I like hardcover books because they make a satisfying "thump" when I smack my children upside their heads.
I've read through chapter 8 as well.
The minotaur's name is spelled Eargobr, and in my head I'm pronouncing it "Ear'gob'er". The dungeon fight was a great example of a focused build and an inherent weakness where Shopkeeper Jake gets to shine vs Eargobr. And yes, watching Deer Bastard get his was kinda sweet. Though I do appreciate how the narrator isn't some hard boiled combatant all of sudden.
Working my way through it now.
I can't believe he couldn't find a single gun in an American town. Of course a couple chapters later it's explained that "normal" technology will no longer function (yet somehow he has a record player that still functions and he is trying to sell), but thats kind of besides the point. He should have been able to find a lot more useful stuff than is shown.
I am enjoying the supporting cast more than the main character, but I suppose thats pretty standard for the genre, as the MC is probably supposed to be more of a self insert style character, and thats fairly common for litrpg stories.
The card based magic is interesting, and I'm wondering if the rules for it will remain consistent throughout the book.
Finally, I feel the MC is taking the destruction of the Earth and civilization as we know it far to well. I get he has the spell card that helps calm his mental state, but I would be alternating between fury and despair, of course I have a family I'd be devastated to lose, while it seems the MC didn't have much in the way of family. Which I think may go a good way to explain why he has latched on to these strange inhuman individuals so quickly. All I know is that in his situation, my thoughts would be bent towards punishing these "Gods" for what they did to Earth.
Well, hopefully, next month's book will be a better choice for you, nobody can say you didn't give it a chance.Made it all the way to chapter 24, but I think I'm going to have to call it quits here; as I just realized that I don't care what happens to this guy. The story comes across as soulless; like the main character is describing to me the contents of his grocery list and complaining that the supermarket didn't have that brand of grape soda he likes, rather than the life-or-death experiences he's supposed to be having. The pacing is also lighting fast; to the point where everything is just glossed over too quickly for any of it to feel like it matters. I have no idea who the main character is or what he wants, let alone any of the side characters; who honestly come across as little more than NPCs from a 16-bit era JRPG, but without any of the visual or audio cues that fleshed them out, or the gameplay that kept you invested.
All in all? Not worth finishing; not in my book at least.
By the sounds of it, the "Deer Asshole" shouldn't have been killed off so quickly. Keeping him around as a constant threat may have done wonders for character building and tension
I am so glad I dropped this garbage when I did, though now I'm wondering how the heck it managed to net so many positive reviews.Alright, got quite a bit forward all the way to part 2, chapter 9.
Holy genre change Batman! Not only is he no longer in the Magical Market business, he's away from Earth, separated from the cards, and now we've learned no less than three new magic systems (Energy Manipulation, Runes, Domains) while cards are going to the wayside as he keeps getting told they're crutches he should abandon as he goes into army adventures as part of an elite dungeon-killing team. You can tell this was an RR or similar webnovel or else his background was from there, this kind of massive whiplash into an entirely different genre doesn't happen outside of those situations.
Well I was right and the City turned out to be a major and continuing threat, the first one Jake couldn't wipe out immediately after it appeared. The torture scenes were very visceral and Jake's suffering was well written. Jakes experiences definitely changed him, unfortunately for the worse as he was already semi-psychotic and now he's growing increasingly moreso. The City is looking to be his final boss.
The world development in the city of the gods was good, it's an impressive place and he did a fine job of conveying the hopeless crushing difference between the super-wealthy elites and the poor of Ambrosia. This is a well-written echo of the themes he originally started with the first examination of The City.
Annoyed note: Why did Jake become a Rune Charger? It appears to be entirely plot-related, he's told straight up that it's literally soul-crushing work that will shorten his lifespan and the pay is garbage, and he has a set of cards that give him supernatural skills at cooking, driving, cleaning, and other domestic duties but after being told those jobs are easier and pay better he trades them all for a freakin' wristwatch and randomly decided rune charging is for him.
As an aside: Rune Charging is a critically important skill that forms the foundation of all of Ambrosia's magitechnology. Few people can do, it's very draining, and it takes a lot of skill. Also, pay for it is extremely low and even the best rune chargers can barely pay for a flophouse bed and meal, most rune chargers earn so little they can't even pay for their own food and sleep in their rune-charging office because they can't afford a cardboard box in an alley to sleep in. Economics do not work that way! Critical highly-skilled jobs only a few people can do are not poorly paid!
This was a poorly-conceived piece of writing. It's fairly obvious the author wanted to get Jake into the Runic Knights for the next section of the story. The rune charging section is rushed even by this books standards and Jake has to make a series of highly irrational decisions to get into rune charging that are clearly just the author making excuses to enlist him in the Runic Knights. It's both suspension-of-disbelief breaking for Jake to go against all the advice he's given and randomly decide on what he's told is the worst job imaginable, and not really necessary from a plot perspective. If you want Jake to enlist in the army, just have a recruiter spot him beating the tobacco juice out of the three muggers, and the recruiter gives him a pitch and Jake takes it to get off the streets as a homeless starving guy. Much more believable than the rune charger section.
On the very negative side, it's looking very much like Earth is completely doomed. If a planet doesn't take proper preparations their dungeons will grow out of control and consume the world, and his current destination is dying right now even though it's equivalent of the Roman Empire was fully prepared, because no other nation was. With no humans having prepared at all it's apparent things are grim. This also partially answers my question about wandering monsters, apparently they can leave dungeons once the dungeon becomes powerful and aware enough, and when they do they drop a single card. That doesn't quite explain why they were wandering around when the dungeons on earth were still fresh and absolutely shouldn't have been spawning vampires right and left, there may still be more going on.
The Mind Card plot is really overdone and annoying. He's literally created a card out ofmind flayersCthuloids which is visibly giving off malice and fills him with a sense of horror, his teammates utterly hate mental cards and are deeply suspicious of them, and he's decided to put it into his deck because he thinks it might be useful even though it doesn't fit with his powerset. Even for Jake this is psychotic.
I tend to make "Bets" with myself as to whether I can predict plot twists. If I win no bets, I consider the book poorly written as the author can't do foreshadowing properly. If I win every bet, it's also poorly written as the author can't write a decent plot twist. So far this story I'm running pretty heavy on winnings but I haven't been able to post many "bets" here because the hectic pace of the story tends to have them resolved a paragraph after I think them up.
This time I can: I predict his Decadence card is going to be pivotal in the end. There's no reason he shouldn't have used such a worthless card as fodder to upgrade one of his other cards but he never burns it, and he keeps putting Decadence into his deck even though it does nothing if he's not living a luxurious lifestyle, even when he's a homeless bum or working as a soldier. There's been twenty times more word count dedicated to Decadence than his brief experience having and breaking up with a girlfriend.
It's still better than a lot of stuff I've seen praised online. On a technical level it has decent grammar and descriptions that manage not to be too wordy nor too sparse. The initial concept was interesting and I suspect edgy 12-year-old readers are responsible for the rest.I am so glad I dropped this garbage when I did, though now I'm wondering how the heck it managed to net so many positive reviews.