Let’s do a bit of a refresher, what is Ascend Online. Ascend Online is a full dive, full immersion video game with a fantasy setting. While other companies in this world have tried to create games like this before, they haven’t worked, but this one is amazing and it feels right. We are following one group of players who show up in the city of Eberia in the first book and then head out into the wilds. This time we are following Lazarus Cain (great name), a half-giant half-elf who instead of going out adventuring like most players did, joined the thieves guilds in Eberia to try something different in the game. However, when he wakes up in a another thieve’s guilds hideout without his memories and a sigil emblazoned on his chest, he has the adventure come to him.

It was a bit interesting starting this book, because I saw that this was book #1.5, so I knew I wanted to go in what is technically the right order, but I wasn’t sure what I should be expecting. I wasn’t expecting for it to be in Eberia and with a different group of players. That took a few minutes to get used to, but I think that I like Lazarus as well as I like Marcus (Lyr) in the other books. Mainly, because I think that Lazarus is a bit more of an interesting character. I like Marcus, but he is more of the prototypical hero. Lazarus, while part of the thieve’s guild is still a caring person and is worried about the world. Again, Chmilenko does a good job of staying away from creating an edgelord which would have been easy to do yet again. The characters that Lazarus interacts with, the other players in the games and the NPC’s, also seem to be a bit more fleshed out with, which is nice.

Another thing that makes me like this book a little bit better is that the story is a bit more focused. The first one jumps around a bunch more and leaves a lot of open ends to the story. Now, I think that’s good, since we’re in a series, to not tie everything up, but you feel like there are two stories in the first book. This, on the other hand, is all about finding the memories and figuring out what is going to be happening and how to stop it. I think it also helps that this story is in Eberia and not in a larger area. This is actually some good advice for young writers or new Dungeon Masters, keep your story focused to a smaller location and it’ll probably end up being a tighter story because you don’t need to fully build and explain as much of the world.

Now, this book isn’t perfect. You can still tell that Luke Chmilenko is a young author. There are some things, like the NPC’s swearing that is a bit jarring. I feel like in a fantasy world, the NPC’s should have their own way to swear or phrases that they use as compared to just saying what we say now. For the players, I’m fine with it, but for the NPC’s it’s a bit world. The other thing, and I complained about this in the first book as well as the Sufficiently Advanced Magic series, is use and listen to your editor. While I think it was a little bit better in this book in terms of writing, Chmilenko still had a serious issue with repeating or over writing sections of his book. This comes down to describing something and then repeating the same description of the same thing in just a little bit later, sometimes in the same sentence. Any editor worth their salt would have fixed this issue. It’s stuff like “The slow moving river of sewage slowly drifted by, it’s went wafting up to us” or something similar to that, where you have it already described as slow and then repeated. Definitely could save on words that way and make it clearer. I’m not going to knock him for the stat blocks, as I think they are an issue just because I’m listening to the series, not reading it.

Overall, I liked this book better than the first. It definitely still has the issue that I’ve found in so many LitRPG’s where it’s overwritten and just needs a good going through by an editor. I think that this is a better book than the first, and I really enjoyed the story and the main character. This is a very traditional LitRPG, but it’s a good series for someone who wants to start in the genre. I’ve already started book #2, so expect in a few weeks a review on that one as well.

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Ascend Online, a book by Luke Chmilenko, is a story of a new, fully immersive video game that is coming out. It’s basically a surprise to everyone in the world that it’s happening, because, other places have tried immersive games, and they’ve failed. But this one looks much more impressive from the trailer and it certainly is. In fairly typical LitRPG style, the main characters end up in the video game and the whole of the story is spent there. Marcus and his friends go into the game together, but because Marcus takes longer than everyone else picking his character, he gets sent to a small village and separated from everyone else, instead of the main city. So it follows him as he has adventures and gets different quests while waiting for his friends to join him, beating the rush of adventurers who will be pouring out there for sure.

Now, that bit of synopsis screams edgelord, an edgelord, in this setting, is that character who would set themselves as an actual ruler of an area and do things that they think are dark and edgy that makes them cool. And there have been a few LitRPG stories that I’ve listened to where characters seem to be headed in that direction. Also a few authors who seem like they are trying to be that themselves. This book could have easily gone down that path, and you do run across some characters who get that sort of treatment in the book, but Marcus and his friends are actually good people. It’s really refreshing to see handled that way, and I think that is one of the things I appreciated about the book.

The other big thing I like about the book is that while it’s in a game, the author does take some steps to just write a fairly epic feeling fantasy story. Yes, we do get one of my least favorite bits, because it is a LitRPG, but the world is well conceived as compared to some other LitRPG’s that I’ve read where it just felt very generic. It felt much more like a video game than this one does. Now, like I was saying, we do get one of my least favorite things which is stat blocks and heads up displays that you get in actual video games. I think that in book form, that wouldn’t be as bad, but for an audio book, it makes for some boring listening. Since I’ve just listened to it, I’m going to assume that the book has it laid out in a table you can skim over faster than it takes someone to read it, especially when not a ton has changed always.

Let’s quickly talk about the actual writing in the book. This is another spot where I don’t want to say it’s bad, but it certainly isn’t good. I think that Chmilenko writes compelling characters and a fairly interesting story, tying different things together well, while stringing together different quests, but the actual writing is a bit clunky. This book could be made a lot better by just having a better editor, or having taken the advice of a good editor. It isn’t a case where there are just dumb sections of the book that could be cut, I think that they’ve done a good job of keeping what is needed, but there is a lot of need to clean up sentences. A word will be used in a sentence and then used again, or something will be described at the start and end of a sentence. Just a little more time on editing would have been able to clean up the sentences, that in some sections were pretty commonly bad and other sections were better, and made it an easier listen to. Does this take too much away from the book to make it listenable/readable? I think for a lot of people it might, which, is a shame, because I like the story. But it really pulls you from immersion when you feel like the author is repeating himself. I think I said this with Sufficiently Advanced Magic, if you are going to write and possibly self publish LitRPG work, find a good editor and listen to them. I know it might be beating a dead horse, but it’ll make a huge difference.

So, what do I think of the book and would I recommend it? Clearly I’m enjoying the book as I’m listening to what is technically book #1.5 in the series. Different cast of characters, but I think better writing than the first book. If you can make it through the rough sections of writing and want to check out a LitRPG book, I think it could be an interesting read. I think I might prefer Sufficiently Advanced Magic, though that one drags in spots more so than this one does. Ascend Online is a good book in the LitRPG genre, however, most books in the LitRPG genre seem to be less good than your standard fantasy. So yes, I can recommend it, but don’t spend much money on it, in fact, try and find it at your library if you can.

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