The Grind - The Pickaxe of a Thousand Attributes Book #1

by Dan Sugralinov, Joshua Swayne (editor), Andrey Nechaev

Egor, a fresh college grad from Russia, takes his classmate’s advice and joins a popular VR game, hoping to earn some cash. But with a tight budget that won’t cover a full account or a fancy VR immersion capsule, he opts for a free trial account and fires up his ancient gaming console.

Laggy gameplay, crappy graphics on his old TV, a sluggish internet connection—who cares about all that when you’re not there to play? Egor’s plan is mine ore in the sandbox and slaughter hordes of rabbits, all in the name of scoring some sweet loot. Little does he know, he’s about to stumble upon an item that will make the game’s elite players stop at nothing to take him down…

539 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 7, 2024

About the author

Dan Sugralinov grew up in a small working-class town on the Russian border with Kazakhstan. It’s a miracle he survived his childhood games of hide-and-seek in the surrounding building sites complete with perilous rebar structures and flooded foundation pits.

Ever since he learned to read at the age of five, he couldn’t put a book down. Reluctant to earn himself the name of a conceited nerd, he concentrated on playing soccer which allowed him to become friends with the town’s toughest kids.

In 1995, he graduated with honors, entering the St Petersburg Academy of Engineering and Economics where he studied business creation. He must have done something right because in the years that followed, he first worked on TV and radio just to get the taste of it, then opened his first successful business followed by several more. In between, he started writing and playing video games, winning the St Petersburg Mortal Kombat championship and becoming runner-up for Starcraft and Warcraft 3. He is a 14-times champion in Quake, Quake 2 and Quake 3 as well as the world’s ex-#1 in the World of Warcraft.

In 2004, he wrote his first motivational novella The Bricks which to date has garnered him over 3,000,000 readers online alone.

In 2014, Russia’s leading publishers of business literature Mann, Ivanov & Ferber published a revised and extended edition of his book, The Bricks 2.0.

In 2015, Dan discovered the existence of LitRPG. He devoured everything that had been written in that genre until he finally decided he too could write similar books.

In summer 2017, he published his first book in the subgenre of realRPG: Level Up.

Dan Sugralinov is a consummate gamer, a multiple MMORPG champion and the world’s ex-#1 in the World of Warcraft. He is also a successful businessman and author of books on marketing and business organization. His first LitRPG series Level Up took Russia by storm in 2017. Its English translation is about to be released on Amazon.

Reviews

[Mark]

The game described in this book is a capitalist hellscape of awful consequences and no good quality of life. I wouldn't play it if you paid me.

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t always enjoy the pacing and structural choices. I understand the need for motive and tension in the story. Putting the gaming elements in a video game means a good deal of that tension is going to come in the outside world. The problem is that more often than not the outside story felt like an interruption. At the end it feels more tied together so there’s hope on that front.

I did like how the lack of high tech gear was turned into an advantage or into opportunities for amusing challenges. I liked how the MC took on awful players and in-game monsters. The action was good.

I’ll check out the next one.

2.75

[Devan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Too much real life drama

First of all I enjoyed this. The problem is I read not as an escape per say, but definitely don’t want to think about real life responsibilities and drama. This made it impossible to separate the two. I get what the author was trying to do, just didn’t enjoy that aspect.

[Melissa Lynn Fernandez · Rating 5 out of 5]

fear the pickaxe

I like the down to earth feel of the main character. His struggles with life/money. He stumbles at first to figure out how to solve some of his problems. His mom getting hurt really made this character special to me. Having to find money to pay for hospital bills for a family member is tough. A great story all around.

[fane · Rating 1 out of 5]

frustrating main character frustrating story. None of his decision makes sense. He needs money to pay for his mother's healthcare and he have the ability to do pay for it by selling an item, but instead decide to gamble the with the money. also why is everything centered around him, like everyone is going out of their way to make his life hell in game just because ...

[Tony Fecteau · Rating 4 out of 5]

This author always spins an amazing story. We see the life of a Russian, and what he needs to do to get by in life. I love the old references to the old console games and found a lot of humour with the "sticky" controls which used to happen with the old controllers.

[ConciseAlan · Rating 4 out of 5]

We can always count on this author to deliver a solid story that's fun to read. Here, the mc is a broke lawyer in Russia with a sick mom who works odd jobs to get by. He hears about an online game where he can grind cash, and gets a lucky loot drop to help him excel at that.

[Brad Theado · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a return to old school Russian litrpg. Good stuff

[Johnny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book one

You want overpowered? This is the book to read.

Editing was really good. I only found two mistakes and will put them on Goodreads.
Book one was written on Royalroad, but no sign of book two yet.

9/10