The Dark Paladin
Most people know Vasily Mahanenko through his Way of the Shaman books, which are probably the most popular LITRPG on Amazon right now. His brand new series, Dark Paladin, however, I find is a better written and much more complex book (series, but unless you read Russian, you can't get the second book).The premise is that the entire world is just a 'game' and when you die, you might just wake to the real world, provided you've done something worthwhile in your life to achieve this. The real world, as it is, is modeled after a fantasy RPG. Those people who 'awake' to the real world choose a class to train in (Mages, Paladin's, Rouge, etc). But to train, you first have to survive the Academy. And thus begins the book.Yea yea, we've seen this already about a dozen times (in my case over forty times, which is the number of LitRPG's I've read). However, how Manhanenko creates the logic of his world building and how he dies pretty much everything together somehow makes a lot of sense and is, perhaps, one of the more unique LitRPG world building efforts I've seen yet in the genre.The setting is reminiscent of the Hunger Games where characters are put into a massive arena and forced into a last-man-standing type of conflict.Somehow, the whole thing works (when you read LITRPG, you kind of have to take your suspension of disbelief to a whole new level ). It's a promising read and, considering I've powered through dozens of bad, bad, bad LITRPG's, one of the betters in the genre.
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The whole plot of the first book takes place in a sort of Hunger Games style series of arenas where all the characters try to kill each other to pass a test. On that note, you may like Hunger Games or, even better, the Japanese manga that Hunger Game author 'borrowed' the idea from Battle Royal.
And of course, read Ender's Game (you know, the 'sourcepiration' of all such fiction involving giant gaming arenas). Give Red Rising a read too, which takes the grand contest to the death in an academy setting to a whole new level.
Booklists having this book
Best LITRPG Books
LitRPG an emerging subgenre of Science Fiction & Fantasy and, arguably, the fastest growing new speclatutive fiction genre, if you look at the sheer number of LitRRPG indie fiction being... Read more
Other books by Mahanenko, Vasily
Survival Quest
The Kartoss Gambit
The Secret Of The Dark Forest
The Phantom Castle
The Karmadont Chess Set
The Way Of The Shaman Series
The Way of the Shaman series is probably the most popular and well known LITRPG's out there right now, translated from a Russian author whose name I can never pronounce... Read more
The Dark Paladin
Most people know Vasily Mahanenko through his Way of the Shaman books, which are probably the most popular LITRPG on Amazon right now. His brand new series, Dark Paladin, however,... Read more