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sirwilhelm's review
5.0
This book grows on you the more you read.
I wasn’t really sold on this novel for the first 10-20% because it all seemed too easy and far too lucky for my taste. But I was intrigued by the world/system and it’s surroundings, in the setting the author created. As that gets expanded on I found myself being drawn further and further in until, by the end, I was absolutely mesmerized by this immersive, intriguing, well thought out universe that has been presented to us.
If the book had nothing else going for it then I think that by itself would lead me to recommend it to be. However, it also has interesting dialogue, scenarios, and a very fast progression system that lets you feel like the MC is an actual main/important character in the world.
I think this book could rub people the wrong way, in the aspects I described above, but it’s definitely worth picking up.
I wasn’t really sold on this novel for the first 10-20% because it all seemed too easy and far too lucky for my taste. But I was intrigued by the world/system and it’s surroundings, in the setting the author created. As that gets expanded on I found myself being drawn further and further in until, by the end, I was absolutely mesmerized by this immersive, intriguing, well thought out universe that has been presented to us.
If the book had nothing else going for it then I think that by itself would lead me to recommend it to be. However, it also has interesting dialogue, scenarios, and a very fast progression system that lets you feel like the MC is an actual main/important character in the world.
I think this book could rub people the wrong way, in the aspects I described above, but it’s definitely worth picking up.
vittorioseg's review
1.0
It has very poor worldbuilding that just takes me out of the story. Trillions of times more expensive than gold? How does that work? Why does it work that way? Why if it is realistic (A word that I find meaningless), does still function in the idea that the best way to train newbies is to send them without word nor training to die in the thousands? It just... it just seem thoughtlessly constructed. And I know that worldbuilding is not the end of all stories and there are themes and character arcs, but its just too distracting to get invested in the narrative and so I can't bring myself to care for the characters or their outcomes.
cerv's review
2.0
The City and The Dungeon - Matthew P. Schmidt
Second day of self-published. This a LitRPG set on a post-apocalyptic Earth. I gave this one a 4, the highest rating of "maybe", but I misjudged. This is empathetically not a good book. More so than any other book I've ever finished this book would have benefitted from a professional editor telling the author what an idiot he was being. This is only the second self-published book I've finished. The book would need to be entirely reworked for it to attain a semblance of being worthwhile. I can't recommend this to anyone regardless.
I don't know why he presented it as is. The book really would have been far better for everyone involved if this had been a book series or a single book with entirely reduced scope. Far too much happens with far too little detail. In some ways it's basically an outline of what could have been a multi-book series. Far too many disparate ideas are also all thrown together. The author contends with economics, politics, religion, addiction, PTSD, government, existentialism, and various other topics. Unfortunately, when he does so, he either fails at it entirely or fails to explore it in any detail. The author is aware of some of their shortcomings by having the characters discuss these shortcomings, but they always ultimate dismiss the shortcoming as irrelevant. The writing style and narrative framing is a mess. There's an autistic character that is depicted relatively well. I wonder if it's from personal experience or Temple Grandin's documentation of autism.
The book is a class-based system with auras showing the strength of an individual. The party goes into a dungeon. Everyone is functionally immortal as long as they are later revived. The characters are all cardboard cutouts that never develop in any meaningful way, especially the protagonist. They make it to floor 76 of I guess 100, no one knows, though they literally skipped floors 52-74. Most of the other floors happen off-screen. Overall, most everything does really. The book takes place over roughly a bit more than a year, though only a tiny bit of that is detailed. As for the economy, a violet crystal is worth a sextillion of the base red crystal that 90% of the population uses.
While I could have typed multiple 3,000 character posts on this, it's wasn't worth my time or the reader's.
If this book had reached its theoretical maximum potential, by which I do mean the book rather than the author, I believe it could have been traditionally published by a major publisher and if marketed correctly could have been a relatively popular seller, comparable to DanMachi. Yes, I am being presumptuous.
TL;DR: Can't recommend to anyone. Overflowing with wasted potential.
Second day of self-published. This a LitRPG set on a post-apocalyptic Earth. I gave this one a 4, the highest rating of "maybe", but I misjudged. This is empathetically not a good book. More so than any other book I've ever finished this book would have benefitted from a professional editor telling the author what an idiot he was being. This is only the second self-published book I've finished. The book would need to be entirely reworked for it to attain a semblance of being worthwhile. I can't recommend this to anyone regardless.
I don't know why he presented it as is. The book really would have been far better for everyone involved if this had been a book series or a single book with entirely reduced scope. Far too much happens with far too little detail. In some ways it's basically an outline of what could have been a multi-book series. Far too many disparate ideas are also all thrown together. The author contends with economics, politics, religion, addiction, PTSD, government, existentialism, and various other topics. Unfortunately, when he does so, he either fails at it entirely or fails to explore it in any detail. The author is aware of some of their shortcomings by having the characters discuss these shortcomings, but they always ultimate dismiss the shortcoming as irrelevant. The writing style and narrative framing is a mess. There's an autistic character that is depicted relatively well. I wonder if it's from personal experience or Temple Grandin's documentation of autism.
The book is a class-based system with auras showing the strength of an individual. The party goes into a dungeon. Everyone is functionally immortal as long as they are later revived. The characters are all cardboard cutouts that never develop in any meaningful way, especially the protagonist. They make it to floor 76 of I guess 100, no one knows, though they literally skipped floors 52-74. Most of the other floors happen off-screen. Overall, most everything does really. The book takes place over roughly a bit more than a year, though only a tiny bit of that is detailed. As for the economy, a violet crystal is worth a sextillion of the base red crystal that 90% of the population uses.
While I could have typed multiple 3,000 character posts on this, it's wasn't worth my time or the reader's.
If this book had reached its theoretical maximum potential, by which I do mean the book rather than the author, I believe it could have been traditionally published by a major publisher and if marketed correctly could have been a relatively popular seller, comparable to DanMachi. Yes, I am being presumptuous.
TL;DR: Can't recommend to anyone. Overflowing with wasted potential.
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