I'm glad these books exist. While I am sure there are a million Tolstoy, Woolf and Steinbeck readers who read and enjoy this series, the target audience for this book is most definitely the kind of person who doesn't read much, ONLY reads sci-fi/fantasy, or only reads the next big thing. And that's good: books should be made for people who don't read much. And who knows? Someone might read this and find that Christopher Moore writes in a similar vein. And then they'll find that John Scalzi is a lot like Moore. And then they'll find that T. Kingfisher is a lot like Scalzi. And suddenly, that person is a "reader."

Unfortunately, I flat out hated this. And it took me a long time to come to terms with it because I wanted so very badly to like it. I have enjoyed plenty of jokey books -including some that like this one, never actually made me laugh out loud- and with the incredible heat this series has on it right now, the last thing I wanted was to read this and find that I didn't like it. But that's where we are.

Still, I had some fun here and there. The RPG aspects are by far the best aspects. I enjoyed finding out what kind of loot people were getting and how the game works. It was fun. But then Dinniman would make sure we understood that the women of color were obese and unappealing, that his girlfriend was cheating on him with three or four different people, and the overall 12 year old boy level of humor just left me uncomfortable in a way that was less "oh man, this book is not afraid to go there" and more "this kid is shouting shit ass fart fuck in the aisle at Target for attention and now I've decided I don't really need Tide Pods this week just to avoid dealing with that shit."

From charting some of my journey through this first book on Pagebound and the responses I've gotten from people or read on other threads, I gather that the casual misogyny and reliance on stereotypes gets significantly better by book four as Dinniman received criticism and actually self-reflected and took it to heart and did better. That is very commendable, but unless books four through the end are the greatest pieces of literature guaranteed to change my life forever, I cannot fathom reading three books of this. I can't believe this is as popular with heavy book readers as it is. I can't believe a simple talking cat and sub-Deadpool level "amirite fellas?" style humor is enough for so many people to suffer the tedium.

For what its worth, when it's not being awful, I enjoyed the LitRPG aspect of the books. The mechanics of the game were interesting to learn about, the world-building sounds like it could get genuinely more interesting in further books, and while very little of it landed for me, there is some interesting work put in to how various monsters might be normal humans who were transformed and what their fate might be and why. Unfortunately, I can't overlook the lowest common denominator humor, the pandering wish-fulfillment of the main character (I'm just a regular schmoe whose girlfriend cheats on me with 3 different dudes and a woman, but she's probably dead and I'm a 6'3, former military, uber-mensch who's going to save the world by being good at video games) and the kind of casual misogyny that believes it's actually being progressive because all the women we're disparaging are ethnically diverse.

Stream of consciousness because I don't want to spoil too much. This was fantastic and best absorbed as fresh and unspoiled as possible.

Tchaikovsky truly is a master of portraying non-human thinking in print. From Service Model to Green City Wars, he just seems to really love finding inhuman ways to think and making them sympathetic and relatable.

This is a complicated narrative. While the plot itself is fairly straightforward, its themes, and character motivations are layered and nuanced.

Dr. Avrana Kern is an incredible character that I'll be interested to see what more can be done with in future installments.