Protagonist: A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure: The Whims of Gods, Book 1

This book was really entertaining and I enjoyed reading it quite a bit! The characters are funny and the story is interesting. I hope you all enjoy it too.

Most LitRPG tales seem to rely on extremely stupid characters and plot devices that push them into action. Here we don't get that. The main character does get her invite into the magical world from an unknown "God" who comes to her as she is dying in the remains of her totaled car. She has no knowledge of the world, and definitely starts out with a limited interest in how to do things, but for once we have a character who doesn't just rush into every problem. She tries to figure out how to use the system and her growing powers.Yes, she is a bit overpowered thanks to the amount of progress she makes with each level, and she picks up skills and spells like its going out of style in a way, but the story flows naturally. I never felt that the author had snuck something in just to force the plot to go a certain direction. Instead we have character growth and building towards reasonable goals for each character. This is a well thought out tale where I never felt that the plot was contrived.I was definitely smiling at the end. This was a fun tale.

As of the time of writing this review, I’ve read the first three books. Book one did take a little bit for me to really get “into” the main character. I mean, it roped me in well enough. But after the first quarter of the book or so, I was really hooked. And I enjoyed the next two quite a bit too. Definitely recommended, a good addition to the genre.

Like watching a really good anime serial but better. It would be fun to hear this as an audio podcast!

Read the first book, and immediately bought the next two. Now I have to wait for the fourth

The book has interesting world-building and operates on understandable mechanics, but the protagonist feels more like she is stumbling into each plot point rather than deciding for herself. I feel like that's intentional to a degree, but it also makes the character less interesting, as she feels like a less essential part of the story.A note on terminology: "protagonist" is what those chosen by the gods are called within the setting, which lends a bit of generic video game feel to people in the book often referring to the main character as "protagonist". In a LitRPG story, the generic video game feeling is something to avoid.The main character does get some development, but as mentioned earlier it rarely feels as though she's progressing so much as being dragged along a planned route. To borrow a term from RPGs, she feels railroaded far more than she makes choices that matter. The book also commits the error of having a side character that's more interesting than the main character.Despite all that, it is a promising start, and could improve in the next volume. I am at least curious about what becomes of the protagonist, and may continue on.

This was a slightly silly little romp, and a welcome breath of air from the more grimdark entries into the litrpg genre. I like Tess, and the Trauma Suppression skill is an interesting way to deal with “these events are objectively horrifying”.

I really had high hopes for this series, but like my title said, it turned stupid about the 50% mark. Like, one of the classes one of the characters had was called Battle Barber.... and I positively cringed when he used a big pair of scissors to fight with, actually "shaving" the hair off the monsters he fought. And then I finally had to pull out when the MC and her team found a hidden dungeon, only for said dungeon to be inside a "giant shower". I'm not kidding, it was literally a giant shower dungeon. There was some other things that didn't sit well with me, and they all added up for me pulling out at the 60% mark. Just too cheesy for me.