This book was first published 2020 and is written by Andrew Rowe. The story is considered a humorous fantasy while I would call it a Litrpg. It takes inspirations from rpg games such as Legend of Zelda and Dragon Quest to form a book that is joking around about clichés in video games. The audiobook is narrated by Suzy Jackson, who does the main characters voice, and Steve West, who does the automatic voice that narrates every time the main character defeat something or get a new skill and so on.
It follows our main heroine Yui Shaw who refuses to wait for a hero when the Demon King attacks them. She sets out to save the world despite not being the dashing male hero of the prophecy. Along the way she gather friends and finds out the truth of the circle of destructions that always comes when a new Demon King shows up.
Yui Shaw is rather flat and static for a main character. She is shown to not listen to anyone, clever but headstrong with her entire character revolving around defeating the demon king. All her backstory is about her tries to get chosen or conquering a trial to get a weapon or the like to defeat the demon lord. Frankly, this makes her rather uninteresting. Especially when her motivation for doing all this is that it needs to be done.
The side characters often have more backstory, not all of them but the fairy companion who is still devastated after her last hero died on her only to be revealed to be alive but punished by the gods had more of a backstory than the main character. I’m not sure how to feel about it, but the characters aren’t interesting enough or feel real enough for them to carry this story.
The world is interesting enough, though I can imagine that the gamers which this book are meant for might not think so since most of the places seem to be taken out of rpg games such as the Water Temple being from Legend of Zelda. We also don’t get enough backstory here to make the world seem alive. In fact, they keep saying that the horrible Demon King needed to be stopped and that he was going forward in a higher pace than before, but we are never told what he has done for everyone to hate him so much. Much of the story takes place in a idealistic world that doesn’t seem to lack anything so, why is the demon king such a threat outside him being called a demon king?
The humor also didn’t land for me. With the vague reasoning for their goal, the heaviness isn’t there to contrast the lightness which means that the book are just sunshine and rainbows. This means that the jokes don’t stick out as much and you have to look for them to find them. Such as them mentioning that the hero must only be a guy, but no one can answer why or the guy who is a Dark Lord is also named Dirk Lord. Very subtle…
Now the humor might not be funny to me but that can vary heavily depending on the person who listens to them. I might not be amused but others might. Though, I never understood those who though pointing out a fault in a story is supposed to be funny. I feel it demands a bit more than that, such as pointing out how illogical these tropes are or the like. Not just pointing out that they exist which this book does a lot.
So, if there aren’t much backstory, the characters aren’t fleshed out then what does the author fill the pages with? Skill, and inventory management along with long explanations of levels and attributes. Yes, the book is filled with the most boring part of a game. I have noticed that this is a common problem with books that depicts games or the like. So far, practically none has successfully made it interesting.
I cannot say that I enjoyed this book. The audiobook had good quality and the narrators did their job great. The problem was that the book didn’t deliver it to me. The premise works fine, but it feels shallow. The humor wasn’t for me and I have personally always felt that a deep story makes the best rpg games. This one follow old rpgs with a lot of skills, tedious grinding and stats to keep track of. I would give it a 2 out of 10. It wasn’t amusing to me but I have noticed that this book is really popular to other people so I might be one of the few that didn’t enjoy this book. It all seem to come down to personal taste.
With Kind Regards
Senefer.
Read with Senefer 