Random Book Haul & Review Aug 2021: Awakening: A LitRPG/GameLit Series (World of Magic Book 1)
1. The Journey
2. The Review
The Journey
There were 215 pages worth of books that were published in July 2021. As usual, I went to Random.org and generated this sequence: 25, 171, 176, 69, 14, 159, 129, 141, 27, 127.
First up is page 25.
Page 25
There was only one book that was a standalone novel or the first of a series.
Will the birds ever sing again? by David Charles Williams
Ever since the beginning of the 20th century, humans have been destroying our beautiful planet.
Not always intentional.
🛑
Stopped by awkward sentence in the description.
Page 171
The Fall of the House of Thomas Weir by Andrew Neil Macleod
Edinburgh, 1773. A storm is coming. A storm that will shake the Age of Reason to its very foundations.
When rumours spread of ghouls haunting Edinburgh’s old town, there is only one person who can help. Dr Samuel Johnson: author, lexicographer… and a genius in the occult and supernatural.
With his good friend and companion, James Boswell, Dr Johnson embarks on a quest to unravel the hellish mysteries plaguing the city. But what they uncover is darker and more deadly than they could have ever suspected, an evil conspiracy which threatens not just the people of Edinburgh, but the whole of mankind.
For the tunnels under Edinburgh’s Old Town hide a terrible secret…
Before Holmes & Watson, before Abraham van Helsing, there was Doctor Johnson & James Boswell: scourge of the hidden, supernatural world of the 18th century.
I got through the description, read a few paragraphs, then stopped because the POV character in the first chapter was boring.
Use of Emergency: The Si-Carb Chronicles Book 1 by Kate Kyle
A newbie pilot with a secret, broken comms, alien artifact, viral code, empty space. What can go wrong?
Jax, a freshly minted spaceship pilot had a simple job: taking a group of sick people to Rebels’ Republic space station to have their brain implants fixed while keeping her secret - secret. She had a smart plan to get it done: just some tweaking of the comms to make it look like an accident.
But her ship had some surprises aboard: two healthy passengers, who weren’t who they claimed to be, a real emergency, and a piece of virally spreading rouge code.
🛑
From Cambridge Dictionary:
- a red or pink powder put on the cheeks to make the face look more attractive
A Sinner’s Tale: Operation Dominion by Donni Cee
It was a peaceful night in Metroit, Metro City, Meridian (Detroit, Michigan). Citizen will go about and do their business,
🛑
Citizens, plural.
Banjaxed: The Prince of Wolves (The Áilleferry Chronicles) by Celka Fernando Thrush
Ronan Ferry is about to turn 11 when a mysterious relative appears out of nowhere. How is she connected to his family’s curse? And how is his family connected to the end of the world?
With the help of his cousin, along with a few seemingly random strangers plucked from the future, they work together to stop the curse on humanity and fix the broken timeline.
The book was $9.99. The description had something off about it. It felt very thrown together; there’s a family curse, another curse on humanity, and somehow time travel is involved. I mean, it can work, but the way the description was written didn’t give me the confidence to spend $9.99 to find out.
The Earth, the Stars and the Eigenvalue by S.J. Rochester
The inhabitants of the spaceship Gaia have been travelling for so long that their history is now lost. They no longer remember where Earth is or how to find it and only vague rumours of a disaster are left to explain why they left. However, a connection remains; stored and in stasis inside the bowels of the ship are people who lived on Earth. Without warning, every few hundred years, one awakens and joins the descendants of those who awoke before them. None so far has had any memory of the ship’s departure or the catastrophe that prompted it. No one knows why the ship was programmed to wake them or what purpose it is meant to serve but whenever a new person appears everyone is reminded of what they have lost. Together with a fleet of ships, they search the galaxy for Earth or signs of other humans, but the road is dangerous and in space, there is always another danger on the horizon that threatens all.
I actually read through the description and went to look at the preview before noticing the problem. The book is formatted the same as the description, no spacing between paragraphs and no indents.
Rory Hobble and the Voyage to Haligogen by Maximilian Hawker
Eleven-year-old Rory Hobble has it tough: he gets upsetting thoughts all the time and they won’t go away – ‘Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)’, the head doctors call it. His mum hasn’t been very well for a long while either. Perhaps it’s his fault… Maybe that’s why she doesn’t always feed him; maybe that’s why she screams at him. At least Rory has his telescope – gazing at the unchanging stars keeps him calm. But, one night, Rory sees something impossible in the sky: mysterious lights – artificial and definitely not of earthly origin.
When his mum is abducted by the shadowy Whiffetsnatcher, Rory – accompanied by his space-faring, care-experienced social worker, Limmy – travels beyond the Earth, chasing those mysterious lights to the frozen ends of the Solar System. Along the way he must outwit a breakaway human civilisation living on a Martian moon; survive the threat of otherworldly monsters; and learn to speak to alien whales.
But his greatest challenge left Earth with him and it will take all the courage he has not only to overcome his OCD, but to decide whether he wants to rescue an abusive mother if he gets his chance…
I got through the description. The book itself has no problems I could see except for the intentional misspellings that was the voice of the 11-year-old boy. I might have given it a go if everything was in this voice, but it was little snippets of it alongside well-written English which made it very jarring for me.
THE CE-7 Revelation by Kim A. Smith
This story is a cautionary tale. Caitlin and David Ulich’s mother disappeared without a trace from a Wal-Mart parking lot when they were young children and never was found. After that, their father, Ward, never mentioned their mother again. Years later, they tried to find out what happened to her. What they discovered about their parents and themselves was astonishing. The story involves swinger parties, Alzheimer’s disease, UFOs, quantum mechanics, government secrets, alien-human hybrids, and a child genius who saves the world. Based on their experience, Caitlin and David advise everyone to be careful about rummaging around in your family’s past. You might learn more than you want to know.
There was a repetition in the first two paragraphs that made me think this book is in dire need of some editing / proofreading.
Page 176
Space Alliance: It’s only the Beginning by Christopher Flores
A war in deep space between the Space Alliance and The Fallers spreads throughout the galaxy which forced new discoveries on other planets. Arco a Space Alliance soldier was in charge of finding new recruits and began searching on Earth and decided on selecting 4 male humans to be an elite squad that could help them win the war. However, due to them being older than expected Arco was forced to kidnap them and convince them to join the Space Alliance and undergo a transformation that will age regress them into newborns and erase their memories in order to have a clear mind and be properly trained for the war since birth. Thanks to this the 4 boys were being well trained and due to them believing they are brother they were able to work well together as an elite squad.
🛑
Some of the sentences lack commas or could have been broken up into separate sentences. But I stopped because brother instead of brothers was used.
Page 69
No novels on this page…
Page 14
None here too…
Page 159
MARALINGA by Marek Żbik
The book deals with the illusory perception of the safety of radioactive waste repositories, the disposal of plastics, and the challenges faced by asteroid mining projects to exploit natural resources from asteroids. Reader follows the fate of a pair of heroes, an Australian man, and a beautiful plastic eating woman facing immense space disaster.
Beautiful plastic eating woman? That’s kinda funny but I stopped because she’s “facing immense space disaster”.
Page 129
The Dreaming Child: Requiem by CM Wilde
Life on Earth’s surface ended after the Cataclysm. Will the Dreaming Child destroy what’s left, far below ground?
Capture the Dreaming Child and survival is possible.
Fail, and all free GenMods die.
The Dreaming Child is the human Citadel’s most dangerous weapon ever, created to destroy the GenMod resistance. She can infiltrate sleeping minds to steal secrets, and if she discovers the GenMod’s secrets it will end them. Warrior Phys twins, Sasha and Liam, are selected for the mission. MindFrame Quinn – a rare GenMod hybrid of humanoid and supercomputer – is the only one who can extract the Dreaming Child from the network with her mind intact. But the rescue takes a dark turn, and unbeknownst to the three GenMods and her human captors, the Dreaming Child is hiding more than anyone could have ever anticipated.
Beautiful plastic eating woman? That’s kinda funny but I stopped because she’s “facing immense space disaster”.
I stopped at the first line in the first chapter:
‘Bring the vessel online’, says a woman with a clipboard, her hair scraped into a severe bun.
🛑
Scraped into a severe bun? I wrote a whole novel with ridiculous descriptions of hair but they were all metaphors for the characters’ internal states. I didn’t actually describe physical attributes.
What I think the author meant by “scraped into a severe bun” was that the hair was pulled back tight and tied into a compact bun, giving the woman with the clipboard a serious look. But the image that comes to mind is a bloody scalp, because that’s what scraping hair would do?
Page 141
Awakening: A LitRPG/GameLit Series (World of Magic Book 1) by Levi Werner
The future lies within our minds…
Paralyzed in a workplace accident, Lox’s life is looking bleak. He can’t even use the cutting-edge hardware that would allow him to play in the full-immersion-games that have become so popular. This all changes when he hears from New Universal Frontiers, the company with the best game out there: World of Magic.
They offer him the ability to use their hardware despite his injuries, but at a cost… he can never leave the game.
Once in the game world, Lox quickly realizes that there is a lot more to this new realm than just a game. Given a class that everyone thinks is useless due its inherent dangers, Lox begins a long and painful series of trials, some of them explosive, almost all of them dangerous as he masters his magical abilities.
As Lox explores the depths of this world’s magic system, he soon discovers there is a lot more going on here than anyone ever expected.
World of Magic is a LitRPG/GameLit series that features leveling, advanced magic systems, dungeon crawling, world exploration, and much more. It’s perfect for fans of books like Emerilia, World Tree, and Ascend Online.
I read about 17% of the sample. It’s written well enough with no mistakes as far as I could see. It has some infodumps at the beginning but at least it’s relevant to what the character is thinking, and I know what he is thinking and what he wants, since it’s stated clearly. This is more than I can say for a lot of other books.
Anyway, I haven’t read any LitRPG before, although I’ve been watching a lot of anime with the same premise. I’m hoping this is one of the good ones.
The Review
Awakening: A LitRPG/GameLit Series (World of Magic Book 1) by Levi Werner
I found myself reading through this just so I could be done with it. It starts off with Lox, the main character, paralyzed due to a workplace accident and wanting to go into a new full-immersion game where he can get back some of the freedoms he had lost. I think this is something that most people can identify with. But he becomes a boring character once he actually goes into the game.
As far as I could tell, Lox doesn’t have any motivation besides gaining levels. He is given an epic quest about halfway through the book but seems to only want to complete it due to the XP rewards. He doesn’t even plan to complete it, just happens to complete it by sheer dumb luck. The premise behind the epic quest and the world is actually very interesting, with many themes that can be explored, but it is all glossed over in favour of the gaming elements. In fact, the premise is only explored by a side character, in only one line that goes something like: “she wondered about it.” Talk about missed opportunities.
There were also some glaring mistakes. Sometimes, the book lists out Lox’s statistics, but it lists “Unspent State Points” then goes on to list “Spent Stat Points”. This is repeated a few times throughout the book and the mistake is there every time, which probably meant there was some copy pasting going on. Also, at one point, Lox focuses on increasing his agility but later on the text states that he increased his dexterity instead. In some games, agility and dexterity are used interchangeably, but not in this book. They are actually two different statistics.
This is my first LitRPG book but I have seen a lot of anime with the same premise, the most recent being So I’m a Spider, So What? I thoroughly enjoyed the spider anime, so much so that I binged it in one sitting. I know that I can enjoy this genre if given the right story. Unfortunately, this book is not it.
★✰✰✰✰