers the potential of the tale. The reading style is solidly mediocre and mostly monotone in melody. The story is set in the future where you get entry into a game called REFUSE one time. You get to play as long as you can until you die, and then that is it, as Hudson would say it’s Game over man, game over. You don’t get to go back. The MC, makes it inside the game for an hour before dying, because he is sent to a level 70+ area even though he is level 0. He protests the death, because he was not placed where he needed to be, but it all falls on deaf ears and he is doomed to enter military service. Then, someone sends him a cheat and he reenters the game, with a chance to earn some much needed credits for his family. He then proceeds to doing every single thing wrong that he possibly can, and never learns from anything. He is a complete and utter noob.

That is the one part that makes this believable to me. His family is really poor, and it takes credits to do everything in the society he is in, and just looking information up on the internet costs more money than he can afford, so he never really had a chance to learn about the world he is entering, or what options he had skill wise, magic wise, and so forth. He goes into it blindly, and his trusting (or stupid nature) is evidenced by how he handles a woman on a bus in need of credit to get home. So, you can forgive him for doing altruistic things even though you know that they will never work out right for him.

As I said, William’s narration is unexciting, weak, and lacking any real impact to the story. It’s kind of like someone in need of sleep trying to read you the business section of the newspaper that’s upside down. It’s not going to get far. It’s not so bad that I wanted to plug up my ears, but this was a short book, and I didn’t have to listen all that long. There is a follow up tale called Tinker, Tailor, Giant, Dwarf, which I have already purchased, so I may review it in the future. We’ll see, because that is a 7 plus hour adventure, and I don’t know if I can handle Williams that long.

This could have been a real gem, but the narration was a major flaw.

Even though I did receive a promo code for this review it in no way influenced my considerations of the material, and in fact, inspired me to be more honest. Getting a code generally makes me harsher as a reviewer as I am more often concerned what someone like Me will decide based on my review.

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As seen on the LITRPG AUDIOBOOK PODCAST, please check it out on Youtube.com

Uber Short

Was unpleasantly surprised at how short this was. At 2 hours, it doesn't even qualify as the first act. Just enough to get you interested...then done.

Good intro to online rpg and litrpg

Janus finally makes it out of the newb zone in this drawn out version of rpg fantasy. progress is agonizingly slow in this story for veteran readers. recommend only as an introduction story to litrpg writing.

good story, too short.

This story has good plot and character development but as soon as it starts getting momentum it ends. Instead of feeling like a cliff hanger making me want more I ended up feeling like I read a book with half of it missing.

A good introduction for a series appealing to us

Any additional comments?

It is a fantasy story for the computer generations. More than Tron, this has a lot of potential for a good series. Waiting for a love interest to complete the adventure/romantic story.

Extremely unrealistic issues

The situations and solutions in this book defy credulity. An example a game account costing as much as say a new car, the MC is launched into the game not in a starting zone at lvl 0 into a lvl 75 plus zone dying instantly and with the gaming company acknowledging the error seems to think it’s ok to take the new car worth of credits for 15 min of game play. The way the MC gets back in the game is something no one in their right mind would do.

Short and sweet

Overall I enjoyed this book. Only problem is that it was too short. Sort of left you hanging waiting for more.

Too short

This book has an excellent story if you are a game nerd, but it is really short.