Fortress of Shadows: A LitRPG and GameLit Adventure (Stonehaven League Book 2) by Carrie Summers

2/5 stars

Synopsis

Warning! This section contains spoilers, if you would like to avoid these spoilers, jump to the review below.

Devon was alerted by her scout that the army they were trying to hide from had been slaughtered. So Devon went to check it out. While at the slaughtered army, she and her companions were attacked by a demon thrall.

Devon discovered that the players in the area were two of her former gaming buddies. They fought several monsters. Devon then encountered a goblin war party and died.

Devon and her friends attacked the goblin war camp, and discovered there were prisoners.

The man who recruited her to play the game noticed some alarming things happening while people who had the implants in their head to play the game were sleeping, so he gave Devon a device to hopefully help.

Devon and her friends went to complete a quest. They succeeded.

The village was attacked by demons.

The guy who recruited Devon found an issue with the game’s AI’s code, which let it access players brains while they were asleep.

Review

This book was a little bit better than the first one. It actually started to add stakes and consequences to the real world in the story. However, I didn’t feel like it did it well. The danger in the real world felt disconnected from the story in the game.

The reveal at the end of Devon’s unconscious mind being the leader of the demons fell a little flat. It just didn’t feel like a good twist. There weren’t enough hints throughout the story of Devon being the demon for the twist at the end to have any impact. The author tried to make the reveal a big deal, and tried to make Devon’s fight to regain control of her unconscious mind some huge, impactful thing, but it just felt lackluster to me.

The struggles Devon had in the game didn’t feel like they mattered because there weren’t any consequences. In addition to that, the issues in the real world weren’t emphasized enough to feel like they mattered either. Nothing seemed to matter in the book, so I just didn’t care what happened to the characters. Devon went about her day as normal occasionally, but the game took up most of her time. There wasn’t any sense of danger.

To put it bluntly, the entire book felt like fluff.