The Fabric of Reality: A LitRPG Adventure

Edge Cases, Book 1

By: Silver Linings

Narrated by: Travis Baldree

Four friends work together to break the system and make the world a better place in this cozy, fun-filled fantasy-adventure filled with twists and turns.

In the Prime Kingdoms, the system dominates everything. It dictates one’s strength, skills, and power. It spawns dungeons and guides the actions of their monsters. But every system has its limits, and it’s about to push four oddball adventurers to theirs.

First there’s Derivan, an enchanted suit of armor in the middle of an existential crisis. And then there’s the tanklike half-orc Misa, who loves exploiting the system but misses her family—unlike the anxious-but-lovable Vex, a lizardkin wizard who’s run away from his own. And lastly there’s Sev, a cleric who would rather have tea with his god than worship him. None are prepared when a simple quest goes off the rails, interrupted by the appearance of a mysterious dungeon linked to each of them.

Something is deeply wrong within the Prime Kingdoms. The system is malfunctioning, and the world itself seems to be falling apart. If Derivan, Misa, Vex, and Sev hope to survive—let alone determine the source of the chaos—they must rely on their trust for one another, share their secrets, and perhaps even engage in a bit of healthy communication.

Now if only everyone else would do the same . . .

The first volume of the hit LitRPG adventure series—with almost two million views on Royal Road—now available on Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and Audible!

©2023 Silver Linings (P)2023 Podium Audio

Worth the credit

Great listen!
Good story.
Great job on the narration. Looking forward to the rest of the story

Just amazing

I loved every minute of this book it was amazing. I can’t wait for more from this series!

Far underrated by audible standards.

It’s a bit of a crime that this book has a 4.4 rating when some of the worst LitRPG and GameLit on audible continues to receive similar averages.

While this book isn’t perfect by any means, it is an enjoyable and well written story with solid characters, an original enough premise, an engaging plot, and of course excellent narration by Travis Baldree.

There are only a couple of things I can think of that might contribute to its relatively low rating. I say relatively low because we all know that audible’s 5 point system and people’s inability to adequately scale their ratings has lead to a 0.6 star spread between unlistenable trash and the best audiobooks ever recorded.

But I digress… the two things that I think might be contributing to the low ratings are:

1. The naughty word police: Now I get that people who are looking for audiobooks to listen to with their home-school kids might not want to share in the joys of explicit language with said children. I’ll leave aside my feelings that if you aren’t worried about listening to books that are inherently somewhat focused on violence and in lots of ways normalize it, then it’s a little f—ked up that spicy words which your children are absolutely going to learn before they turn 7 years old (assuming they don’t already know them) are your deal breakers. But like I said I’m leaving that aside…

If bad words are a problem for you then don’t penalize the audiobook’s rating for that. Because to almost everyone else, your negative rating is totally unhelpful and moreover your beef is not with the author, but with Audible for not telling you that the book drops F-bombs. It would be super easy for them to let you know which books are on Mr Roger’s book list and which are not. Then you wouldn’t have to waste your time and credits in the first place.

2. There are two characters that have feelings for each other that are not specifically heterosexual. The fact that this is a non-sexual relationship between a suit of armor with no sex organs and a tiny lizard-wizard who just wants a hug makes the “no-homo” discomfort of some listeners a bit of a head-scratcher to me. I mean it’s kinda like the swearing thing: if the the tamest love affair of all time happening between a non-anatomically correct, magically-animated, inanimate object and a tiny, talking, magical lizardman is ok but the fact that the suit of armor kind-of identifies as male is where you’re drawing the line, then I don’t know what to tell you.

If you like LitRPG/Gamelit, but you aren’t someone who gets real hyped up about the genders of magical creatures who have grade-school level feelings for each other, and your imaginary world doesn’t shatter anytime you hear a word used every day by the majority of the existing human population, then you should consider giving this book a try… Basically, if you liked Legends and Latte’s or Threadbare then this book is right up your alley.

Pretty good and interesting. Worth the credit

Sometimes it feels like there's too much happening at once. But I really like a lot of the characters and the whole thing going on.

Unique Plot for the Genre

First of all. Let me just state that reviews are nothing more than opinions based upon the preferences of those reading/listening to the books/audiobooks being reviewed.

Narration: 5/5. Travis Baldree is probably my favorite narrator. I thoroughly enjoy how he narrates books and he did an outstanding job with this book.

Story: 3.5/5. To start off, let me state that I enjoyed the book overall. The reason I feel I can't give it more than a 3.5 is due to some preference of mine. Others may enjoy them. This book is a mix between Progression fantasy/litrpg with 4 protagonist that the story follows. Each protagonist has their unique background story that gets unpacked somewhat as the story progresses. The plot of the book takes a different approach (for the Genre) that I found refreshing. If you listen to a lot of litrpgs, like me, you have probably heard a ton of books that start off with someone from earth being thrown in another world with a rpg stat building system and the MC usually becomes overpowered very quickly because of their previous experience from earth etc.... (rinse and repeat). Don't get me wrong, it's generally a good formula but it also gets repetitive. This book takes a different approach to the whole thing and reminds me of Star Ocean TEO.

My dislikes deal with the parts of the story that just feel pointless to me. To be fair, in the bigger picture you see the 4 protagonist grow closer because of said events, but most authors breeze over said occasions where this author writes about them in detail. Also, the end felt somewhat anticlimactic. This really doesn't bother me but it may bother others. If you prefer your series to end on cliff hangers you'll probably be disappointed. On this point I actually enjoyed the change.

In the end the story/plot kept me. If they ever combine the whole series into one audiobook I would make that investment. But, I don't intend on listening further unless the whole series is on Audible plus.