If I could give this book more than five stars, I would. I panicked at first when I realized how long it was because I was afraid I couldn't finish it before it returned to the library. By the time I finished the first book, I found myself saying, "21 very thick books in this series so far? Sounds reasonable." I've literally never said that before, but I was absolutely hooked by the end of the first chapter when I only picked this up because of the title. Let me first explain that I'm not usually a fantasy reader because I want escapism rather than politics in my fiction. This book is RPG lit, but resonates with me a whole lot more than the Dungeon Crawler Carl series did with its over-the-top shock violence. There's plenty of violence here, but it hits differently.

How it starts ... Our heroine, Erin, gets up from a game of chess one day to go to the bathroom, turns a corner, and lands in another world. She finds an abandoned inn at the top of a hill to shelter in for the night, but all the dust is making her sneezy, so she cleans it with some moldy old curtains she finds upstairs. As she's falling asleep for the night, something in her head says she's leveled up in inkeeping. That was the surprising end of the first chapter that kept me turning pages. She eventually finds water and food and starts making simple meals like buttered noodles and fruit juice that she serves to people who wander in. But the area is not without its perils, like goblins, huge rock crabs, and acid flies. But going about her business and just being herself at her inn, there are cultural clashes and mistakes she makes that have very serious and sometimes deadly consequences. By the end of the book, you're hopeful but also worried about what's brewing under the surface. Plus, more humans are starting to pop into this world from Earth, and you're wondering what sort of consequences that might have if they start explaining things like guns and nuclear weapons to a medieval-type world that hasn't invented them yet. In many ways, it feels like a Star Trek kind of vibe, with a strong nod to culture and the a sort of internal Prime Directive some of the characters have to try not to introduce tech that doesn't belong to this world.

Anyhow, yeah. I'm kind of obsessed with this series right now. My only lament is that Libby only has the first one, and the rest are only purchasable rather than borrowable.

Ah. Another completely forgettable installment of this novella series. This time, our hero travels to the U.S. to help a friend with a mysterious disappearance of a person in a mine. There's lots of boring blah blah blah, and then in the end, we meet yet another non-human mysterious entity.

After his blind date shows up late with her ex to cancel the date, Bud gets smashingly drunk and writes his own obituary. That wouldn't be so bad except that he's an obituary writer for a living and publishes it in a very real newspaper. While he's suspended from work pending investigation, he and his roommate start attending funerals of strangers as a morbid pasttime. It feels like there's something to learn, and they're determined to learn it, facing death head-on. In the end, there's nothing to learn but to just go out and live life and appreciate those who are in your life when they're in your life.

This was an enjoyable novel, with lots of humor and friendship and just the right amount of thinky thinks. If it's remotely piqued your interest, it's probably worth a read.

Well, that was disappointing. I mean, it wasn't a bad book, but it could have easily been a short story. Man goes to family's hunting lodge in Gallacia, man hears local folklore, and folklore starts haunting his dreams ... or was it really real? Fin. I still enjoy enough of this author's other works to not give up on her though.