I pull together my LitRPG picks of 2020 from the reviews on the blog: Life in the North, the first System Apocalypse book that got me hooked, Land of the Undying, which breaks the usual formula, and the easy, overpowered fun of Legend of the Arch Magus. I also talk about how I ended up reading the genre on Scribd, Kindle Unlimited and Audible.
Life in the North is the one I’d start with, Land of the Undying is the one I’d tell you is different, and Arch Magus is a lot of fun if you can live with a hero who never hits a roadblock.
These are my LitRPG picks of 2020, and there aren’t many of them, because LitRPG was only just becoming a regular part of my reading that year. I’m a fan of SciFi and fantasy, as anyone who reads this blog knows, and I’d recently gotten hooked on a sub-genre of fantasy called LitRPG, or Literature, Role Playing Game. These three are the books I’d written about by the end of the year, and between them they cover most of what draws me to the genre, from a proper apocalypse to a goofy overpowered reincarnation. I’m sticking to what I’ve actually read or listened to rather than what’s trending, so don’t expect the big names you’ll find on every other list. A few of the titles you’d expect to see here I haven’t gotten to yet, and I’d rather not pretend otherwise.
If you’re new to it, the idea is that a character gets progression like a video game, with levels, skills and stats, and the story is built around that. A lot of the fun is watching a character get stronger in a way you can follow, and a lot of the frustration is how alike so many of these books are. It’s a sub-genre that suits audiobooks, too, which is how I read most of mine. I’ll tell you which of the three I’d start with, and which one is worth reading just because it does something different.
How I actually read LitRPG
Most of my LitRPG comes through Scribd, which is my go-to source for content about 80% of the time. It’s heavy on audiobooks, and while you don’t get to keep them like you do with Audible, the price is much lower, so I can listen to a lot more. I’m multitasking more than ever, and audiobooks are what I reach for when I’m exercising or driving around. Every so often something turns up on Kindle Unlimited or Audible that looks interesting enough to splurge on, and that’s how two of the three books below ended up in my queue. Services this cheap mean I can try a book on a hunch, which is the whole appeal in a genre with this many near-identical titles, and it’s the reason I’ve been able to read so much of it in such a short time.
The Audible math is worth explaining, because I’m not a fan of paying $30 for a book. A $15 monthly membership gives you a credit, and as a past member I got a promotion for two credits to come back. One of those was spoken for the moment I saw the next Stormlight Archive book was coming out in November, and I’ve absolutely loved everything else Brandon Sanderson has done, including The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance. That left me a second credit to spend on something else. I was also in the middle of a Drew Hayes audiobook called Going Rogue, the third part of a story I’ll get to in a future post. The splurge worked out fine, because the book I picked ended up being a light and easy distraction, and you’ll find it at the end of this list.
Life in the North, where it started for me
Life in the North is the first book in the System Apocalypse, a still in progress ten book series, and for me it’s the quintessential LitRPG. It’s quite possibly the book that got me hooked on the genre, and I’ve read it several times. Dungeon worlds get created when an abundance of raw mana needs an outlet, which forces animals to mutate into something much more dangerous. John Lee finds this out on a camping trip in the Yukon, stuck in an area well above his level with very little in the way of weapons or skills, and he has to acclimate fast if he wants to survive.
What I like is that it doesn’t feel like the usual fantasy. There are elves, orcs and minotaurs, but they’re alien species that have chosen Earth as a new home, so they aren’t the ones from any Tolkien book you might treat as gospel. The LitRPG elements are more SciFi in nature, with lasers, guns, machines and robots alongside the monsters, and John even gets a mecha suit with overtones of Iron Man. He’s a hero who knows his limits and when to fight and when to cut and run, and he keeps putting himself out there to save as many people as he can. There’s a wisecracking spirit who helps him navigate the changing world as well.
I’ll be honest that I often skip the character growth and the counting of levels, since I don’t need it to understand the story, though it doesn’t take you out of it too much. I’m now nine books into the series, and there are some growing pains along the way, but this one is a solid and enjoyable read and the reason I kept going. It’s also easy to jump into, since the first book sets up the rules quickly and the rest builds on them. If you only pick one thing from this list, I’d make it this.
Land of the Undying, the one that’s different
Most LitRPG follows a handful of formulas. The hero has to transfer his consciousness into the game to atone for a crime, like in the Way of the Shaman, or to earn money to save his family, like in Project Daily Grind, or to escape the end of the world, as in Rapture: Apocalypse Gates, or a personal doom, as in Alterworld. The System Apocalypse is the exceptional one for end of the world stories, and it’s the exceptional one of that group. It gets a bit frustrating when they’re all so much alike, and that’s why Land of the Undying struck me as something different. I found it on Kindle Unlimited while most of my LitRPG was coming from Scribd.
There’s still a global cataclysm, and it’s well explained: it makes humans and basically all other life on the planet go insane, and it kills nearly everyone almost overnight. The difference is that the two main characters have a life outside the game, and their relationship grows in the real world while their characters grow in the game. There’s no easy button to transfer, since it takes months of development to bring an AI online for a possible integration, and the NPCs are self-aware and know the difference between themselves and their undying visitors. Mace plays a drow elf and Shari is a light elf, and their races are at constant war in the game, which gives the story its drive.
My one gripe is that both characters seem too competent in real life, since Mace is a computer whiz and Shari a doctor, the exact skills the plot needs. It reminds me of Tom in The Scorched Earth, who always had the right gear and the right friends. Still, they’re fleshed out, their growth is nice and realistic, and they don’t get too many windfalls of divine providence. The zombies get bigger the more they eat, growing to 8 or 10 feet tall, and that’s when escaping into a video game starts to sound great. I want to know what happens to the characters and their world, and I think you will too.
Legend of the Arch Magus, the easy one
Legend of the Arch Magus is the one I bought on Audible with a spare credit, because I’d used the other one on the next Stormlight Archive book and needed something uncomplicated to fill time. The book jacket didn’t lie. I thought it would be LitRPG without the character sheets, but the hero’s a bit overpowered, a Mary Sue who can do almost anything he wants. I’m halfway through the third book and he still hasn’t hit a significant roadblock. If that bothers you, skip it, but I found it a lot of fun.
A wizard tried to make an elixir for everlasting life and ended up dying, then woke up thousands of years later in the body of a spoiled noble named Lark Marcus, who had just been killed by his kidnappers. You get the tropes you’d expect, like redemption, skills growth and unbeatable monsters that are handily defeated, along with lots of world building and two big mysteries about why he woke up when he did and what stopped that advanced society from advancing further. The characters are one-dimensional, with good guys who are good and bad guys who are bad, but if you want something simple and easy to get into, you probably aren’t looking for complex characters. The two books come as an omnibus on Audible, and the narration is good, with each character easy to recognize from the changes in tone and voice. It’s by no means perfect (for that, see how I feel about Brandon Sanderson), but it distracted me and made me want to come back for more. I’m very curious to see where Lark ends up in book two and beyond.
Which LitRPG series got you hooked, and would you have put it on this list? Tell me in the comments.
1 comment
A list like this always shows me what I was reaching for in a strange year. Looking back, I’m curious which of these you’d have started with. What was the first LitRPG that hooked you?