Disgardium Books Two Through Twelve by Dan Sugralinov

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!!!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

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.

Apostle of The Sleeping Gods

Dan Sugralinov's Class A Threat (Disgardium Book One)

 

Sometimes, a book just pushes all the right buttons in just the right order. If you're me then that book is Dan Sugralinov's Class A Threat. Seriously, this book was a real treat. I'll get to the whys and wherefores in a bit, but I don't go through books this quickly very often. I started reading Class A Threat right after finishing another book and I was "taking a quick break" before I started writing my review. I'm still going to review that book, it'll be up tomorrow, but WOW! Sugralinov rocked the dance floor with this one.

And nope, that's totally not a reference to any songs named Rock the Casbah and any mistaken lyrics on my part. Nope. Uh-uh! 

DUDE! 

You really should make at least an ATTEMPT at looking convinced. It's not good for my ego to get doubted and we all know my ego is, like, fragile and junk. So be nice and stop trying to harsh my mellow.

Or sumfin'

In a lot of ways, Class A Threat is very similar to another book I've read, only they turned that one into a movie. There's no Eighties nostalgia here, nor is there a group of Gunters out to solve the mystery, but the universe reminds me a lot of Ready Player One. There is a game where you can make real world money, pretty much everyone of at least fourteen years of age plays it or used to, and you can put real world money into it. Seriously, Disgardium is more popular than Candy Crush was in its heyday. This game is everywhere and it's required for kids from the age of fourteen to sixteen. Players that age are confined to areas called "sandboxes" and that's where main character Alex Sheppard starts.

There is also a dystopian society. The government runs everything. People are divided by class according to their ability to do good things for society. Alex lives on the good side of town as both of his parents are computer programmers who contribute to the game that he plays, but that may not last. See, they're going to get divorced and when they do, their social status will drop. Of course, they may be able to gain it back, but they used to work so well together...

Yeah, that and a lot of other teenage problems appear on the pages of Class A Threat. There's school, dating, etc. The thing I like though, is that this isn't Twilight. Alex isn't some whiny little punk starving for attention. He's the kind of kid who gets through what he has to get through in his own way (read: he's a geek) but he doesn't whine much. He does freak out a bit about things that will have an obvious effect on his future, but it's for logical reasons and he's not a mope. I like this kid. He reminds me of me in some ways.

Well, except for the part where he doesn't end up with the geeky chick. I can't fathom that. Apparently, the other girl is better looking and Alex doesn't understand the concept of a plus five to hotness if she's a geek. Seriously, brain power rocks, and this kid is thinking with his, uhh..

Well, you get the idea. Oh, and he drinks a bit which was something I didn't really do in high school, and I'm actually serious there. Ask anyone who knew me. The one time I did take a sip of beer by buddy Robbie passed out. It was scary, but I also laughed at him. Also, Bud Dry sucks. But I digress.

Something else I was very heavily reminded of while reading Class A Threat was my time spent playing World of Warcraft, except for the part where Alex doesn't like it at first. He has to play, so it sucks. But once  he gets into it, I'm reminded of my early days. He has no clue about the game, or the world it's played in but he's having a good time and finding a way to make his way in the game, and if he has a little adv...

Nevermind, spoilers.

If you've played WoW though, or really any Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, then you'll see a lot that you'll recognize here. "Gankers", rated Player Versus Player combat, dungeons/instances, raids, Non-Player Characters, different grades of loot drops denoted by colored text, I could go on for hours. Trust me when I tell you that it felt like old home week for a reformed WoWhead. That even goes down to the mounts, although Alex can't  afford one at first. Although I am one hundred percent certain, on every level except reality, that the name of the company that makes Disgardium, SnowStorm, was in no way inspired by Blizzard, the company that makes WoW. Yup. Totes coincidental. Totes.

Also like me, Alex manages to find himself a group of friends who actually know what they're doing and can help him in game. Out there somewhere is a woman named Edie, although she was known in game as Persifinee, who taught me how to gear up and how to raid. There's a guy named Dustin, aka Myronath, who taught me how to rep grind, level quickly and earn cool stuff in game. Later, he taught me a lot about how to run a guild. I mean, no one ever really taught me how to play a hunter with Growl turned off, but no system is perfect.  So yeah, that part reads true to me, except that I've never gotten to meet Myro or Persi in person and Alex is in the same sandbox his schoolmates are in and they all know each other in real life and actually get to hang out together. 

Something that LitRPG writers have to do well is create two worlds that work well together. Sugralinov has done a damn fine job of doing just that. It's very easy to track when Alex is in the real world and when he's in the game, but there's no discontinuity as he switches back and forth. As a matter of fact, Sugralinov does a better job of tracking the real world effects of too much gaming than pretty much any other LitRPG author I've read. This makes Class A Threat believable on a level that a lot of other LitRPG books just aren't. I've already started Book Two, but I'm not going to give the title because it's kind of spoliery for Book One. I'm enjoying it though.

It also kinds of bums me out that Class A Threat is too old to nominate for a Dragon Award, because I think it deserves one. Then again, since it's that old there's a ton of sequels to read so I guess I'll get over myself.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Boxes of Donuts

Class A Threat
Dan Sugralinov
Magic Dome Books, 2019

Class A Threat 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.

Eric Ugland's Scamps & Scoundrels: The Bad Guys, Book One

I don't know what it is. Maybe it's too many hours spent playing World of Warcraft and Everquest. Maybe it's being a tabletop RPG player. Maybe it's just a general geekishness. But, whatever the reason, I sure do love me a good Lit RPG story. And Eric Ugland's Scamps & Scoundrels, The Bad Guys: Book One fits the bill. It's got the action. It's got the drama. It's got the clueless protagonist who doesn't seem to get the fact that the girl wants him. Okay, that last one isn't necessarily a requirement for good LitRPG but, if you're a geeky guy, you've probably been him at some point so it's easy to relate to. I love characters I can understand.

I did have to read the first chapter or so to get to the actual GameLit part of the story. At the beginning of the story, our hero (known in the game world as Clyde Hatchet but at the beginning as Ben) is burgling a house with its owners home. Someone tries to burn the house down while he is in it (God help the people who live there) and next thing you know, he's waking up in the hospital and can't move. Then he's offered a chance at another life...

Enter the game. This is when it gets fun. And maybe a little weird. See, in most LitRPG the main character immediately turns to hardcore leveling/acquistion/etc. It's like playing an MMORPG in the real world. Not so much with our buddy Clyde. He has a tendency to kind of loaf and just try to survive. He makes a friend, helps her out, gets a nice reward and...

Doesn't level much at all. Scamps and Scoundrels may be the first LitRPG I've read where the protagonist gets a job and just tries to function in society, at least for most of the story. I like it. I mean, he does a bit of fighting in his job and has a tendency to n00b it up (Seriously, who doesn't know that you can only fight a gargoyle with a magic weapon?) but it feels familiar in a way that some LitRPG just can't. 

And it's also weirdly awesome that Clyde takes a class (actually, makes a Choice. Apparently this game doesn't have Classes) that reflect what he did in the real world. It makes sense. He was a thief in the real world and now he's a Rogue, but gaming is usually about escaping what we do in the real world. He wants to continue with what he always has been. It's oddly satisfying. 

Another oddly satisfying thing about Scamps and Scoundrels is that the main character is a good dude in a lot of ways and that's key. Michael Corleone was a thief, a murderer and a racketeer but the man will do literally anything to protect his family. Tony Soprano is just as bad but, not only is he a dad and a husband, but he gives to charity and we he is going to counselling and trying to make himself a better person. 

Clyde is a similar type of guy. He gets hurt in the fire that kills him trying to rescue the family trapped inside. I won't say he does it in the most intelligent manner possible and it's entirely possible that he took risks that an actual fireman would not have, but he does it. He goes out of his way to help others through the whole story and yet he wants to make his living by stealing things. 

Clyde is also smart enough to know how dumb he is, and that's key. He finds help wherever he can. He gets training to be a thief. He gets training to use magic. (And yes, it's a bit weird that he's a magic casting rogue. So what? It's fun. I'd play that character.) He finds help in every form he knows that he needs to. I like that. If you've ever played an MMORPG, you've probably needed help starting out. (Thanks Persifinee, Myronath and Iinien!) Clyde needs help. Clyde gets help. And yes, Clyde blunders, but hey, who doesn't?

I cannot remember the name of the planet on which Scamps and Scoundrels takes place but it takes place in the city of Glatun, capital of the country of Glatun. Glatun is a weird place. In some ways, it's a typical medieval European town. But in other ways, it almost feels like the Coalition from Rifts. Magic is outlawed.  Elves (and Clyde is an elf) don't seem to be very popular. Danger abounds, and not all of it is human. 

On the other hand, Glatun does not equal the entire planet. There are a multitude of other nations and places. Clyde gets a peek at all of them when he's choosing his initial spawn point. I'm not convinced that he picked the right place. Don't get me wrong. It's a good story. But I'm hoping that at some point in the series (and this is book one of ten) I'm hoping we get to see more of it. Then again, worldbuilding is best done when starting small. So maybe, just possibly, Ugland knows what he is doing.

I’m not saying I’m in a big hurry to read the rest of this series. I’m just saying that when I got to the end of the book and left my tiny little “I’m too lazy to write a big review on Amazon using my phone keyboard, so I’ll do like thirty words” review (You guys all do that, right? It’s important!) that I dropped my phone trying to get the second one and it slid under my pillow (what, you don't read in bed?) and I panicked thinking my phone was about to get swallowed by, like the Sarlacc or the Jaberwocky or sumfin' that it took me a whole thirty seconds to fish the phone out (narrowly avoiding having it end up between the bed and the wall. THE TERROR!!!) and get the next one on Kindle Unlimited. It was a panic inducing experience. I survived it though, and the next book is already on my phone just waiting for me to get off of this computer and go read it. So that's what I'm going to do. In the words of the great philosopher Foley, "Have a Nice Day!"

Bottom Line: 4.75 out of 5 Bronze Short Swords

Scamps & Scoundrels: The Bad Guys, Book One
Eric Ugland
All Quote Publishing, 2019

Scamps & Scoundrels: The Bad Guys, Book One is available 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.

The System Apocalypse Series by Tao Wong

 

It seems like every time I read a LitRPG book, I think about how I should read more LitRPG. I love it, but I guess it came to be too late in my life to be a default like Space Opera and Epic Fantasy.  Every once in awhile, though, something will gain my notice and I'll feel the need to check it out. That's precisely what happened with Tao Wong's series The System Apocalypse. I think I picked the first book, Life in the North, up because it was in my Facebook feed and it caught my eye. I had never heard of Mr. Wong so I was a bit cautious at first but The System Apocalypse grabbed my attention from page one.

The System Apocalypse starts with our hero, one John Lee, on vacation in Canada's Yukon Territory. It's cold, he's camping and a little blue box appears in his vision. From there the whole world changes literally (well, fictionally literally) instantly, not just for him but also for the rest of the human race and anything else that lives on planet Earth. Animals and plants begin to mutate, people start dying in job lot quantities (think nuclear war levels of casualties only there are no actual nukes launched. Then it gets worse.) and no one and nowhere is safe. And yes, I've played Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Games in the past, but in The System Apocalypse, there are no respawns.

The series goes through a few different arcs, starting out with straight-up survival. First John has to survive long enough to find another human being, then he takes part in helping others to survive. It's not as easy as it should be, either. Even with help, he loses people and on many occasions almost loses himself. John is a ball of rage and he doesn't always use common sense but even when he does the wrong thing it's usually for the right reasons.

The cast of characters he gathers around himself is long and distinguished. Most are human. A few are alien. They are, for the most part, all honorable beings who want to do what is best for themselves and for others. It's well thought out though, and they all seem to have their own motivations, even if it's only leveling.

If you're familiar with roleplaying games, whether online in games like World of Warcraft, Everquest, Eve Online or City of Heroes, on old-school platforms ala Wizardry and Shining in the Darkness, or tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons, Heroes Unlimited, or Shadowrun, then you know how important leveling is. The higher a character's level, the more powerful they are. The more powerful they are, the better they can protect themselves against increasing threats. The more fighting they do, the higher their level gets. Well, for Combat Classers. The System also has classes in areas like crafting (artisans), growing (farmers), politics (duh) and even the media (one of my favorite side characters is a reporter named Harry). Everyone needs to level, but it is both easiest and most important for Combat Classers.

Also part of leveling, and one of the reasons it's easier to make/grow that new product or defeat that new monster, is gaining new abilities or spells or feats or...

Every game calls them something different and, in a lot of cases, there are different labels applied to different things in the same game. It can be a wee bit confusing until you get the hang of the game. The System is no different. There are a ton of abilities, skills, spells, affinities and probably some other thing that I forgot about. The System is actually pretty crunchy if you grok the term. If not, it just means there are a lot of rules and usually a lot of math.  It can be confusing to our heroes and definitely to the reader, at least at first. Just have patience and remember your first time playing your favorite roleplaying game. We were all confused and something Wong does well is have his characters share what they're learning with the rest of us.

Probably the most unusual thing about The System and it's leveling progression is the tier system. Most people start out with a basic class. That might be Farmer, or Construction Worker, but it might also be Soldier or Hunter or some other combat class. Fifty levels in a basic class opens up an advanced class. A Soldier might become a Sergeant. Fifty levels of and Advance Class opens up a Master Class. A Sergeant might become an Officer. Fifty levels of Master Class opens up a Heroic Class. An Officer might become a General. Fifty levels of a Heroic Class opens up a Legendary Class. That General might become an Emperor. It doesn't get any higher than Legendary, but few ever make it there.

Opening up new tiers is exciting as it leads to massive increases in abilities. One Advanced Classer could mow down an entire mob of low level Basic Classers fairly easily. A Heroic Classer might be able to take your planet over singlehandedly. Legendary Classers, especially if they're Combat Classers, probably run empires or command a bajillion troops and are not just deadly themselves, but make all of their followers even more effective. This is an amazingly well built system and I just hope I did a good enough job explaining it.

Speaking of leveling and Class Tiers, there is a moment in the series that almost made me quit reading it. I'm not going to go into details, but trust me when I say you'll know it when you see it. Wong promises to write what's missing in the Afterword and, while I believe we're still waiting, I trust him. But it did leave me seriously frustrated at the time. At the end of the day, I'm glad I kept reading because it is a truly awesome series, but I was more than a little bit shaken.

Once John learns how The System works at the most basic level and figures out how to survive and even thrive in the face of what his planet has turned into, we get into another arc. In this one, John and lots of others try to unite the Earth and elect a planetary ruler. It's not easy and the fact that there are aliens (John calls them "Galactics") all over the place just makes it harder. Then we get to watch John and Earth figure out their places in the universe. 

The final arc is probably my favorite, and not just because that's where all the fighting is. I love it because it is the struggle to find out what The System is and where it came from. Why does it exist? Is there a point to it or is it just there? I'll be honest, there is a lot of technical stuff here, but it all makes sense across a twelve book series in ways I can't begin to duplicate in a single review. 

The ending itself is satisfying in a way that I hadn't seen coming, even if it didn't give me quite everything I wanted. It works for the series and wraps things up in a way that leaves no loose ends. 

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Spirit Companions.

The System Apocalypse
Tao Wong
Starlit Publishing 2017-22

Life in the North: An Apocalyptic LitRPG (The System Apocalypse Book 1) is available 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.

Life in the North: An Apocalyptic LitRPG