3/5 stars
Synopsis
Warning! This section contains spoilers, if you would like to avoid these spoilers, jump to the review below.
A homeless man named James woke up to floating text that wanted him to acknowledge it. He did, and then he was attacked by a creature. He killed it, then lost consciousness from his wounds. He woke up in an emergency room with a lot of other people who had been attacked as well. The nurses were trying desperately to believe that the attacks had only been dog or raccoon attacks. The main character tried to tell them that it wasn’t a raccoon, but they didn’t believe him, so he left the hospital.
James teamed up with a woman, and they fought more of the creatures. He and the woman were swarmed by the monsters eventually. They were able to fight them off.
James leveled up, and posted videos with his advice on how to stay alive. He fought off multiple waves of monsters, who were called Nemesis 1, while a timer was counting down to Nemesis 2. Eventually, the timer ran out.
The characters found out that the Nemesis 2 creatures were digesting people and painting walls with the digested human goo to make hives.
James grouped all of the high level people together to go on a hunt to kill the Nemesis 2 monsters, and to attack the hives. Inside the first hive they attacked, they found a gem that was made from the essences of hundreds of people.
They kept grouping together and taking out as many monsters as they could throughout the rest of the book.
Review
I enjoyed the mystery surrounding James at the beginning of the book. How did he end up on the streets? Why did he end up there? What happened to his family? Those questions were answered in the book, which was good. I liked how his struggles and emotions felt real.
I felt like the story itself was okay. It was good at the beginning, but then towards the middle of the book I started losing interest in it. I think I was losing interest because the book started slowing down, and James was…changing. Becoming more reckless, and taking on too much by himself with no regard for how others might help him. He amended his ways towards the end, which was good. I still felt like he had lost something though. I’m not sure what he lost, but I started to dislike him as a character.
It was hard for me to really analyze the main character as I was reading. The book started jumping to other characters’ viewpoints when the main character started teaming up with the other characters. The author didn’t differentiate the main character from the rest of the characters; he only described what the group as a whole was doing or feeling. I feel like the author did a disservice to the main character by lumping him together with a group and then spending more time with the group’s actions than with the main character’s actions.
I had a hard time with the religious nature of the system. It had the normal strength, agility, wisdom, etc., but the levels were religious terms. I wish there was an explanation for that, but there wasn’t. Apparently the religious terms were different for everyone around the world, depending on their religion. Why? How come floating symbols in the air and insectile monsters that digested people and used their liquified remains to construct a hive caused a religion-based system to appear? I was waiting for the author to add more depth to the world he created, but that didn’t happen.
I don’t really enjoy apocalypse books most of the time. This book reminded me of a sci-fi, alien invasion story. Which I guess it is, but with LitRPG elements. I figured I would try this book because I have read this author’s work before and liked it. But…I didn’t really like this one. Others who like alien invasion stories will probably enjoy it though.
Fireheart Books 