Not bad. Interesting perspective as the main character is a mimic. The lewdness is a little over the top though.
Listened via Audiobook. This is my first book into a new genre I discovered called LitRPG. Sylas Runewolf, main character, is dead. He finds himself in the underworld where he has to navigate the in's and out's of a new way of life using a "system menu", having a class granted to him as well as a pub.
The main series rotates around this form currency called MLUs (Mana Lumens). If anyone ever spends themselves down to zero, they go to The Abyss. Along the way, he finds friends, allies, enemies and a much slower pace of life.
Overall, theme was good. It's a good "slice of life" setting that I enjoy sometimes when you need a break from faster paced books. The challenges are interesting and there are challenges presented within the system. My critiques of this book is that the author has a tendency to repeat themselves a little too often. I don't know how many times it was told to Sylas "Your mana lumens are too low" or "Don't do that, it will drain you". Whenever a challenge is presented to Sylas, he tends to repeat the question given to him by the other character and after a 10 hour audio book, it gets much. Some repetition is needed, such as him checking his status screen, the warnings the system gives him, etc, but Sylas didn't need to repeat himself that much.
On a different note, the audiobook reader was fantastic. He had a very calm voice that kept you hooked. Audio quality was great and there was no over dramatics to his reading. You felt like there were multiple characters, such as the voice of the other villagers. Good textbook version of a well recorded audiobook.
Would recommend!
Listened to as audiobook. Where has this book been my whole life? This book feels like a combination of 1984 and Ready Player One. I'm trying to avoid spoilers, but this is a heavy read, but I just couldn't put it down. Characters were relatable and while what Ender was going through was unimaginable, you felt like you were along for the ride the entire way.
As a note for the audiobook, the narrators were great. This was a blend of the traditional "one narrator" style and "fully acted". The narrator was typically based on the point of view of who was narrating at the moment. For example, Ender was one voice, the generals was a different one and Ender's sister was a female. There's one point near the end that was a little jarring because two narrators were "talking" to each other, but it gave a nice charm that you don't get sometimes when listening to the book that you get when you have different voices for different people in your own head.
Read as audiobook. Overall, good book. I liked the worldbuilding that went into this book and the two main characters were as different as they could be. This is a nice little slice of life novel that doesn't focus on the heavy fantasy themes, but has them nicely woven around a story of a tea and book shop. If you like cozy novels that feel like a nice cup of tea, this is your type of book.
Read via audiobook.
This book was absolutely fantastic and not what I was expecting. The voice of the narrator is a rogue AI who finds himself int he middle of a situation where other things have gone rogue and he's dealing with the complicated relationship between being a robot and his human "colleagues". I'm not going to go into the plot much, but it was a great mystery, a great short read and something I wish there was more of.
The narrator for the audiobook was great and breathed life into this book that other narrators have missed. He gave the right emphasis to the sarcasm and wit of the main character and made the audiobook version that much better. 10/10 would read again and probably will because of how short it was.
Overall, not a bad book, but I'm not going to listen/read to the rest of the series. The book revolves around two characters, Sophie and Agatha who are kidnapped and taken to a school where the students are separated into two different schools, Good and Evil. There, they learn how to survive in fairy tales and learn magic, the rules to fairy tales and life skills. The twist is that Sophie believes she belongs in the School for Good and Agatha (who is a goth girl who lives in a cemetery) is trying to get home. However, Sophie gets placed in the School for Evil and Agatha in the School for Good.
Overall, there were a few surprises. The background of the school and worldbuilding was very interesting, but you can tell the author wrote this book with a series in mind. The final chapter closes out with no real closure for a book that is supposed to be teaching people how to live in fairy tales. If there was a closure chapter, I would have been happier with this book. My personal opinion is that the author needs to visit her own school and take a few lessons about how to write a fairy tale.
I would recommend the book for a good YA series to a teenager trying to learn that beauty is not on the surface and actions speak louder than words and who are questioning how to move through the world in middle school or high school. This book would be good for any gender child, but it is more focused on female aspects of "beauty" and "vanity". The boys in the book are all seen as "tough, muscular princes" who all rush headlong into challenges and want to beat their problems with a stick, so not much of a lesson for boys to learn in this case unless they can picture themselves in the role of a princess.
