Solid good litrpg

What did you like most about Valhalla Online?

A different take on Litrpg compared to my limited experience of Aleron Kong, and Hugo Huesca. Overall still prefer Kong, but this is definitely good.

What did you like best about this story?

A touch more real-world

Which scene did you most enjoy?

The fight between Sam and Thornsten

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Is LitRPG a Thor Point?

Having recently been fairly bemused by my first incursion into LitRPG I'd already decided to give it another go so when this one popped up I thought why not? And once again I found myself happily entertained and I must say a quick bravo to Podium for combining two such short books like this rather than trying to extract two credits from us for them.

Even as an ex-gamer myself any regular fan of epic fantasy is likely to have issues with these books because they are aimed in a different direction. Many of these authors aren't going to go in for hugely cultured world-building - it's meant to be a game. They aren't likely to invent a clever magic system or abilities or races and they are going to mechanize a lot of what happens with levels and statistics. A lot of the dialogue is going to be aimed at re-producing the gloriously stilted interactions and massively simplified emotions of the NPC - Non Player Character. in fact the previous one that I read which was Aleron Kong's Chaos Seeds really was just a person playing a game.

I think Valhalla Online does go some way beyond that though. While I enjoyed Kong's first book albeit with some bemusement as to why this is better. I think it has all of the main elements that will enthuse fans of LitRPG but it also has far more going for it. While I'm happy just to have read just one of Kong's books I think I'll be returning to this series. It has much more depth, a better set of characters and a main protagonist with a real purpose to what she's doing. There's a little more consideration aimed at the psychology the situation.

The narration by Jennifer O'Donnell is pretty strong with a special mention going out for Gurgle the Kobold!

So, while I do think that some epic fantasy buffs might get irritated by these kind of books I think this is a very worthy addition to the sub-genre and taken for what they are they can be pretty entertaining. I'm not going to read lots of them because of the repetitive nature of leveling up and skills development but I will logon to Valhalla Online again in the future.

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