It's no longer very often I get carried away in a series and just can't put it down. I've gotten a bit jaded in my old age and being a book reviewer I try to skip around between authors and end up not coming back to a series I swore I was going to finish because not it's eight authors later and I've got a ninth to read and well...
You get the idea.
The fact remains that I love to get swept away by a series. I just spent an entire month reading Dan Sugralinov's Disgardium series. I loved every minute of it and I will get back into this one when the next books come out this su...
This s...
Thi...
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
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IT'S NOT FAAAAAAAAAAAAAIR!!!!
I thought that this was a twelve book series. It's supposed to be a twelve book series. It said it was a twelve book series. It almost is a twelve book series. But...
But...
Book Twelve, appropriately titled Unity, got too long and it got split into three parts and now I have to wait till this summer for parts thirteen and fourteen. I'm gonna freak out here. I can't wait that long to find out how this thing ends.
I mean, it's not like it's my first time here. I've been following David Weber's Honorverse since the reign of Bush the Younger and I've had some fairly significant waits there. Don't get me started on how long I had to wait for the end of Jean M. Auel's Earth's Children or what I had to say about the last book afterward. But dude...
I thought this thing was going to end at twelve. I was prepared for the big denouement and it didn't come. I feel like I just went on the most awesomest date in the history of ever, go the girl to her front door, leaned in for a kiss and she was like, "Totes wanna kiss you but I gotta pee. Hang out here for a sec." and then took off and left me holding her purse. I mean, I know she'll be back but the suspense is killing me.
I reviewed the first book, Class A Threat, here. An awful lot has happened since then and most of it is only good in the sense of how entertaining it is. The main character, Alex Sheppard AKA Scyth - his character in the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game known as Disgardium, is one tough kid. And yes, I do mean kid. He starts the story as a fourteen year old and by the end of the twelfth book is only sixteen. At that age though, Alex is hardcore.
He does battle against everyone and everything in the game world of Disgardium and that's a game where the players have in game pain transferred into their real life bodies. He also faces massive challenges in the real world both from people who wish him harm and from those who wish to bribe him. He's an honest man though, and he manages to not fall by the wayside. I like this kid. He could date my daughters. Well, maybe my oldest. My youngest is only twelve so she's still a bit young.
Alex, as the name of the first book Class A Threat implies is a Threat in the game of Disgardium, meaning that he has a highly imbalanced power that can change the whole game. How that works/what it means in precise terms is a spoiler. Go read the books if you want to know. What it also means is that he has to hide his status to protect himself from others in the game who would kill his character in order to collect a bounty. It also endangers him in real life, as players and the Snowstorm, the creators of the game, can control his character and how he uses his powers if they can control him.
Alex is not, however, afraid to use his abilities as a Threat to treat himself to acquire some benefits in the game. He gains levels - a measure of how powerful his character is- at a breakneck pace. He brings in unbelievable amounts of in game money (gold) in the process and that's a big deal. In Sugralinov's world, anyone who has reached the age of majority (sixteen) and passed their citizenship exams can take their gold out of the game and covert it to phoenixes - real world money - and some get extremely rich in the process. With Alex's in game wealth, he can do exactly that IF he takes and passes his citizenship exams.
And I'm not going to tell you if he did or how it went if so. Read the books.
Alex also manages to use his in game wealth to hire a bunch of non-citizens to work for him in-game. Most of them are of legal age and can cash out a small amount of their gold monthly. For most of them, Disgardium is their only source of income. Alex does right by these people and does his best to take care of them both in and out of the game. He takes on more responsibility at the age of sixteen than most people do in their entire lives and he thrives while doing it. Of course, this causes problems in the real world as well. Not everyone can be trusted and not everyone who sells him out means him ill. The world is a big, confusing place for me at forty-seven and this is a kid with the weight of the world on his shoulders. The fact that he can keep moving forward says a lot about him as a person. The fact that I can keep reading and so easily suspend disbelief says a lot about Sugralinov as an author.
The worldbuilding here is impressive and leaves me a bit confused about Sugralinov's politics. There is enough here to anger members of both parties in the United States, but that's part of what makes it good. I slide back and forth with my reactions to what his characters think and do but they are always believable. Sugralinov appears to be a political writer with his own agenda and no one else's. Also, he doesn't harp on the politics for the most part.
The action sequences in the real world in the book are intense and fast paced. They make me wince at parts and at many points trying to figure out how Alex and friends were going to get out of what was thrown at them. At least one thing had me convinced that the rest of the stories were going to be written about ghosts but they got out of it alive and somewhat well-ish. At least alive.
His in-game action sequences are what really got me worked up though. I've played World of Warcraft and Everquest and have literal years invested in game time played. My WoW main had over eighteen months online all by himself. I haven't played in awhile, but Disgardium almost has me back into it.
Alex/Scyth are involved in some of the most intense player versus player combat sequences imaginable. I've fought encounters in WoW and raided cities. I've never done anything that comes anywhere near what happens in these books. I'd love to just see something like this happen on Twitch or something and I don't even watch Twitch. Alex and friends also do multiple instances and down multiple bosses for the first time ever. This guy has a gaming career that most players three times his age can't even dream of. These are probably the best parts of what would be an awesome series without them.
Disgardium is my new favorite LitRPG series. I can't wait for the last two books.
Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Rainbow Crystals
Apostle of the Sleeping Gods, The Destroying Plague, Resistance, Holy War, Path of Spirit, The Demonic Games, Enemy of the Inferno, Glory to the Dominion!, Clear Threat, Out of Play, Unity
Dan Sugralinov
Magic Dome Books 2019-2023
Apostle of the Sleeping Gods: Book Two of Disgardium is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you.
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