Stijn
Okay series, but too simple/unambitious.
System apocalypse, humanity has to fight instanced dungeons while living in solo instanced hubs.
Pros:
+ completed
+ okay writing
Cons:
- Making everything instanced and separated feels like a cop-out for the author not to have to write meaningful worldbuilding or character interactions.
- progression loses all meaning about halfway through.
- Final “grand reveal” fell flat.
Almost dropped the series here. This book is just endless statpages and pointless fully described fights against trash mobs.
Great series if you don't mind skimming/skipping big parts
It's an enjoyable read with great progression and world building, but it's held back by lots of bloat, very flat/emotionless writing and an MC with no personality.
Difficult one to rate for me.
On on side, It's VR, so imo there are 0 stakes here. This makes it so that I've skipped or skimmed most combat in this series.
On the other, the side characters Frank and House are comedy gold and carry this entire series to the point where I've actually finished 5 books while still skipping most combat.
Solid funny & completed litrpg series with a rushed ending.
Decent writing, good pacing, the jokes are a bit forced and childish, but they're okay for some chuckles. The ending however is terrible and probably the most rushed bs I've ever read. The entire plottwist + final battle(s) + finale is maybe 100 pages. Bit of a shame
So solid 3/5 for me. Don't regret sticking with it, won't come back to it either.
System Apocalypse with focus on “realistic” response.
If you've read Shadow Sun, this series is exactly the same but better.
So imo you have 2 routes with System Apocalypse. You've got Primal Hunter/DOTF with a focus on grinding/leveling/loot,... and you have Phase Shift/Shadow Sun/Dawn Of The Void where they focus on structurally dealing with the apocalypse with guns/military/politics.
Phase Shift is strongly in group 2. The story revolves around our MC and his group slowly retaking the US. They take cities, build a military,... They get stronger but it's not really the focus.
The entire series is consistently well written, but overstays its welcome. The first time our MC retakes a major city is pretty cool, the 8th time around it's hard to get excited.
Side note: The retro cover art for this is terrible and kept this on my backlog for a long time
Great series held back by the secondary MC.
So our main MC Ryun is really well done. Complex character, the backflash timeline is interesting, cool progression (both emotionally and skill-wise) and great side characters.
The problem this series has is the secondary MC Zack. He's dull, generic and just plain boring to read. Books 2 and 4 have a lot of him and I found myself simply skimming all his chapters (you don't lose much tbh)
pros:
+ Completed series
+ decent writing,
+ an actual plot
+ fun main cast with lots of banter
cons:
- The stats make no sense and skills might as well not exist.
- Lots of fight scenes that massively overstay their welcome.
- First arc of book 1 almost made me drop the series. I'd recommend just skimming through it until
the 55% mark.
pros:
- solid writing
- interesting plot (while heavy handed at times)
cons:
- progression is boring and more of an afterthought.
- MC is an annoying, inconsistent, overbearing prick.
- author seems to have some weird fetishes
This could be so great, but for me it's mostly held back by the way the progression/litrpg elements are handled. System popups with vital upgrades get ignored. MC's progression is crippled from book 1 to 3, levels seem to be mostly just ignored,... it basically feels like the entire System could be scrapped without it having much impact
Shadow Sun is a system apocalypse litrpg where everyone seems to mostly forget the system, the apocalypse and the rpg. There are classes, spells, stats, monsters,... but they mostly get ignored and instead we have shotgun fights against other human settlements and settlement building.
Think The Walking Dead season 47, but with more plot armor.
I'm dropping the series here.
4 stars for book 1, 3 for the series as a whole.
- Solid start
- well written
- completed series
- ending of the series is satisfying, but rushed.
2 army vets get isekai'ed into a litrpg world. Interesting concept and the book is really written with army vet experience in mind. Our characters take a lot more structural practical approaches to most problems compared to most books in this genre.
The problem is the writing. The author seems to randomly forget how English works midway through sentences. It got to the point where I started double checking if this wasn't some Chinese google translate. Sorry but stuff like this should be removed from Amazon with a popup to the author saying “come back after you actually finish the book instead of sending in your first draft”
Okay system apocalypse story, but the powers are a bit convoluted and our MC is OP because of pure luck instead of hard work or risks.
Average read, couldn't help but compare it with Farseer trilogy. Feels like Weeks tried to go for the same “the world isn't a fairy tail” vibe, but didn't have the writing skill to accomplish this without making the story feel forced.
And that's not even talking about the completely childish and just awkward to read romance part of the books.
Starts off a bit slow, especially if you're like me and are trying to figure out who the hell is who 4 years after the last one, but once it gets going around the 25% mark, it doesn't let go until the end.
I always love reading a series where the author dares to experiment with his style. The first 3 were completely first person. He tried something new from book 4 with the different pov's, went a bit too far in 5 and now dials it back down to a more focused story. You can actually read Pierce Brown narrowing down this writing style to something that really fits him and I can't wait for the next one.
What a ride
Pretty good.
So this book covers finally finishing up Nevermore and the following homecoming. Nothing very interesting happens here, but while Nevermore had its moments, it overstayed its welcome and I'm happy it's done and we can move on.
My only worry is that “the big bad” that's been setting up - Ell'hakan+Yip Of Yore - kind of feels... underwhelming. They haven't done anything impressive and we're already know they are falling for Villy's games by the different POV's. + Their powerset doesn't make much sense. If your power is based on creating the perception of power, that all disappears if people know what you're doing. Still interested in seeing where it goes tho.
Everything that's here is great, but the content itself is starting to annoy me.
70% of this book is a filler arc again. The arc itself is great. Well written, interesting storyline, no issues whatsoever. The other 30% is setup for the next book.
That's 2 books in a row now with barely any mainline story progress. I was hoping the whole “settling his clan” arc would be finished book 6, now I'd be surprised if we get there before book 9. With 2 books a year releasing, that's 4 years for what feels like a fairly minor story arc (no progress with the new power factions in sight).
Still enjoying the series, but I'm hoping things get moving soon.
Okay and well written as always, but it's pretty much just a compilation of side stories.
The series really needs another big story arc.
Not Great
This is just a full book training montage. There's no story, no real challenges, no stakes, it's only “look how OP Zeke is” followed by 3 different pov reactions and then him going home to bang Reyna during the weekend - rinse and repeat about half a dozen times and that's it
There's just not much here.
The series had an awesome start, but this book was just boring.
The focus on the floor gimmicks was already bad with the pirate bs and got even worse now that any relevant side characters got replaced by randoms that disappear next floor. Roan is a lot less interesting than the combination of the other gods and even the powers and fights fell flat.
This was a slog to get through and I hope the series somehow gets back to the simpler story of humanity trying to beat the tower with some lunatic gods.
Kind of thorn on this one. It's well written and I enjoyed everything that's here, but Eryk is just frustrating as hell.
On the one hand he still refuses to trust his closest friends, on the other hand he also doesn't take his numerous chances to simply disappear when everyone thinks he died. He doesn't really has a goal and just goes along with everything.
The series started a bit generic, but well executed but has been shifting to plain boring. While the fights are still well written, they're just endless with no real purpose individually. There's no need for a fight by fight description for every single floor. There's 500 pages here and the story and even character progression account for maybe 15 of those.
The tower itself is imo also a fairly boring setting so far. Endless dungeons with (mostly) only our main party vs monsters.
I hope the main story starts kicking off in the next book, otherwise I'm probably dropping this.
Bit of a letdown
As always: the writing is great and the characters are incredible. Problem is that nothing happens. This feels like a full filler book. There's nothing exciting happening like the tournament arc, there's no new major characters, it's just feel good filler and nothing else.
An okay isekai story, but heavy on the stats and the MC is too overpowered.
MC gets a buggy introduction into the system. It forces him to be a support, but his mana is bugged and became infinite. MC gets damage negation and magic negation aura's early on that combined with his infinite mana just make him immortal. The author still tries to make combat somewhat interesting, but... it nothing really matters because nothing can touch him.