Book 1), Patch 17: Epic LitRPG (Realm of Arkon

Here is the thing... Books can be badly written and still be be good. A great concept or exciting story can be held back by poor grammar og sloppy editing, but as long as you can figure out what is going on you can still enjoy the book.

This book is an eksempel of the other kind of bad writing. Sometimes you dont know who is speaking, or in fact what they are doing. There are sentences in this book that makes no sense. Sometimes the author doesn't even explain what is happening and you are left to guess, concepts are mentioned, but not explained. Not as a narrative device to make us wonder what they are, but because the author apparently figured we would be able to read his mind from across the sea. Sections of the book have flashbacks, but they serve no purpose, the character in the flashback is either killed or quickly left behind. At one point we get a flashback within a flashback. They where pointless and I frankly started skimming after the third one. How this books has so many positive reviews I cant figure.

---- Minor Spoiler ----

At one point the MC is apparently attacked on the street, he runs away and suddenly he mentions that the people he is running away from are officers of the law. There where no description of them ad being officers of the law before this or why he thinks they are officers. They just are. And this is but a minor eksampels of the author not mentioning key details, and they add op quickly.

---- End spoiler ----

Its sad actually, because the germ of a good book is here. The basic premise is there, the LitRPG elements are there, and functional. There might be a bit to many lucky breaks for the main character in the beginning, but in the authors defence he does have an explanation for that.

However the fact that at times you cant figure out who is speaking, and what is going on makes me say: "Skip this one, your time is better spent on other books"

I hope you find this usefull and I apolegice for the language, I am not at native English speaker.

All in all, I really enjoyed the novel. The beginning is a little wishy washy because the premise is kind of hard to believe. The first chapter or two are below average I’d say, but then… I don’t wanna give away the plot; all I’ll say is that the author’s original style begins to shine through, which makes this novel worth reading, and not just more waste of digital ink. The action moves at a rapid pace, pulling you in, and before long you can’t put the damn thing down!!! And, as you might expect, everything ends on a huge cliffhanger… Judging from book one, I expect the Realm of Arkon series to be at the forefront of the young but rapidly developing LitRPG genre.

I love this book and this series.

**minor spoiler**
If you've played Skyrim and World of Warcraft and liked both, this is an excellent series for you. Imagine being the only player in a game, you start off at level 1 and encounter a scripted even that auto levels you up 60+ levels. The only down side? you're in a 200+ level area. It just get's even more crazy from there. But you like like power gaming this is the series for you. Try out the first book and you'll want to read the entire series!!!

Sorry. I am spoiled by other writings. I wish to get a story with a high level of ability to tell a tale ( straight up ! ) ... This did not deliver.
My thought is that the author needs to "grow his craft" .

This is a good example of an author grounding his characters reactions ,to what is happening to them, in reality. The grounded nature of the characters and setting makes of relatable and interesting World.

There was something unique about the psychology and characterization in this book that made it stand out among it's genre. I don't want to spoil the experience for anyone, but if you are at all interested in gaming literature please download and read the sample at least. As for myself, I'm looking forward to delving deeper in when the second book is released.

The translation is very natural and suites the tone of the story well.

...
I was a little impatient for more info and mucked around some. The author's full name is Georgy Smorodinsky (Георгий Смородинский). This book was released as "Семнадцатое обновление" (17th Update) under the LitRPG sereis banner, with the second being released as the "Проклятое Княжество, Мир Аркона-2" (Cursed Province, Realm of Arkon #2.)
Link to original publisher listing: https://eksmo.ru/catalog/book/semnadtsatoe-obnovlenie-ID1809587/

It's a little odd that the author's name is so different. Not that there's anything hinky going on, but it's weird to cut yourself in half between markets like that. Whatever the case, I hope they find success with this series, because this first book is one of my favorite books this year.

This was an amazing addition to the litRPG genre, on par with Way of the Shaman and Play to Live, the other bests in this genre (all from Russian authors, funnily enough). This book was consistently entertaining throughout, and had some really good scenes of imagery, which reveal how the game-world quickly becomes the real-world for the main characters.

The plot is similar to others of this genre: MC gets stuck in game world, but gets a few lucky breaks that puts him in a class all of his own. The main character in this book was not overpowered, which was nice, as many books in this genre fall into the trap of quickly making the MC all powerful. There were a few times where the POV shifted, but the vast majority of the story stuck with the main character, which was nice, in my opinion. The stats on leveling up were clearly displayed, and the fights and game-world were clearly thought out and explained.

There were a few editing and translation errors, mostly consisting of misused expressions or inconsistencies within the story (i.e. at one point 33% toughness later is down to 31% toughness), but these errors were not enough to drop a star, as I would still consider it one of the best in the genre. The only reason this book did not get 5 stars from me (which I really wanted to give it), was because of the ending. As such, it really wasn't any kind of resolution, simply just a place in the story the author decided the book reached the limit in terms of length. Even worse, an entirely new story arc begins in the last 10% of the story, which reaches no conclusion at all. If the next book in the series was already out and I could read it immediately, this really wouldn't be a bad thing (as the book is already plenty long by itself), but the sequel is not out yet, and I have no idea when it will be out. This lack of any sort of conclusion or resolution to the first book in the series caused it to get 4 instead of 5 stars.

I found the story quite immersive, at least from the eyes of the MC. Written with a lot of humour, in an interesting gaming universe, and with enough action to satisfy. I remain impressed with the quality of Russian LitRPG. So far, none I've read has been a disappointment. A few story breakers in this one though: This author used the technique of changing the point of view to a secondary character or NPC frequently, in order to illustrate the beginning of a quest. It inevitably broke me out of immersion, and I had to resist the temptation of skipping to get back to the "Real" story. I felt it was unnecessary. Additionally, switching the point of view to a secondary character to close the book, after the reader has been completely invested in the MC's adventure was a questionable choice imho. So this is more like a 3.5 stars for me. I'll give it a 4 as apart from those points, this was a real fun read.

I really wanted to like this, and there was quite a bit that was good. But this was really hard to get into. The MC is a graphic game artist who saves a gal from getting raped from one of the games owner who then sends him into the game as a hated avatar in a super high level area. The Mc then proceeds to get killed over and over and over... again until he finally gets away after many respawns with 100% pain levels felt.
So far so good. The problem is that the MC relives memories for chapters whenever a NPC tells him a story whenever he gets a quest. That is so frustrating and really slows the book down. Then towards the end, the MC is in a sticky situation and we are left in a cliffhanger while the Author changes over to a new MC who starts the game for normal players for the last third of the book never returning to the main MC. I just can't handle being jerk around like that, hence three stars.

This (audio)book series really has me hooked and it has since the first book. Reading through a few of the comments I think it might have been a better choice to have the back story of Max intermixed or start the 2nd book but I don't think it detracts much from the overall story. I love the twist on "person trying new immersive game" and I'm really excited about where the story is going (currently reading through the 3rd book). Highly recommended for your LitRPG Library. The only thing I wish I could find is a map as I'm no good remembering the names of the cities and villages.

Enjoyable, good entry in the LitRPG subgenre, except....the levels and HP and XP were kind of out there, when compared to the normal MMORPGs that this books comes from. For example, the main character wakes up in a place where the majority of NPCs were level 200+. Umm, yeah, considering many MMORPGs don't even break 100 levels for anything. One of the mobs had 8 million HPs. Things like that were kind of add

Regardless, still a good read. There were some jarring jumps when going from flashback to main character to flashback, and then in the last 1/5th of the book, it jumped to a different set of main characters, leaving the previous main character on kind of a cliff hanger. Odd jump.

I enjoyed this read, the characters are fun, their motivations are more or less realistic, and the world is interesting. There are a lot of unknowns left to find out, and that is acceptable, too many authors try to tell everything out front, and then put you on as the character, when the person you're following would have no way to find out all of the big issues, so it makes sense that we don't yet know what happened to make the world go crazy.

It was going great, right up until the complete and utter shift from the main character to Max. I basically found myself skimming through the last 15% of the book to get back to K's story. A real let down to suddenly have the story change from one story, to another in such a small frame.

Unlike some reviewers I did not get thrown by the last part of the book, in fact I liked the end more than much of the beginning. This is because the author seems to have a hard time drawing the world for you, possibly because he focuses on too much rather than the immediate environment of the characters. I did find myself skipping visions because they really had no impact on the story. I expect the next book will be better. I hope the author makes it unlimited just like this one as I don't see myself dishing out money beyond what the unlimited account costs. It was a good story with good characters.

This series will be my fourth LitRPG series. I am enjoying it immensely. Some reviewers have mentioned the abrupt POV change, and while it is quite abrupt I don think it detracts from the story. Take the chance, read it.

This is a great start to a series! Granted, some overall story flow editing would have either resulted in a longer book (with more time spent in the second story line) or a shorter one (leaving second story line to next book). However, the overall story easily overcomes this. Well worth giving it a try.

A multi character/person look at going perma two people in different circumstances one forced to go perma one chooses to go Perma surrounded by a really good background story. Overall It was a very polished story I think this author had the opportunity to read a few other litrpgs before he wrote this book. There are parts of the book were he takes it for Granted that you know how certain technology items should work.

Please keep writing. Loved the book and the world.

I'm marking the book 5stars on its merits as a great adventure. It's hard to find good litRPG like this.

My one hope is that future translations into English are carried out with a little more accuracy.

Thank you again for the great adventure.

A friend recommended this series to me and I have to say, I enjoyed it greatly. If you're one of those folks who enjoys series like Log Horizon, The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor, or LitRPGs in general, chances are you'll like this too.

I really love Litrpg series! As a gamer myself, and an obsessive reader, I find myself highly addicted to books such as this! And as an aspiring author, I find mysef highly inspired to write a series such as Play To Live, End Online, Feyland/Feygaurd, and now in addition this book and and the continuing series! I can't wait for the next book!

Not bad, but not special either... a completely run of the mill litrpg book, if you've read any of the russian litrpg books nothing in the book will be surprising or new other than a few very minor plot elements.

Good:
The pacing is good. The characters are ok. The universe is interesting.

Bad:
The writing...
- Why are there are long from minor side characters? And when I say long, I mean - say a side character has 3 pages of interaction in the primary storyline, the long (and mostly pointless backstory) reminiscences could be as long as 10-15 pages. Why?
- Switching POV from the primary character to what appears to be a minor secondary character 3/4's of the way through the book without returning to the primary protagonist. Why?

I'm glad this book was available via kindle unlimited, I'd be upset if spent money on it.