[07/19/17] The Luckless: Second Age of Retha Book 1

You know a genre has arrived when people argue over what is and isn't the genre...

However, the gatekeepers are going to find to their dismay that the 3rd and 4th wave arrivals aren't going to bother with their gate.

And then it's a whole new ballgame.

 

Like a real quest - you can count on me! I am about halfway through.

 

Watching my backlog of vodcasts and just realized am watching one featuring this author. Am interested to see if she mentions her LitRPG during the vid.


edit: finished it up, no mention of her LitRPG within

 

Well, the Luckless is KU so I downloaded it...

 

Okay, so that book was amazing. @Paul Bellow I think I'll do a review on it for you

 

@Larakel Can you post it here too? Thanks! I read the first page on my kindle last night before falling asleep, so, gonna give it a go.

 

Reviewed on it on my blog

 

So I finally had a chance to finish this book! There are already so many awesome reviews (looking at you Larakel) out there, but I am going to add my perspective anyway.

First, a basic summary of the plot:
A comedy of errors result in the main character, Kit, getting stuck playing a useless character in a fantasy-based immersive virtual reality game called Age of Retha...with no way of logging out! Her cousin Bryce works for Eternal Chase, the company that developed Age of Retha, and risks his job to warn Kit of the peril she and all the other players are facing. His warning also comes with a potential solution in the form of an impossible epic quest that might force a log-out for all the players involved. The rest of the book describes Kit's trials and tribulations as she and her team of low-level companions attempt to complete this impossible quest.

Things I liked:
The book presents a light-hearted tone with a low barrier of entry for newcomers to the LITRPG genre.
The banter between the party members was enjoyable.
Some of the characters were likable.
Some of the situations were quite funny - I eventually just gave up on taking the main character seriously and just enjoyed all her foolishness.
A female main character. They are rare in LITRPG.
Lots of battles!
Character voices were (for the most part) unique and distinguishable.

Things I disliked:
OMG there is no Villain in this story! Just a series of game elements contrived to provide obstacles for the main character and her party.
As other reviewers have mentioned already, the premise of the story is very unbelievable. Too many things had to go wrong in order to get Kit stuck in the game.
Even if you are willing to suspend disbelief and accept the premise, the solution Bryce proposes does not make sense within the context of the premise.
Because I found it hard to buy into the solution proposed by Kit's cousin Bryce, the stakes were not really believable. There was no real motivation for the players to do anything but wait for Eternal Chase to fix their gaming servers.
The main character is completely unbelievable as a veteran player. I used to play a priest in vanilla wow as a member of an endgame raiding guild on Khadgar that often claimed server-first boss kills, and I found myself incapable of relating to Kit.
For some reason I found myself disliking Kit's personality...honestly I can't explain why.
The world-building needs a lot of work. The world of Retha feels like a hollow shell in dire need of fleshing out. I want more lore, culture, racial idiosyncrasies etc. Why do the dwarves and elves hate each-other for instance?
The game elements are underdeveloped.
One of the things I like the most about LITRPG is the way the characters become systematically more powerful as they progress in level and game-play experience. This book presented little progression in the power of the characters.
The "climax" at the end left me very unsatisfied and the way the book ended made it feel incomplete.

Comments:
The writing structure is decent, with few glaring errors.
After the fist disaster of getting stuck in the game and having the main character commit to the story, there were no real plot-altering disasters to speak of.
All the characters, including the main character, are one-dimensional.

Bottom-line: the book was an easy fun read but failed to deliver an emotional experience of any kind. I will probably give it 3 stars on Amazon.

 

I'm at the 42 percent mark and seriously considering flipping to the last chapter and skipping all the fluff. The struggle is real.

 

I borrowed this last week, but haven't read it yet. I have a thing for elven MCs.

 

I read it. It went way too far into the series of unfortunate events required to make the plot spin to be really enjoyable.

I remember having read it, and a bit of the plot, but damn if I can remember any of the story. I also didn't much care for the MC, and one bit I DO remember is how she got out of the dwarven dungeon. Getting thrown in there in the first place didn't make sense (neither did the happenings in the eleven forest for that matter), but how she got out of those two situations made even LESS sense.

Overall, I probably won't be picking up the sequel. It was just entirely too forgettable.