The Land of the Undying

Dark Elf Chronicles, Book 1

De: Dave Willmarth

Narrado por: Justin Thomas James, Laurie Catherine Winkel, Jeff Hays

Shari is a med student, months away from being a doctor. Mace is a coder on his first day of an exciting new job. When the world comes to a sudden and horrifying end, none would have expected them to be among the few survivors.

Hyper-aggressive undead zombie creatures hunt anything living on the surface, where even the grass and trees can kill you. Hiding underground is safe, but not much of a life. Their only escape is a virtual world of magic and monsters where Shari can use her healing skills, and Mace can focus on something other than his fears.

But Shari is a light elf, and Mace is a drow. Their people are ancient enemies, and neither would be welcome in the other's world. Still they strive to come together in the game, while they scavenge for food and fight to stay alive in the real world.

The odds are against them, and their food will eventually run out. Is their best hope for survival to find a way to upload themselves to the game permanently?

©2018 Dave Willmarth (P)2018 Dave Willmarth

I’m pretty stingy with my 5 star reviews...

And while I’m not sure that this is technically the best LitRPG book I’ve listened to on audible, I can say that I’m experiencing the same feeling I had after listening to The Land for the first time...

...I am feeling bereft that the book has ended, and I’m seconds away from going on Patreon to donate money to this author to get the next book recorded already!

I will breathlessly await the sequel to this book. For those of you out there like me who just can’t trust a highly reviewed LitRPG book on Audible to be well-written, or even edited, this is one where the positive reviews can be believed. It’s definitely made the list of LitRPG series that I comb the “coming soon” list for.

Tops on that list are: Chaos Seeds, The Gam3, The Dark Herbalist, The System Apocalypse, and the first five books of Alterworld, plus a whole bunch of other series that only have one or two books in them so far.

My favorite LITRPG

I'm loving this series. I appreciate that the reason for getting into the game is more of an escape than an accident.

It has potential

Love the post apocalyptic setting. I would like the author to build more on the state of the world. But mayb in book 2?

Buy the Audible!

Absolutely loved listening to this book!
Normally, I bounce between the kindle version and the audible depending on where I’m reading (driving in car vs a quiet moment at lunch), but with this book, I ended up walking around in headphones all day just to keep it going.

On content/plot: this was a pretty decent blend of two worlds, each with their own stories going on, told from two cooperative viewpoints. You have the post-apocalyptic world full of infected “zombies” with our survivors huddled together in an underground shelter. Then you have the VR world, which is pretty standard fantasy, but done pretty well, with NPCs showing concern over the sudden loss of players, and our two protagonists experiencing the world differently (standard hero vs dark race just trying to survive)

The Voices: the two main narrators were amazing, and the tonal shifts and emotion added so much to an already decent story. You can hear the smile and joy in Laurie Winkle’s voice and it made it nearly impossible not to fall in love with Shari just a little bit.

I’ll stop rambling now. Just make sure to grab this book the next time you want to walk around laughing to yourself and confusing the people around you.

Great story

This is a great novel that combines two seemingly disparate genres and does it well. The real life storyline is zombie survival. Mace lucked out getting into a secure facility, and even through he has running water, electricity, and a safe place to sleep, he’s alone. He plays a VR game so that he won’t go crazy from the loneliness. He still has to risk his life against the monsters outside to scavenge for food every couple weeks. Then one day he hears someone over the radio, Sheri, and two meet up so that they can work together to survive. Lots of great survivalist stuff in the real world story and a little romance.

The game storyline, is mostly action, adventure MMO stuff. But something that the author is able to do, is make that game stuff relevant to the real world storyline. Mace wants to upload his mind to the game, giving him the possibility of living there as long as the electricity in their geothermal powered facility stays up, possibly centuries. But to do that, he needs to achieve a level of synchronicity with the game by training his mind to think of the game like it’s the real world. This gives the story the excuse to have both characters play the game. But what the author does that I think is interesting, is that he keeps the theme of survival in the game, at least for the drow storyline. In addition to that, the game itself notices that all the players have gone missing and tries to figure out how to adjust, even going so far as to give quests to Shari to bring players back to their world.

Overall, I had a great time listening to this. Though I’ll admit, I was already partial to the apocalypse survival genre.

Story is just not interesting

The writer has taken on too much, He doesn't know whether he is writing a LITRPG novel, or a earth disaster. The earth part of the novel is just too boring and dull, The LITRPG part of the novel is not well developed. The main characters are just not believable. The story is just to boring, The writing is good, but the subject matter is poor. Eric. The narration is good also but does not fit this novel. The author is all over the place.

it truly pulled me right in from the get go

I loved every thing about this book the story the charm of the characters the voice acting

Not bad but it had some flaws too

It wasn't a half bad book, I have been through something like 15 litRPG series now and I would say maybe this would be a middle of the pack experience. I think there were things that were done well but I also felt like there were several complaints on my end as well. I am writing this review after having listened to the second book as well so this is sort of my assessment of the series so far:

Flaws:
1) I found the actual gameplay to be lacking which was surprising to me. Normally I hate the IRL moments of litRPG books that have some sort of video game but it was actually the gameplay I found underwhelming. I didn't mind the character building and character interactions but the actual mechanitcs of the game and combat itself felt very generic and boring to me.
2) The IRL situation in these books is actually a little over the top. Its post apocolyptic but the acutal situation of the world leaves me to strongly question how the main character is still alive. It seems a little flawed as it sounds like if you breath air you would just die so I found that a little questionable. I think I would have been a little more generous as to how many people were still alive or maybe scale back the global disaster on how exactly it works because my understanding of it makes it sound like nobody anywhere would ever have even a remote chance of being alive still. It sounds like you would literally need a completely closed system recycling air and water to even maybe still be alive.

Good:
1) IRL situation I found compelling and interesting. I constantly wanted to see and hear more of the real world rather than the game.
2) The NPC to character interactions was quite good. I really enjoyed the feeling of this game being sort of a social lifeline for these people in a super shitty situation.

Overall, it wasn't half bad. The game mechanics seem completely bland to me though. If this was a real video game that we could play the only redeeming elements of it would be the NPCs and the fact that its an immersion game. I really love post apocalyptic content though and I did overall enjoy the IRL happenings of this book quite a bit more than I did the video game parts.

Awesome book

Love this book. Basically two adventures involving in game and in real world and both are interesting. Very well written and the narration is as always incredible.

I have Undying love for this book

Holy crap, this book, I must say was the complete package. I don’t know what I enjoyed more, the real life stuff that the MC had to endure or the game play itself, which was also fun. And that was a real pleasure. Mace, the protagonist, lives in a world populated by zombies of every shape and size. It seems that those numbnuts at Cern goofed up, and collided the wrong leptons, muons, and preons together an accidentally created a zombie particle, an insidious sub atomic beast that infects biological material and turns it into nasty zombies that can infect with but a touch. The real problem is that the particles attack ALL biological matter, thus plants and animals are also infected. Now, here is my one and only beef with this story. I said the exact same thing when Brian Keene wrote his zombie masterpiece The Rising. If insects became zombies, as well as higher animals, then nothing would exist in a matter of days. Insects and arachnids are everywhere, and touch everything. Life on Earth would not have a calendar of weeks or months, it would be days. Make the grass deadly, too, and the timer speeds up. Now, in Wilmarth’s case, I completely understand that he could not say that the particle only affected humans, as there would be no discernable reason for that to happen, so it had to be anything biological, but it does really make me have to fight to suspend my disbelief. Thankfully, the tale that he crafts is so outstanding that I can let it all slide and just enjoy the story.

It turns out that Mace got lucky, and essentially found a bunker that he could hole up in, and joy of all joys, he is able to access the MMORPG that he loved to play before everything went to hell. He hatches a plan, one in which he will upload his mind into the game itself, so that he won’t have to consider starvation or becoming a mindless monster. Still he has to venture out in order to get supplies and see if he can locate any survivors. And it is in the daily struggles to stay sane, keep fed, and ever alert for the rampaging undead that Wilmarth really ups his game and makes this not just Litrpg, but also survival horror and I appreciate that he turns the concept on its head. Most Lit books would make it where the zombies were in the game, and not vice versa. He has created some real depth in the land of the unliving, and it is so well (ahem) fleshed out . This feels like it could be a real world event, and is exactly how humanity would react to it occurring.

The gameplay was amazingly just as interesting and fun as the real life drama, and there were several battles in the Underdark that just caught my imagination. I’m thinking of the Cthulhuesque kaiju battle for one, but I can honestly say that for every moment spent in the real world I wondered about the game, and for every moment in the game I wondered about the real world. Wilmarth also comes up with a rather likable love interest in Shari, who is fun and complex and can actually show Mace a thing or two when it comes to surviving. I like that Shari is no wilting flower, and has complete control of whatever situation she is in. The two make up some of the best Character’s I have read/listened to in some time. The world, though bleak, is rich and vibrant in its descriptions, and the game is the kind of game I’d want to play in. Oh, and I have to comment on this, Mace plays a Drow, and in the game he is treated like a baby killing mad man by most of the “people” that he meets. Just the way a Drow should be treated, this has been a moment of reflection in memory of Archaic Venture and its Drow character. Take notes please. Mace struggles to overcome his dark legacy throughout the game, which only adds more to the realism and the overall wow factor because you can sympathize with his struggle as a good person who has to overcome his appearance.

This is the part where I praise Justin Thomas James, and Laurie Catherine Winkel, two people who must be constantly in trouble because we keep using their full names when we talk to about them. Justin Thomas James! What are you doing?!? Why creating a vocal masterpiece. His narration is full of emotion that ranges from angst to antici. . . . . . . pation. He fully embodies that character of Mace, and brings him to life in such a way that you really worry for the poor man whenever he goes outside his door, of get choked up when he talks to a brother and sister who are hanging out over at the fire department. LCW, that’s Laurie Catherine Winkel to you and me (mumble) since the restraining order) is utterly vibrant as Shari. She makes you believe that this is a real girl who has had to endure a ton of crap since the moment things started going haywire, but is still able to cope and keep herself clearheaded. Honestly, I am so happy to hear her get a nice juicy role like this, and I really want to hear her do a whole great big book unto herself at some point. She has a wonderful voice, and I really want to hear more from her every time she is in a book narrating. JTJ, is the same, and I am an unabashed fan of Soundbooth theater. I know that whenever I see that name on a book I am in for an experience. Also, I deeply appreciated that only two narrators were used in the making of this Audio. As much as I realize Jeff Hays has a master vision of what the audible book experience can be I still cotton on the concept of having one or two narrators as most, and this made the book all the more enjoyable for me even though Jeff and Annie were deeply missed.

I really cannot convey how much I enjoyed this book, and I hated the fact that it ended. Thirteen hours just wasn’t enough, I could have used a another thirteen, but probably still wouldn’t have been satisfied with the extra time allotted. All I can say is that I eagerly await the next installment of this series, and that I am glad that Dave stepped aside from his main series to pen this critter. This was a blast to listen to; I loved the characters, and really enjoyed both the real world as much as the game world. I can only see this series getting better and better. This is a solid and seamless story of two worlds, and two characters; each of whom is as interesting and fascinating as the other. So, please, take a trip into the Land. . . .of the undying.

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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