Summary:
You know what’s worse than breaking up with your girlfriend? Being stuck with her prize-winning show cat. And you know what’s worse than that? An alien invasion, the destruction of all man-made structures on Earth, and the systematic exploitation of all the survivors for a sadistic, intergalactic game show. That’s what.
Join Coast Guard vet Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, as they try to survive the end of the world—or just get to the next level—in a video game-like, trap-filled fantasy dungeon. A dungeon that’s actually the set of a reality television show with countless viewers across the galaxy. Exploding goblins. Magical potions. Deadly, drug-dealing llamas. This ain’t your ordinary game show.
Review:
Think Hunger Games meets Dungeons and Dragons and you’ll get this novel, but do realize that it leans heavily on the D&D aspect. I’d actually classify this book as LitRPG (Literature based on Role Playing Games), which can be an enjoyable genre if you love numbers. Gamers of both tabletop RPGs and online RPGs manage their characters with what are called “stats”–scores that codify their strength, intelligence, charisma, etc. in comparison to any enemies that they encounter. There is a lot of that in this novel. I mean, A LOT. If you’re put off by discussions centering around how many points you have for spellcasting and how much each spell costs, you may want to skip this one.
It’s not just confined to the characters, either. There are weapons, items, potions, treasure boxes, and so on, all coming with their own descriptions and filler text. A lot of the descriptions of these things contain jokes centering on Earth culture, although here I use the term “joke” loosely, as I didn’t find most of it funny. Mostly I just rolled my eyes.
Beyond the whole LitRPG thing, I found it hard to get into this book, and by the end was actively slogging to get through it. I’m one of those readers that finds it difficult to justify not finishing a book, so I pushed myself to make it to the end. It starts off very slowly–other than the initial destruction of all structures, there’s no action for 100 pages or so. It’s all just scene setting, info-dumping, and lots of numbers. Beyond that, there’s a lot of gore and violence, and again, that’s not necessarily bad, but after a while it did get repetitive. If you’re in the mood to see lots of tiny monsters getting literally stomped and kicked to death, then this is more to your speed than mine.
There are hints of a larger story involving rival corporations in the galactic community that are influencing what happens in the game, but overall, I felt like there were several aspects of the novel that were nicked from The Hunger Games, like the talk shows featuring the dungeon crawlers, the corporate sponsorships of players, and the defined areas in which action takes place. Within that setting, it’s just a lot of fighting: players and monsters; players and other players; you name it, it fights with something. It made me feel that, overall, the novel was derivative and kind of repetitive.
I really wanted to like this book more, as the description sounded really interesting, but I found it to be tedious. I’m slightly curious about what might happen next, so I may pick up the next book, but I’ll have to be in the mood for something that’s little more than non-stop fighting, monsters, and gore. If that sounds like it’s right up your alley, more power to you, but I would recommend that most people give this one a pass.
