Brad the Impaler: A LitRPG Adventure

Revised my original 4* down to 3* after trying to articulate to a friend what I thought of this book.

I liked it, and will read more. The main character and his dog are appealing and fun to follow, although highly reminiscent of Carl and Donut (the author at least admits to picking that author's brain, so I'm not going to fault him for it either). The game world is completely lame at this point, to the point that it is almost annoying how bland it is. Aside from the seemingly required snarky “system” there is no life to it except for the guide, Fortune. I really like her, and it is clear there is going to be more content involving her in the future, but if I take just what is present in this book...meh.

I like Brad. I like Slash. I like the fact that Judas Priest was a foundational part of Slash growing up. I like the Easter eggs in the chapter titles. But I am bored with the game world and mechanics, and Brad railing against them to no effect. I feel his despair and his anger at being told almost nothing about what to expect, because I feel despair about not knowing anything either. It is fine to keep the reader and characters in the dark, but something has to be exciting, otherwise it is just boring and why would I keep reading? So far, my reason to keep reading are the characters, but eventually I'll give up on them too if nothing interesting happens. And when I say interesting, I don't mean completing quests and building shelters and such. I mean learning about the world and the reason for it. The inspiration, Dungeon Crawler Carl, at least has a pretty solid bit of world-building to back everything up. This is sort of like someone never played a computer rpg and was just told how it works and made up literally the most generic system ever.

And finally, the tipping point for me deducting a point is the lack of consistency in Brad's backstory (was he a pitcher and a quarterback in school, or was he bullied until senior year?? usually it isn't both) and the author's need to use him to pontificate upon societal “problems”. I don't care. Keep your politics to yourself. I read books like this to escape, not hear about things that I see every day in the real world and that you think somehow your litrpg book is going to suddenly make a difference. It isn't. The only difference would be that I stop reading because eventually I can't stand the injection of opinions where they are unwanted and unnecessary.