Ascend Online: Ascend Online, Book 1

So before I really start my review, lets get into some reality's of self publishing. It is hard. Everything is handled by the author from beginning to end. Writing, editing, art, layout, all of it. A self published book usually has a number of errors that a book published by a traditional published won't, this is because at a publishing house, there are a lot and I mean a lot of eyes on any given book.There are beta readers, a team of editors, agents and so on all looking at it. Even with all of that there are a number of typos that always get missed even through multiple revisions. That is a fact. I am aware of it.That said, any self published book needs a decent editor, if only to clean up the worse excesses of the author and fix the grammer and prose issues that show up. It is always worth it to pay an editor to go through and do a proper line edit and proof read. This book, I'm fairly certain didn't have that. I say that because there is are a large number of grammatical, spelling, and prose errors that have fairly easy fixes.It is a testiment that despite the multitude of errors I genuinely enjoyed the story of this first book.Is it perfect? No. There are the usual suspects in terms of kindle self pub books: characters that aren't the strongest, a couple of plots that aren't as tight as they could be and so on. But despite all of that, I enjoyed this book. It was well paced, set up the next stories, and fit the genre expectations really well. It isn't Dungeon Crawler Carl good, but it's fun, and sometimes that's all you need.

Ascend Online is the first book in the series of the same title by Luke Chmilenko.The virtual world of Ascend Online is wonderfully built and articulated. There are intriguing, yet uncommon, rules and laws governing the gameplay that adds additional obstacles to the encounters and initial planning for advancement. Specifically, the death penalties and log-out mechanics interest me the most. There seems to be something more in the world they visit before reviving. This mysterious phenomenon combined with the general undeveloped world at large, makes the usual game mechanics expected to add ease to the day-to-day grind more limited.Along with the byplay between Creativity and her sister Discord, there is so much left to uncover and influence the growth of this new world. While I like this world and the work the author put into this introduction to this literary series, I can somewhat already tell I'll be annoyed by the coming experiences and obstacles. It honestly seems like they will spend the entire series ensuring the survival of Albgard at this point. While I would enjoy the general civilization development and experiences that entails, I'm not overly excited for that to be all that is offered.There are a variety of intriguing Quest-lines connected to this seemingly miscellaneous budding village/town. Alas, it appears there are many threads connecting these mysterious manifestations of doom into a combined force of nefarious smog weighing on their hopes of prospering. What (is this place truly?) and how are they going to bring the possible translocation hub under their control? With a psycho Queen Mother leading the most powerful House in its acquisition? In what way will Graves allow himself to be manipulated next? By either Discord or previously mentioned psycho Mother, being my guess at this level of knowledge.Also, why the fracking frack aren't there at least one ridiculously overpowered NPCs defending the wellbeing of the NPC masses from the truly homicidal machinations of the more chaotic leaning player base? Seems short sighted by this fictional gaming company to not utilize.... There is a heavy attention placed on morality and freedom of action here. I understand the absoluteness of NPC death, and little to disrupt the consequences attached is enforcing the truly free aspect this game is designed to achieve. Thereby, allowing the players to have a certain amount of control and influence in the directions that the game will manifest.I also believe there's another skew to this plot. In that the world is way over populated, with the popularity of this game, there is going to be a mass exodus putside of reality. With the majority of humanity living their lives inside FIVR pods, covering the Earth's surface in facilities to house the demanding amount of machines to encompass all those interested.

This series storyline is so good I’m not sure it needed to be a litRPG a few tweaks and it would just be a fantasy. Especially considering how hard leveling is and how little it offers. The slow start snowballs into a over reaching plot that slips into to much. The Mc finds himself spawned in a rural region the town new the surroundings wild. I waver between thinking this is great or tedious, as the growing pains of a boom town arrises. Including no already available merchants with armor or weapons, potions don’t come up for a long while. I appreciate this Mc being intelligent and resourceful. I tried reading survival quest and found the Mc such an idiot I quit. The real world hasn’t come up to often so far. If you like this book I suggest he who fights with monsters and if you don’t mind gore and bad language dungeon crawler Carl is wild.Edit: the 4th book has become a slog. Strategizing, war, characters are losing individuality. Not sure I’ll finish it. I was looking forward to what was in the nafar crystal but as of 30% it seems like something there isn’t going to be time for. War of this scale seems tedious when you just respawn. Maybe if the story gets back on track down the road and I come across it I’ll revisit, but I’m skipping this.

I like the magic system and the combat system also looks good. H.P. still seem a little expansive and I think they will get outrageous as we level up.

This was a very fun read, I definitely felt the frustration and nerves of our main character Marcus/Lyrian as events unfurl.There is a big cast of characters and the author has done a good job at portraying their different personalities without shoehorning the plot progression.Minor spoilers ahead:I knocked off a star cause I sometimes feel frustrated with Marcus/Lyrians decisions, is there a blink step cool down? Spam blink and rule the battlefield.Also, at one point Lyrian comes off a bit dense and asks the obvious questions. This came off forced as a means to direct the reader's attention. As a result, this felt very out of character seeing as Lyrian cites himself being an experienced gamer. However, this was directly poked fun of by another supporting character almost immediately. Love to see it.

Although I read quite a lot of LitRPG books i tend to stay to the lighter details and more of the action.This the first book is very detailed and goes quite deeply into all aspects of the RPG gaming so might not be for everyone due to its complexity.However it's very entertaining and quite easy to continue on if you wish to skim the stats like i did when they became too elaborate. Still im looking forward to book 2.

I really enjoyed the pace and setting of the story. It's a fun read with good characters and storyline. I'll be reading the rest of the books with anticipation.

I really like the way that this book is a group effort with an unwilling but ever accepting leader. Can and will only get better. Got this book from a similar authors recommendation. I will be reading on!

I've just gotten into the LitRpg genre ! Absolutely loved this first book in the series. Great characters and jumping into the rest of the series .