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nedjemet 's review for:
The Primal Hunter
by Zogarth
Potential trigger warning for mental health rep:
There's a good story here, but the pacing and the focus are painful, making it a book that I'd only recommend to a select few.
I love the concept of getting trapped in a video game or randomly ported to another world, which means that I want to love LitRPGs. Sadly, the genre consistently fails to win my heart and it's for one glaring reason: these books are clearly written by people whose main experience with story telling is video games and table top RPGs like D&D.
The story telling styles favored in those mediums is wildly different from what most book lovers are looking for because video games and table top RPGs are interactive mediums where the story is also a game. This means that people are fine with lots of unimportant side content to level up their character before the big boss or to just allow them to play around in the world they're be unleashed in. They also don't want things like time skips because they want to play out the full story and make all the choices for their character.
Books are not interactive media. What makes for a good video game experience makes for a lousy book and Primal Hunter is a prime example of that. A large portion of this book is dedicated to leveling up our main character - Jake - and you could cut most of it without losing a thing. This is made even worse by the fact that the book has very little in the way of an actual plot. The story starts with Jake and a bunch of his coworkers getting magically portaled into another world where they're informed that their universe has now been made part of "The System." As part of their integration into The System, they must complete a tutorial whose goal is basically just survive. There's no greater quest driving the narrative. There's actually no quests at all. Everything that happens in this book is little more than people making best guesses about how to survive and what will happen when the tutorial ends. And it don't even end in this book! The tutorial takes up both of the first two books and that is was too long to go without telling us anything of substance about the actual plot of this series! Multi hour tutorials may work in video games, but they don't in novels.
I won't get into major spoilers here, but do know that you're not going to enjoy this book if you have faith in humanity or if you just want to have faith in humanity. The novel takes a very grim approach to what it thinks people would do if put into this situation. I only finished it because I was listening to the audiobook as I did chores and this is a very easy book to pick up and put down because it's got so much filler and so little substance.
If the premise intrigues you and you like listening to D&D podcasts or watching twitch streams, then you may like the book. Everyone I know who gets really into LitRPG is also a big fan of at least of those and it's really not surprising. Most of the LitRPG I've tried reads very similarly.
There are a few things that really disappointed me and a few things that I liked, but they're all a little too spoilerish for me to just list them, so read on at your own risk:
I get that Jake and Jacob are supposed to be narrative foils of some sort, but their names make reading this story so confusing at times because Jake is such a common nickname for Jacob. They needed distinct name. PLEASE do not do this to your audience!
Another thing that drove me crazy was the level up system. Every time Jake reached a certain level threshold, he'd be given upgrade options and we actually saw him read through each one and debate its merits. Every time it happened I just pictured some gamer streaming this to their audience and talking about the different options and why they're going with the one they're going with. Which may appeal to those who love twitch streams, but I just wanted him to pick an option and get to the plot!!! This book suffers from a massive case of telling instead of showing.
From the little we saw, I like the way this series handles gods. They're very much an active part of the world and they're willing to interact with people, too. I've actually already listened to a little of book two based solely on wanting to see where the god element goes. There's a good chance I'm going to DNF it because it has all the same issues of this first book - I am so sick of watching Jake fight random animals. Can we please get to the actual story of this series? - but I wanted to mention this positive as it may be a draw if you like LitRPG.
I did like Jake's backstory. I liked that he didn't magically become OP in this new world. He just already had skills - a background in competitive archery - that let him be OP. Same goes for Jacob's story, though I won't get too into that one for the sake of spoilers.
Spoiler
I don't know much about sociopathy, but one of the side characters in this is very clearly meant to be a sociopath and he's portrayed to the full extent of the stereotype. The story also uses words like "broken" to describe him. Do with that what you will.There's a good story here, but the pacing and the focus are painful, making it a book that I'd only recommend to a select few.
I love the concept of getting trapped in a video game or randomly ported to another world, which means that I want to love LitRPGs. Sadly, the genre consistently fails to win my heart and it's for one glaring reason: these books are clearly written by people whose main experience with story telling is video games and table top RPGs like D&D.
The story telling styles favored in those mediums is wildly different from what most book lovers are looking for because video games and table top RPGs are interactive mediums where the story is also a game. This means that people are fine with lots of unimportant side content to level up their character before the big boss or to just allow them to play around in the world they're be unleashed in. They also don't want things like time skips because they want to play out the full story and make all the choices for their character.
Books are not interactive media. What makes for a good video game experience makes for a lousy book and Primal Hunter is a prime example of that. A large portion of this book is dedicated to leveling up our main character - Jake - and you could cut most of it without losing a thing. This is made even worse by the fact that the book has very little in the way of an actual plot. The story starts with Jake and a bunch of his coworkers getting magically portaled into another world where they're informed that their universe has now been made part of "The System." As part of their integration into The System, they must complete a tutorial whose goal is basically just survive. There's no greater quest driving the narrative. There's actually no quests at all
Spoiler
with a few exceptions for specific people and they keep this fact a secret. They also basically just get a single, nebulous quest that somewhat drives their actionsI won't get into major spoilers here, but do know that you're not going to enjoy this book if you have faith in humanity or if you just want to have faith in humanity. The novel takes a very grim approach to what it thinks people would do if put into this situation. I only finished it because I was listening to the audiobook as I did chores and this is a very easy book to pick up and put down because it's got so much filler and so little substance.
If the premise intrigues you and you like listening to D&D podcasts or watching twitch streams, then you may like the book. Everyone I know who gets really into LitRPG is also a big fan of at least of those and it's really not surprising. Most of the LitRPG I've tried reads very similarly.
There are a few things that really disappointed me and a few things that I liked, but they're all a little too spoilerish for me to just list them, so read on at your own risk:
Spoiler
The book focuses on two "plots". Plot A is Jake off on his own leveling up and plot B is a very hard-to-buy war going on between basically everyone else. The war ends up petering out to nothing by the end of the book, so the fact that the book developed it at all feels like a big waste of time especially since the book focused on characters who will clearly not matter at all moving forward. There are only three characters who should have been given their own chapters: Jake, a guy named William, and a guy named Jacob as those are pretty clearly the only three characters that are going to actually matter to the series.I get that Jake and Jacob are supposed to be narrative foils of some sort, but their names make reading this story so confusing at times because Jake is such a common nickname for Jacob. They needed distinct name. PLEASE do not do this to your audience!
Another thing that drove me crazy was the level up system. Every time Jake reached a certain level threshold, he'd be given upgrade options and we actually saw him read through each one and debate its merits. Every time it happened I just pictured some gamer streaming this to their audience and talking about the different options and why they're going with the one they're going with. Which may appeal to those who love twitch streams, but I just wanted him to pick an option and get to the plot!!! This book suffers from a massive case of telling instead of showing.
From the little we saw, I like the way this series handles gods. They're very much an active part of the world and they're willing to interact with people, too. I've actually already listened to a little of book two based solely on wanting to see where the god element goes. There's a good chance I'm going to DNF it because it has all the same issues of this first book - I am so sick of watching Jake fight random animals. Can we please get to the actual story of this series? - but I wanted to mention this positive as it may be a draw if you like LitRPG.
I did like Jake's backstory. I liked that he didn't magically become OP in this new world. He just already had skills - a background in competitive archery - that let him be OP. Same goes for Jacob's story, though I won't get too into that one for the sake of spoilers.