Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsA bad Google Translate of a Russian Author
Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2021
I have a hard time rating this book since it was so long and honestly the first half was 1/5 and the second half starts getting 2.5-3/5. The writing in the first half of the book is really tough to get through. It feels like a really bad google translate from a Russian author. There are alot of gems in Russian authors litrpg and have enjoyed several and can recognize common words and syntax that are heralds in this book from that vein. the writing in the first half of the book is really a struggle to get through. every second sentence is "Zach did this".
Zach was stabbed in the arm, but he fought through the pain.
Zach was stabbed in the stomach, but he fought through the pain.
Zach took an arrow in the shoulder, but he fought through the pain.
The closest thing i can come to is listening to an emotionless voice on the radio describe things and in the fighting scenes this is especially bad. Alot of these chapters are written in such a fashion that it seems the author wrote one third of the chapter, then came back a week later not knowing what he wrote in the first part and just restated everything again for the second third of the chapter, then took another break and restated everything again in the final third of the chapter. It is bad, really hard to read, and honestly inconsistent in many situations. A prime example is a fight the MC has where he gets stabbed several times and then at the end of the fight has to run full speed after a dexterity based archer and catches and kills her after a chase. The author then goes on to so that the MC can barely walk and has to limp back to where he killed several other people after chasing a speed based character through the woods. So many inconsistencies in the story telling makes this book very hard to read in the first half.
In the midst of the early bad chapters there is an interlude type chapter were it switches to the point of view of an invader and this chapter is written in such a better way. It is almost as if a completely different person wrote it. About 40% of the way through the writing gets better and the story telling improves a great deal with the book hitting a stride about 60%. Since the story telling became so much better during the later half of the book i honestly started to enjoy it where i think the book on story telling alone moves from 1 star in the beginning to 3 stars in the end.
My reason this book goes to two stars over all is although the writing improves throughout the book the system mechanics do not. LITRPG is mostly about the systems and mechanics that make up the world or its just another fantasy or sci/fi book, which is fine but if you want to market it as LITRPG then you need to take these systems into the rating of the book. The author starts out with a basic leveling system which is fine but then after we get into the book he starts wanting to make a cultivation system. The Author tries to then blend these two systems and just puts together a horrible Frankenstein joining in the combination of the two. we start getting cultivation mechanics out of the blue, that are horrible explained (which may be more to the poor writing than anything) and adding things that are not well explained. I read many cultivation books and i am still really confused on the system the author is trying to use in his books.
Finally i realize that it is hard to have an OP main character and also try to make him struggle for his success but the Authors attempt in this book was the most unsatisfying experience i have seen in a long time. Continually saying that your MC was horrible injured but "Zach fought through the pain" does not an interesting story make. i found myself skimming through the battle scenes especially near the end of the book because they were just so boring and emotionless.
I will say i pre-ordered the next book in the series since the writing did improve so much and once i got about 60% into the book i did start enjoying character development that started to take place. I just think this book was such a missed opportunity that it claims to have 20 million views on Royal road but the author didn't take the time to improve the first half of the book. I don't know maybe this book is the group effort of several people which is why the beginning is so bad and the end is a good book. I just think if you are going to move a webnovel to sell on amazon you should make sure the product is well written and consistent over the whole book rather than just copy and paste it from the web. Again a missed opportunity to turn a lackluster book into a great book.
