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![Transformation [LitRPG series. Book I]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51CjECi7VrL._SL500_.jpg)
Top Reddit reviews mentioning Cyberpunk Science Fiction eBooks:
That's great! All my books happen to be free too! You can find them on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Ascend-Online-Luke-Chmilenko-ebook/dp/B01M01ET8E
It'll say that the book costs $6 there, but that's because I'm running a sale for the next forever. During this sale each book comes with a sense of pride and accomplishment for being able to help an author eat and warm his house this winter.
I hope you take advantage of it! This sale will only last until the end of time!
Use Shirtaloon's He Who Fights With Monsters as your case study.
He spent 20 months writing his first volume offline (roughly 350k words) then started posting on RoyalRoad with a large backlog for patreon. After he'd written and posted roughly one million words of content for free he published to Amazon through Atheon.
Obviously, he put a ton of work in and nearly two years of his life before even putting the story up for free, but he's been very successful now.
speaking of, defiance of the fall is my number one recommendation, first is on amazon and the rest is on royalroad, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09168R29M?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_0&storeType=ebooks&qid=1627873967&sr=1-1
another good one would be threadbare, about a sapient teddy bear golem
- <strong><em>Defiance of the Fall</em></strong> from a Swedish author. It's a rare kind of readable mix of xianxia and litrpg. The hero progresses not just as a cultivator but also as a leader; it deals with management, city building, alliances and backstabs, some economics, genocides, etc. It feels quite, ehm, gritty realistic, but not without a weird humor sometimes. The first tome (~600 chapters) is completed, the audiobooks are there.
I'm about to try to go full time. I just finished my last semester of college and am hoping that this is a career that's viable for me. My recent web serial turned novel was a hit on amazon and I hope I can write a good deal more doing it full time. I have noticed however that I've already started slacking off a bit which is bad :(.
I doubt that writing will pay better than say a coding job (my degree is in CS/math) but seeing as I have no obligations other than a few student loans I'm going to try it out ^.^
https://www.amazon.com/Defiance-Fall-LitRPG-Adventure-TheFirstDefier-ebook/dp/B09168R29M
Just register to Amazon, go to buy, enter your credit card details and buy it. Afterwards you can get the Kindle app.
City of Sin from a Chinese author, it is definitely inspired by Planescape: Torment, it is a representative of the rare D&D xianxia genre. The hero is a runemaster, heir to the cursed clan, where the devil bloodline is supported by incest, he rises to power in the planar metropolis, leads planar invasions. Epic, drama and all sorts of 18+. The novel and its translation are completed.
<strong><em>Defiance of the Fall</em></strong> from a Swedish author. It's a rare kind of readable mix of xianxia and litrpg. The hero progresses not just as a cultivator but also as a leader; it deals with management, city building, alliances and backstabs, some economics, genocides, etc. It feels quite, ehm, gritty realistic, but not without a weird humor sometimes. The first tome (~600 chapters) is completed.
<strong><em>Defiance of the Fall</em></strong>, there's the audiobook too.
It's a rare kind of readable mix of xianxia and litrpg. The hero progresses not just as a cultivator but also as a leader; it deals with management, city building, alliances and backstabs, some economics, genocides, etc. It feels quite, ehm, gritty realistic, but not without a weird humor sometimes.
Ascend online gets a big recommendation from me. It is well written, has a good plot, great execution of RPG elements, and cool village building theme which I like.
And more importantly, Ascend Online is free on promotion on Amazon Kindle for a few days right now so even if you aren't going to read it yet, I would go and snag it before it goes back to normal price. The Audiobook becomes discounted heavily after owning the kindle version! https://www.amazon.com/Ascend-Online-Luke-Chmilenko-ebook/dp/B01M01ET8E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1504215682&sr=8-1&keywords=ascend+online
Luke Daniels narrates the audiobook for Ascend Online and he is a big name A-List narrator. He is also the narrator who did all the hilarious voices in the extremely popular comedy book "Off to be the Wizard" by Scott Meyer.
Yeah, Im fully into ebooks, but the cost really is BS. I think there is some drama between publishers and amazon that always inflates the prices. Some self published authors have really cheap Ebooks (I loved this book and its sequels and they're only $3-$5 each). So there is a chance the prices may go down at some point if something changes between amazon and publishers.
I actually got into Ebooks while pirating them, so cost wasn't an issue, after awhile i got so used to the convenience of having it on my phone I couldn't go back to print. Then i had a little more spending money and decided buying them was even more convenient.
The Singularity Series by William Hertling
Was barely able to put it down. If you are interested in the possibility we are headed towards a technological singularity this is great hard scifi that paints a plausible, well thought out, and very engaging path towards it and through it.
You should drop everything and read Snow Crash.
Altered Carbon (the books) might fit what you're looking for, although not progression fantasy.
There's a great book series called Singularity starting with Avagadro Corporation, which features an AI built to read and respond to emails that becomes sentient and escapes the lab. Should be required reading for AI developers :) https://www.amazon.com/Avogadro-Corp-Singularity-Closer-Appears-ebook/dp/B006ACIMQQ?ref_=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=b52d1801-2532-4b08-b81e-10514d91d7ab
If you have a fighting game bouncing around in your head I'd suggest reading Iron Prince it does a wonderful job of balancing fighting/story in a very addictive and engaging way.
It's better than 95% of the Kindle Unlimited LitRPG and Urban Fantasy stuff. It isn't as well written as popular Fantasy authors, like Sanderson, Martin, Abercrombie, McClellan, etc. But I would consider it on the level of Dungeon Crawler Carl.
It technically isn't a game, but the mechanics work the same and it definitely falls under LitRPG. It has problems here and there, but far better than most LitRPG I've read. The characters feel distinct, there aren't typos or missed editing, 'I' and 'me' is usually used correctly, unlike most Kindle Unlimited books. The mechanics are interesting (kind of similar to Will Wight's Cradle, I wouldn't be surprised if it took inspiration) and it's an interesting premise, but the mechanics all still work like a game, HUD, etc.
Defiance of the Fall is really scratching this itch for me right now. Book one didn't totally sell me on the story till near the last quarter of the book but after that it's full speed ahead. I'm on book 4 right now and loving it. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09168R29M?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_0&storeType=ebooks
"Awaken Online" does this. The author supplies a nice timeline and read order chart on all his book's web pages in Amazon's Kindle store. Here is a to his link first book.
Came here to say that. Here's a link.
One of the authors is quite active on Reddit. They also have a Patreon, and are releasing chapters from Book 2 now.
Have him give Iron Prince a try. It's a very chunky book but if he likes games, it's a fantasy novel with stats, so it's like a real life scifi rpg. It's very binge-worthy. The characters attend a special academy where they learn how to develop their personalized scifi weapon for the purposes of eventually fighting hostile aliens on the frontier. Big emphasis on the sports aspect as well, as people compete with their scifi weapons in arenas for the masses, and the kids at the academy all battle one another in duels and tournaments.
The main draw is that the MC is a total underdog born with a crippling medical condition. With modern tech it's able to be treated but not cured. The MC's only hope is to prove he's worthy of being one of the few chosen to attend a special academy and get a scifi weapon (the weapons integrate with the whole body and have the potential to permanently keep his condition at bay). He works insanely hard for every small gain in the beginning and is very likeable and persistent. You just have to root for him. And when he receives his scifi device he really starts to take off, his limitless potential combined with his almost inhuman determination rocketing him to the front of his class. He makes awesome friends in the academy and the supporting cast are all great.
https://www.amazon.com/Iron-Prince-Warformed-Stormweaver-Book-ebook/dp/B08KGT4CLQ
Highly recommend it. One of my favorite reads of 2021.
I would recommend strongly "He who fights with monsters". I both it because my subscription was expiring, and it was... long. It litRPG, so it's basically a fantasy book, but the characters have stats and skills like in games. It doesn't affect the plot that much... maybe makes it a little growth-oriented (leveling) up. It's actually a really good book, disguised as trivial fun.
I haven't had that experience. Only when there's very few reviews and a series is new. (Honestly that's been my experience with other websites for reviews.) But this isn't a new series and there's thousands of reviews all saying the same things. They're not vague about their criticism at all and it definitely applies. There are issues with how firstdefier portrays women and writes romance. It was a terrible decision to handle the women that way. The pacing is actually kind of bad. It does feel like he didn't plan it well at first. And imo many of the other criticisms are true too. This is where the series came from and that's why I linked that in particular.
In my opinion there's not enough of the published story out to review that by itself, but from what I read of the second one it did feel like to me that he used a different editor or something? I will say that the first book was a much better start than RR's which I had to slog through, but definitely could have been better. For one there is no dialogue for most of the first part of DotF for the RR version at the start, which I assume he probably took down now that he's on Zon?
Well, I don't want my comment to get too long here so I'll just link to Amazon reviews which has a two star review as the top one and good reads to be fair to you.
https://www.amazon.com/Defiance-Fall-LitRPG-Adventure-TheFirstDefier-ebook/dp/B09168R29M
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57866482-defiance-of-the-fall
City of Sin from a Chinese author, it is definitely inspired by Planescape: Torment, it is a representative of the rare D&D xianxia genre. The hero is a runemaster, heir to the cursed clan, where the devil bloodline is supported by incest. He rises to power in the planar metropolis, leads planar invasions. Epic, drama and all sorts of 18+. The novel and its translation are completed.
<strong><em>Defiance of the Fall</em></strong> from a Swedish author. It's a rare kind of readable mix of xianxia and litrpg, and starts with the System Apocalypse trope. The protagonist ̶i̶s̶ ̶s̶t̶r̶o̶n̶g̶ gets cheats from the beginning, but he gets ̶s̶e̶r̶i̶o̶u̶s̶ impossible challenges as well. It feels quite gritty realistic, not without a weird humor sometimes. He progresses not just as a cultivator but also as a leader; it deals with management, city building, alliances and backstabs, some economics, genocides, etc.
<strong><em>Defiance of the Fall</em></strong> from a Swedish author. It's a rare kind of readable mix of xianxia and litrpg. The protagonist ̶i̶s̶ ̶s̶t̶r̶o̶n̶g̶ gets cheats from the beginning, but he gets ̶s̶e̶r̶i̶o̶u̶s̶ impossible challenges as well. It feels quite gritty realistic, but not without a weird humor sometimes. He progresses not just as a cultivator but also as a leader; it deals with management, city building, alliances and backstabs, some economics, genocides, etc.
City of Sin from a Chinese author, it is definitely inspired by Planescape: Torment, it is a representative of the rare D&D xianxia genre. The hero is a runemaster, heir to the cursed clan, where the devil bloodline is supported by incest, he rises to power in the planar metropolis, leads planar invasions. Epic, drama and all sorts of 18+. The novel and its translation are completed.
Currently reading Dungeon Crawler Carl myself (on Book 2!) and it has been a hilariously excellent read. Great way to start the genre.
My top recommendation that I think fits your request is He Who Fights With Monsters by Shirtaloon. Not only is it well-written with a great system and engaging MC, the surrounding cast is fantastic, and it includes some light romance. This story is a banger, so treat yourself to it once you wrap DCC.
He Who Fights with Monsters: A LitRPG Adventure https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08WCT9W26/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_ZDWFPPRSB40K4MMVPMS7?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
Once you are done with that and if you still want more, you can try out my novel, Dive: Endless Skies, which is currently a contestant in SPFBO 7. It's a more traditional fantasy setting about a young woman who falls in with a team of guild mercenaries on a Dungeon quest. You can expect great characters, good action, a little romance (more just awkward flirting and budding romance), and light litrpg elements.
Dive: Endless Skies (The Dive Sequence Book 1) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08XQVLJBL/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_1TBZZF75RAMTV6CWJZY7
He Who Fights with Monsters by Shirtaloon has been great. Combat is fun and the dialog is increadable. I would avoid the audio book as it falls into the trap of having a stat sheet that is read out but the book for me is a must read. I would desibe this a a Isekia/Gamerlit with some great character building.
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Swing Shift by William D. Arand (Randi Darren is the same author) is another great book filled with modern fantasy fun. I would describe it as a mix of fantasy/mystery/action. All of this authors books share the same universe which is a plus.
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I would also recommend Demon Accords series but I would say it has some inexplicable character moments that really brought the series down as a whole. The Power Creep is also off the charts.
On that note, if you wanna dig deeper on the philosophical concept of memes, check out the book Snow Crash. Basic story concept is the idea of memes that can act like computer viruses to the human brain stem, spreading from person to person virally using the avenue of language, and of people learning to "write" these virally intrusive memes. It's one of Neal Stephenson's better ones, imo, and I like quite a few of his novels.
Orson Scott Card, in the preface to one of his short story collections, wrote about how "stories are the atomic units of society".
The fictional story <em>Snow Crash</em> is of course on a similar theme, taken to an extreme.
Anyway, lots of people that are socially awkward treat the little stories and memes that link people together as silly. Admittedly, they are silly. But they are also important.
Think about religious cultures. What food to eat on a holiday is not important. It's the stories about why we that food on that day that matters.
C. S. Lewis wrote about his ideal Christianity as a "good infection". Whatever your little stories and memes are, enjoy them by yourself and you can enjoy sharing them with others. For good or ill, that is most of society.