DNF after 50%. I'm astounded that this is a recommendation in the LitRPG genre.

I arrived at He Who Fights with Monsters after having read Dungeon Crawler Carl. I wanted something less horror, more fantasy, and some recommendations put He Who Fights with Monsters as the perfect scratch to that itch.

Far from being a less-grisly heavyweight champion of LitRPG, He Who Fights with Monsters (as of halfway in where I had to stop) is a lukewarm self-insert fantasy with bland characters, a weak RPG system, and the pacing of a bicycle in too low of a gear being pedaled by someone who can't quite reach the pedals.

The author shows some skill in establishing settings and building the world. The environments felt mostly fleshed out, though in some places, the reliance on magic replicating technology felt lazy. For his magic system, the Affinity system was unique and interesting, and I would have been interested to see more, had the rest of the book not fallen so flat.

The protagonist comes across as a cardboard stand-in for the author, suddenly gaining unfounded charisma, intellect, and belligerence with nearly zero foundation. Support characters are frequently single-dimensional, leaning heavily on tropes and physical quirks, rather than actual development. The development of one of the villains is so comically generic, I expected them to grow a mustache just to be able to twirl it evilly.

The RPG elements Jason sees as video game windows were bland. Descriptions for items were occasionally interesting, but otherwise, the blocking for the RPG text felt more like filler than anything interesting.

Pacing in He Who Fights with Monsters is atrocious. Considering the title of the book, it is criminal that halfway through the book, Jason has easily fought with monsters on fewer occasions than he has explained just how absolutely atheist he is. Between that are lengthy and egregious training montages, dialogue that contributes nearly nothing to the development of anyone invovled, and awkwardly spaced cutaways to other perspectives. Halfway through the book, Jason's motivation is something akin to "getting stronger and being an adventurer, I guess."

Overall, a mediocre mess that promises a LitRPG epic, but delivers a power fantasy fanfic, with Jason as the author's self-insert.