It was just a bit okay, a little boring, Sadly.
I wanted to like it, but it was not just for me.
Sadly.

I appreciate having had an opportunity to read and review this book. The appeal of this particular book was not evident to me, and if I cannot file a generally positive review I prefer simply to advise the publisher to that effect and file no review at all.

As a gamer, this had me feeling nostalgic from start to finish. This is the first gaming novel I've read so I wasn't really sure what to expect. I was left wanting more from the actual game world though.

The protagonist was half and half for me. I found him grating on my nerves quite a lot, but other times he had me smiling, so I just don't know. I have to agree with some, this book did give off some misogynist vibes, but that could be due to the translation. I also thought the extent of the bestiality jokes were a bit much.

This was my first LitRPG - but this cover drew me and I wanted to love this but however I just enjoyed it. It was fun but I think I wanted more. I will keep my eye out for this author. It wasn't bad and I enjoyed the gaming set up in the book but it just fell short for me.

ARC provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

LitRPG is a hard genre to do anything new or exciting in, so writing an ok book in this genre is technically amazing.

But all in all it was just ok. There was nothing that really drew me in or excited me, but I still read the entire book...

This is an enjoyable lit-rpg adventure but there isn't any more to it, or not that we can see so far in this first section, which is a decent length. I've enjoyed another book much more, 'Warlords of Llantatis' by Dominic Green, but that had two differences; a much more evident sense of humour and an outside suspense tale enmeshed in the actions in the game world. Perhaps because the Fayroll world is written by a Russian, we don't get much humour, or if we do it's guarded under irony and understatement, and we don't get much of a look at Moscow life, just the protagonist's office, flat, an art gallery and shopping.

Hagen - the in-game name for our minor hero Harriton Nikiforov (who tells us Harry means ugly enforcer in Russian) starts off as a new player who gets killed a lot in an online fantasy game and respawns without his goods, until he gets better informed. The player is a junior journalist at the age of 36, divorced, given the job of checking out this immersive alternate reality game which comes with a sensory wraparound couch, so he can write up a few articles.

The game quest notifications come up in bold for us, as Hagen progresses, makes lucky friends and starts to find the game addictive, makes a few decisions unselfishly and gains quests. And that is it. Apart from making me homesick for Oblivion, the game didn't do a lot for me, because the character isn't ever in real danger. Nobody is. While other reviewers say the game has misogynistic or homophobic lines, there are only a few and I think Hagen is not responding to the NPCs, or being ironic in his response, or keeping his retort to himself. Maybe the translation doesn't cross to everyone. I didn't like that Hagen doesn't get a horse. And his 'tank' character is boring compared to a magic user. We get one glimpse of the outside world being affected by the game activities, but that is all. I need more, to make me want to read more.

I downloaded an ARC from Net Galley. This is an unbiased review.

While I liked the premise of the book and the snarky style, there were several things that made this book much weaker than I thought it could have been. There were more than a few instances of telling (as opposed to showing) just in the first few chapters of the book: as in "'Ha! It's Beloomut!' That was my first reaction to the Fayroll world." (This would have been stronger if the author had not told the reader that that was his reaction, but instead perhaps followed the "Ha! It's Beloomut!" exclamation with some kind of description of his physical reaction.) And "She looked exhausted" would have been better perhaps as "She looked exhausted, with messy hair and dark circles under her eyes." And there is no description of Aegen when Hagen first enters it that enables the reader to get an idea/context of what it looks like; we're told it's "beautifully drawn" and "looked real," but is it modern? Medieval? Hard to say.

Along those same lines, I would have liked to see some kind of demonstration of how Fayroll was so popular earlier on in the story, some kind of scene maybe where Harriton physically sees or even goes to a release party for a new expansion pack or something. He/Hagen seemed like a pretty calloused character, which made him less pleasant for me to read and relate to.

All in all, it wasn't a bad book, but it wasn't my favorite.

This is my first LitRPG. I liked it! I like gaming, but I love reading so a story featuring characters in a game was a nice surprise.

Our MC is a journalist tasked with writing a series of articles on the new sim game taking the world by storm. He's given the technology and the time off to fully explore this game.

I liked our MCs voice. He was funny, sarcastic and self-deprecating. As he navigates the Fayroll world we are treated to many adventures and surprises. I wasn't at all expecting the ending.

This is a fun and interesting story!