The Grand Game

Coming back to this after having read all 7 books that are currently available in this series.

They are enjoyable, solid 3/5 stars. Not amazing, but certainly worth reading, and the protagonist is a normal dude instead of an autistic introvert that thinks other people are icky. Yes, I'm looking at multiple other litrpg series right now. I've quit several otherwise “ok” series simply because I hate the main character far more than any villain the author can dream up. coughRandidlycough

But the reason I'm backtracking and reviewing this book, and boosting the star rating by one as well, is because there is NO CULTIVATION in the entire series! Thank you baby Jesus. It was ok for a bit when I first started getting into litrpg, but it has become the focus of far too many series. I can't even bring myself to read the latest Defiance of the Fall book because the last one was literally 700 pages of navel gazing by the main character, contemplating his core and his dao and whatever bullshit the author thinks people want. Maybe they do, but I don't, and I am ECSTATIC that this book has absolutely zero. And if you are like me, maybe you'll read my review and feel that refreshing breath of fresh air wafting over you as you contemplate an entire series without that crap.

So yeah. Not the most amazing series ever, but solid, and none of the annoying stuff I hate. Maybe a bit too much game messages early on, but it gets a lot better. If I have one complaint it is one that is shared by most litrpg; side characters often get left behind for multiple books/thousands of pages while the main character gets trapped in a dungeon or mentally masturbates to their core or whatever. That happens here a lot, and it kind of bugs me, but what can you do? I still really enjoyed this series, although I should warn you that it is written in that typical Royal Road style where every chapter is about 5 minutes long, so you end up thinking you'll just read one more, and suddenly it is 3am and you need to be up for work in a few hours. Yeah, that happened to me pretty much constantly with this series, which shows that I did in fact enjoy it and want to read more.