LitRPG

This just shows that authors can turn it around. The first book I read by Phil Tucker (The Path of Flames, Chronicles of the Black Gate #1) made me never want to read anything he wrote ever again. It was shitty and some of it felt like it was expressly designed to piss me off. It was only by accident that I read Bastion without realizing it was the same guy, and the "demon" aspect was probably what made me give it a shot. I'm glad I did, but holy fuck The Path of Flames should be removed from his catalog, and probably that whole series if it is similar in quality. I'd be embarrassed to have someone read my newer (good) stuff and then check out my older works and encounter that.

I haven't read any other series by him for fear of ruining the good thing.

Ritley said:

The third quest academy book came out, really enjoyed the first two. Only about a quarter of the way through this one, and it’s started a bit slow. Hopefully it picks up, but it’s still pretty good.

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Not wanting to read any more of the other series I've started that have dogshit main characters (as documented in this thread), I started the first book of this series. 20% into it and I'm already really enjoying it. Aside from my natural proclivity for enjoying school settings, the characters are already more relatable and easy to root for than half of the ones in this genre. I'm sure it helps that every chick is a mega-hottie too, but if I hated the main character none of that would matter. This guy seems pretty cool so far, and his ability is great while verging on OP of course, but who cares? Losers don't get books written about them! Or if they do (generally by some author who writes from the cuck chair), I don't want to read them.

Thanks for mentioning the series here!

Polaris said:

I actually have the audiobooks for that downloaded, and thought it sounded interesting, but haven't really gotten around to it (I have such an absurdly massive collection of shit to listen to).

At any rate - just finished Bastien and definitely looking forward to seeing what comes next. Going to start listening to book 2 soon.

Are there any good ones that have something similar to like a DnD style pugilist, or the like. I've always been obsessed with Hand to Hand combat specifically, so anything like that would be really interesting to me.

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The Road to Mastery series is exactly that; the guy gets strengthened fists and hits people. It is reasonably good, but that depends on whether or not you've exhausted yourself on all the other big series out there. If you have, this will seem rather repetitive because there isn't a lot new or fresh. It isn't bad or anything, but I got bored because I've read all the same shit before, just with a slightly different power set.

We Hunt Monsters probably doesn't really fit the bill for you, although the guy uses his fists fairly often. He has an ability that allows his punches to use up to 3(I think) weapons he has equipped in his inventory, so he has a sword, a bow, and a club maybe that all "hit" when he punches someone. Ridiculously OP, obviously. But probably not true to the spirit of what you are looking for.

As far as the Phil Tucker series, maybe you'll enjoy it. I won't get into why I hated it so as not to influence you, they might not bother you at all. I'd be interested to hear a different perspective if you do finish the first book.

velk said:

Is that the one where he gets "real ultimate power™" from sitting in cold water and fights gym-bro gorillas near the start ?

If not, there's that one, if so, then yeah that's the only one I can think of. It was a bit too corny for me, but tastes vary.

Oh wait, there was also the one that.. actually it was so bland I can't remember any significant details so I wouldn't recommend it anyway. There's at least one other series like that out there though ! ;p

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I'm pretty sure that's the one. If there is another I can't remember it.

Ritley and anyone else that has read Quest Academy.

I just finished the third one and I'll say that it completely devoured my time. I stayed up way too late every night reading these (it is 1:00 am right now in fact) because they sucked me in. I just looked over some of the reviews and I get where some of the people feel it is slow and boring when he does crafting or weaves, and I also get where others just want him to duplicate the most OP powers available and become invincible. One reviewer was actively angry at how "cowardly" the main character is, and how it obviously reflects upon the author. Maybe that person hasn't read literally every other litrpg series out there where the main character is massively OP and everything is super easy, barely an inconvenience? The fact that this hasn't turned into that is honestly refreshing. The fact that this guy is actually fun to read about and not some massive douche that thinks nothing but "must get stronger!" every moment is really fucking nice.

Still, I get that some people don't like large sections without killing shit, and if that's how people feel, no big deal. Like I hate core cultivation shit and Tuco loves it, while I actually enjoyed a lot of the crafting and weave crap in this; sure I skimmed bits of it at times after I got used to it, but it didn't actively annoy me like say DotF. Maybe after 10 more books of it I'd change my tune, as even Defiance had me for a long time. But for me, school shit, trials, crafting upgrades, all that shit was like crack. I need more of it!

Honestly the thing that stood out to me the most was how relatable all the characters were. Like, I genuinely enjoyed the interactions with everyone. Except for that cunt Erika. We are supposed to hate her, so good job I guess, but holy fuck do I hate her. I'm sure we'll get a redemption for her at some point, but it is going to be a tough sell for me. I'm not a psychologist or anything but I'm pretty sure she's a psycho- or sociopath. It does slightly annoy me that it is pretty clear who he should be pairing up with romantically, but whatever, that isn't really important or what I'm dying to read more of. Just a slight annoyance since just about everyone reading likely knows it is coming eventually.

Are there others out there like this? I've read Mother of Learning and consider that one of the pinnacles of good school shit. It doesn't even have to be litrpg if it is similar, as honestly if you took the stat screens out of Quest Academy it would be just like Harry Potter (which I've also read). I got about halfway through Super Powereds: Years 1-4 but despite enjoying a lot of it I just couldn't stay engaged for some reason.

It doesn't have to necessarily be school-based, but anything at all with this same feel to it? It has been a bit since a series sucked me in so completely like this, so I want more!

This has been good. Great find Void !

TJT said:

This has been good. Great find Void !

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All credit goes to Ritley for this one, I just wrote way too much about it!

Just bought Quest Academy 1, thanks for the suggestion.

I just finished book 5 of he who fights with monsters, am enjoying it so far.

Ok I read all of the Quest books.

While I liked them it definitely has a problem with two things.

1. Nothing really happens. Book climaxes are literally handwaved away at the last minute. I hated that.

2. Not sure how to describe this exactly. But it has serious problems with tone. Quest Academy exists because people are desperately needed to fight in the Demon War. Okay cool. When characters come in to make this a salient thing the school characters just go like "nah brah that dude is too uptight" even though he fights on the frontlines constantly and is jaded because of it. So you have this weird situation where the school characters are on edge with the army characters in order to maintain their more academia style teaching. When they all admit that the military training regimen would produce more usable soldiers for the war. Which is heavily stressed they are losing at the start of the book.

Endless laughing and chuckling to break tension. This is fine in general but every 10 sentences its "soandso laughs as he effortlessly resolves whatever they were complaining about the last few pages." This is used heavily and I got tired of it. Real tired. The entire series seems to be built around this type of interaction.

TJT said:

Ok I read all of the Quest books.

While I liked them it definitely has a problem with two things.

1. Nothing really happens. Book climaxes are literally handwaved away at the last minute. I hated that.

2. Not sure how to describe this exactly. But it has serious problems with tone. Quest Academy exists because people are desperately needed to fight in the Demon War. Okay cool. When characters come in to make this a salient thing the school characters just go like "nah brah that dude is too uptight" even though he fights on the frontlines constantly and is jaded because of it. So you have this weird situation where the school characters are on edge with the army characters in order to maintain their more academia style teaching. When they all admit that the military training regimen would produce more usable soldiers for the war. Which is heavily stressed they are losing at the start of the book.

Endless laughing and chuckling to break tension. This is fine in general but every 10 sentences its "soandso laughs as he effortlessly resolves whatever they were complaining about the last few pages." This is used heavily and I got tired of it. Real tired. The entire series seems to be built around this type of interaction.

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I definitely agree with a lot of that. They started the series off with the train ride through demon territory that was supposed to instill fear in us, and it did...until no one at the Academy seemed to really give a shit. However, after reading more, I kind of wrote it off to the general population being sort of lulled into complacency by the fact that most of it wasn't happening in their faces anymore. Sort of like how (I would imagine anyway) the everyday people of Israel just go about their business while they're actively at war. Or it could just be lazy writing. The timeframe seems a little too tight if everyone's parents were heroes fighting for their lives.

The laughing bugged me a bit too, and I get your complaint about it being used far too often to break the tension. But overall I prefer the kind of dialogue in this series to many, many others. At least they seem like relatable people. Too many of these books have absolutely shit characters/dialogues. For example, I'm reading the Rise of Mankind series, which is about a world that is seeded with dungeons to power up the people to face a nebulous future threat, and the main character accidentally gets control of a dungeon when he shouldn't have. Ignoring how the main characters act, I'm in the middle of the third book and I am already sick of the ridiculous number of asshole minor characters that apparently want nothing more than to rape and pillage. Don't get me wrong, that would absolutely happen in a post-apocalyptic world, but even then most of them would be smart enough not to literally say that when asked, while standing in front of the obviously powerful Dungeon Lord and surrounded by dozens of innocent women and children. Those characters are there because the author wanted the MC to do something brutal and "badass" but also justified, so hey, rapists!

Another series, We Fight Monsters, the main guy only cares about his quest to get home. Everyone else is a tool or a temptation to be avoided. Makes him extremely hard to root for.

And I'll be honest, I just like the rapport between the characters in Quest Academy, as it reminds me of Harry Potter I guess, and very few series since then have made me genuinely think the characters are friends. Of course, Sal is absolute shit at being a friend, but you get my point. HWFWM had a good core group of friends for many books, but it has sort of gotten out of hand and lost a lot of that feeling for me. Still good, but early on you really felt like they were close.

Anyway, for everyone reading the series now or in the future, it definitely has problems and some of them might be dealbreakers for you. But I still loved it despite those problems.

Maximis Velocity said:

I have been reading Jez Cajiao recently. I read all of the Rise of Mankind series and thought it was a great take on the Dungeon Master trope and so far the UnderVerse series is good as well. A little more adult themed than most but not too bad.

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I mentioned the Rise of Mankind series in my previous post, currently I've started the 4th book. Good enough to keep me going, particularly with the whole dungeon thing being something I haven't read in a fairly long time, but not amazing. I still can't bring myself to like the main character much, even though I can admit that I would probably be EXACTLY like him if I were in his shoes. I'd be telling people to fuck off, it's my fucking dungeon and they can get bent if they don't like it, throwing people from rooftops if they are rapists, etc. So believe me, I get it. But I can also realize that I'm sometimes a prick, and that doesn't make for a great main character in a story.

There is one thing that is massively bothering me at this point in the story though. Barry, the guy he stuck with the encampment across town, is like the fucking whipping boy for the main character (Matt). Literally every interaction is Barry saying pretty much anything and then Matt shitting all over him for stuff he has almost no control over. Just endlessly, over and over, every single fucking time Barry is in the scene, he gets shit on. Even after losing both his son and now wife in short order, Matt still treats him like a red-headed step-child. It is ridiculous and annoying, and I am actively rooting for Barry to just shoot him in the fucking face and see what happens to the dungeon.

The author has also begun dipping a toe in the whole "core cultivation" bullshit that I hate so much, so we'll see how that progresses. Hopefully it doesn't.

I do appreciate the more adult themes somewhat, although like everything they get a little tiresome after awhile. We get it, you like checking out your girlfriend's ass.