This was my first litrpg, read for a fantasy bingo square. I read quite a few Kindle samples of the big names in litrpg before choosing this one, and This was my first litrpg, read for a fantasy bingo square. I read quite a few Kindle samples of the big names in litrpg before choosing this one, and most of the "must reads" in this genre felt a little too "male wish-fulfillment"-y to me from their samples. This one stood out, I think, because of the female mc and female author, combined with third-person storytelling that avoided some of the sins of first-person POV's that I found annoying in the samples that included it.
My pick was a good one. I found this really fun! The "gameplay" in the book actually hit a couple of my personal "buttons" of things that make a story/game enjoyable, so that definitely helped boost the enjoyment factor. First, the general scope of what Devon is accomplishing in the book tends to be focused on base-building mechanics of building a community and making improvements to keep the community happy and whole. When I'm gaming myself, I am very fond of resource management and base-building types of games, so that was a perfect fit for me. And then, when it came to Devon's own "character growth", there was a lot of emphasis on improvisation and finding clever ways to combine skills to have bigger impact when combined than they each had on their own. I always enjoy books with underdogs who much find creative solutions to solve problems in my general reading, so that element hit my buttons pretty hard as well.
So, yeah, fun read. I don't think I'll ever want to jump wholeheartedly into the litrpg pool, but I'll probably continue reading this particular series. As a "one, and possibly only" example of the genre to have chosen, this one worked for me....more
