3/5 stars
Synopsis
Warning! This section contains spoilers, if you would like to avoid these spoilers, jump to the review below.
Basil woke up to the sound of his cat screeching for food. As he fed his cat, he noticed a strange red dot in his vision and determined he would probably have to go to the doctor if it didn’t go away. After the cat was fed, he suddenly started talking to Basil. Basil thought he was going crazy and looked around for clues that it was a prank. Basil figured out how to access the red dot in his vision and chose the tamer class.
Basil then went outside to discover there was an aurora borealis in the sky during the daytime, in France. He went to go feed his chickens and discovered something had broken through the fence and into the greenhouse. He grabbed an axe and a giant centipede came out. Basil was furious because the greenhouse was really expensive, and started hitting the centipede. Basil was able to communicate with the centipede, and after beating it up, it begged for mercy. Basil ordered it to fix what it broke. After taming the centipede, Basil set about fortifying his house. After he fortified it, goblins attacked the house.
There was a dungeon near the house, so Basil and his pets destroyed it. Basil then went to a nearby town and found that everyone had been turned to stone. He went to another town to see that the same thing had happened to it. He was following the footprints of a large creature, and when he caught up to it, he realized there was a robot invasion from another planet.
Basil attempted to build a defensive force from garden vegetable monsters he planted, but only some of them listened to him so he had to kill the disobedient ones. And then Plato, Basil’s cat, was scouting in the woods and saw some of the robot invaders. So he ran to go warn Basil.
There was a random chapter from the perspective of a random guy who was a guard for the queen of England. I am not sure what the purpose of the chapter was. The chapter said that the queen was immortal, and the prince was a vampire. I don’t know. It was super random. Nothing in this chapter was ever mentioned again in the book, and none of it really made sense. I was confused when I read it.
Basil rescued a woman from the marsh who had crashed in a helicopter. From her, he learned that the invaders were building another dungeon on his figurative doorstep. Basil, with the help of a person he met, summoned an angel to cure the people who had been turned to stone.
An Incursion event started, which would put more monsters on earth. Basil joined with the French military for a bit during this to fight the invading robots. Basil and the military managed to kill the boss and hold their ground until the portal was closed.
There was a random chapter from the perspective of a kitten. This chapter really tugged at my heartstrings. The kitten defended her city, and she kept asking the other inhabitants of the city when her owner (8 years old) would wake up. The kitten didn’t understand that her owner was dead. The chapter ended with the kitten cuddling up with her owner’s tomb, waiting for her to wake up. Honestly, it was a really well-written chapter. It was really random, just like the chapter with the random Queen of England’s guard, but it was really well-written. It would have been nice if the book had more of that emotional, impactful writing.
Basil met other people/species and asked questions to try and figure out what the system on his world was. He wasn’t able to get much information, but he did find out that there’s a possibility that earth could go back to normal. He vowed to find out more.
Basil’s house, which he guarded zealously throughout the book, was blown up at the end of it.
Review
This story was okay. It was really silly in a lot of places, which was annoying. A lot of things happened in it, so it was a little hard to follow. In my opinion, the book would have been better if the story was a little tighter, and not as busy. Also, I wasn’t able to take the main character seriously a lot of the time. He was just silly. He would make these serious vows after something stole his sandwich, or something dumb like that. Other times (mostly towards the end of the book) the book was intense and an enjoyable read. I felt like the book touched a little too much on religion, but I understand the reasons behind it.
I liked Basil’s reasoning for living in the woods and not wanting to level in the beginning of the book. It made a lot of sense, and it fit his character perfectly.
Basil changed as a character throughout the book, which was nice to see. He changed from being a peaceful hermit who just wanted to be left alone to someone who actually wanted to take back earth.
Fireheart Books 