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With Unity formed, Gunnar feels like he has a family like he's never had before. All that's left is to grow in power, continue building in Edgewood, and work on earning Adeelee's affection. Nothing can tear him away from his friends and newly founded guild.

Or can it?

Gunnar still has a lot to learn about his massive world.

There are eyes and ears everywhere. Deception can come when you least expect it, and even in Eden's Gate, sometimes you can lose control of your own fate.

426 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 22, 2017

977 people are currently reading
217 people want to read

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Edward Brody

9 books356 followers

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5 stars
1,384 (46%)
4 stars
1,036 (35%)
3 stars
425 (14%)
2 stars
89 (3%)
1 star
17 (<1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 111 reviews
Profile Image for Bradley.
Author 9 books4,879 followers
May 7, 2022
There's something about LitRPG that just soothes the hell out of me. Light adventure, the joy of leveling, the hijinks of storytelling and reversals, and above all, LOOT. It's just so comforting.

And sitting at about level 15, stretching one's wings, getting enslaved, running around with murderers... well, it's all fun in the game. Right? Right?

Well... yeah. It is. Especially when you can turn around and betray the hell out of them or other PvP types. :)

Solid. Fun.
48 reviews1 follower
January 6, 2018
Not sure why the author wants to go sideways plotwise. Not a big deal, if it is interesting, but the the setup leaves much to be desired. Half the book is just setting up location change and requires a degree of incredulity for the circumstances to line up.

The main character Gunner is really a showing himself a incompetent NEET who almost always just gets by luck or extraordinary circumstances. Despite being continually surprised by the game and the creator telling him straight out that the world is real for all intensive purposes, he continually puts himself into unnecessary danger or walks into traps while spouting profound things like "huh" or "what the hell" while being in denial saying this is just a game or some other nonsense despite being in the game world for months.

He is also inconsistent as a character, he is seems extremely reluctant to kill anyone when he needs to avoid trouble, but then he isn't when it suits him or the plot needs him to. I think it might be a LITRPG thing, so much of the allure of LITRPGs is the world building and so I guess everything else including character authenticity becomes secondary when you need the plot to move to one location or quest, or setting up a situation for the character to get a new ability or stat.

Profile Image for Karl  Ben-Shachar .
100 reviews2 followers
November 24, 2017
Seriously!!??

Okay, I'm disappointed. I actually, literally counted down the days, until this books release. What a disappointment! Gunner is making mistake after mistake. Behaving like a teenager. Impulsive (and not in a good way). He's basically the book version of naruto. Meaning, something can be explained to him thoroughly, and he just say "I don't get what's going on". Has he been this much of a dumb character? I really tried to get through this book, but urgh! I feel like the author dropped the ball in this installment of Eden's Gate. Its a good thing that this is on K.U. I would have been pissed if I actually spent money on this.
Profile Image for Steve Naylor.
2,504 reviews127 followers
July 24, 2018
Rating 3.0 stars.

This book was just okay. Since I like LitRPG, and this is a LitRPG book, I liked it, though I would not say it was very good. The first 2 books were much better. Gunnar has a guild and his goals have been the same for the last 2 books. He wants to build his guild, build his power, make a name for himself and try and find his girlfriend Rachel (maybe). He repeats this goal multiple times in every book. It never seems like he gets around to any of those goals those. In this book, he gets side tracked from his goals and it is not necessarily his fault but where he went and what he was supposed to do did not make much sense

Another issue is the writing style when compared to the age of the characters. Gunnar is the youngest but I still have to assume he is about 22? Aaron is a little older, then everyone else is in their 30's. Aaron talks like he is a 11 year old boy. He calls himself the "sizzler" and keeps talking about how much sex he wants to have. It would have been more believable if Aaron was written as a 11 year old instead of an almost genius computer programmer. Also despite saying that Eden's gate is the real world now and he has to get used to it, he keeps saying things like "you can't do that"

Despite that I have to stop complaining about the direction an author takes his characters instead of the way that I would take that same character. The world is still interesting and I am planning to continue this series.
Profile Image for Abhijith.
30 reviews1 follower
November 29, 2017
The quality of this series has dropped dramatically in this book. The MC shows no good qualities. He uses fire against sand so many times it is embarrassing. More over he comes across as a confused and stupid character.
Profile Image for Mahalia Gosla.
338 reviews17 followers
March 13, 2019
This was slower than the other books in the series. the actions were great, but it felt a bit bland.
8 reviews
October 8, 2019
The character is forced to do something he disagrees with. So he is devolved in a good way.
(400)pg
Profile Image for Travis.
2,913 reviews49 followers
November 23, 2017
Disappointing in that the promised teaser at the end of book 2 did not pan out in this book. In fact, that teaser was completely useless, as the mentioned character only shows once or twice in being mentioned in passing. Not cool, not cool at all.
An editor is sorely needed for this volume, as the grammar errors were plentiful, and it was difficult to remain on track being jarred out of reader's trance more often than not.
If you can ignore all these negatives, then you're looking at a pretty good story. We have the obligatory take over the world villain, the race that refuses to listen about destruction being on the way, and a whole host of new enemies. Lots of things to look forward to in future books in the series. It's a good read if you can get past it's various issues, though I have to wonder why the author bothered with setting up the ending of the previous book if it was going to get such minimalist treatment in this one, just more that smacks of amateur writing here, but even an amateur can tell an excellent story, and despite it's numerous faults, this was an excellent story, there's no doubt of that.
Profile Image for GaiusPrimus.
870 reviews97 followers
November 25, 2017
This book was a bit of a disappointment. I rounded up to 3 because I still like the series.

Gunnar is just infuriating.

I also don't see the point of adding another villain to the story, when there's so many plot lines left open.

On the plus side, the author is pretty prolific, so we might see another book relatively soon. Hopefully focused on the guild and the village build, and the plot lines of the first 2 books.

Profile Image for Johnny.
2,182 reviews82 followers
January 10, 2022
Book three

I have a hard time getting into this world.
Everything, and I do mean everything cost gold in this world. No copper or silver. To me this is lazy world building.
I also find the MC to be kinda dumb and childish a lot of the time.
There isn't really anything to hook me and pull me into this world and make me want to stay.
The writing and editing are good, so I will recommend this book, it's just not holding my attention.
Profile Image for Darren.
517 reviews11 followers
April 5, 2018
Well.. Book 2 started dipping on the sad side, and it continues on with Book #3. Not particularly interested in reading Book 4 unless I see better reviews.

Profile Image for Clinton Stanturf.
223 reviews1 follower
May 4, 2019
God the hole Escape at the end was made the main character look absolutely retarded. First he seemed ok but the main character is absolutely getting dumber and dumber in each book it's like he's never played a game before in his life and unlike other books that make the character kind of stupid because they never played games before this MC that's all they done in life so come on.

The other thing that bothers me is the author instead of building up the skills that they already have they're just throwing every other kind of magic possible in the MC and they're not really using it case in point.

MC hits the high-level guards super strong armor again and again with his weak sword.

(with the author confirming that it's doing no damage)

and after he almost died repeatedly he finally use the new branch of magic that he was stupidly given.

Then as with a lot of lit RPGs for whatever reason the author wants to give a full readout of all the stats over and over and over and over and over again even when there's nothing that really changes. I don't get what's so hard about doing it every other chapter when when you're spending an hour to two hours reading stats is dumb and this author takes it a step further he wants to talk about everything the character takes out of his inventory. No one cares what he takes out of his inventory especially in the next chapter he puts it right back in.
Profile Image for Linzie.
41 reviews
March 13, 2022
Don’t get me wrong, I love LitRPG. But this book wasn’t believable in the slightest. Gunnar is forced to infiltrate a guild of murderers and torturers to save a man’s wife from sexual slavery to its leader Dryden, and despite constantly questioning Dryden and balking at the mild atrocities Dryden asks Gunnar to commit (when compared with the truly awful stuff Dryden and his boys do on the regular), for some reason Dryden mostly trusts Gunnar from the get go and let’s him in on the guild’s biggest secrets and Dryden lays out his evil master plan for Gunnar too.

Gunnar spends the entire book being horribly naive, which is annoying. But more annoying is the way the writer decided to write the two women in Dryden’s harem, who have been his sexual slaves for years. When Rena comes back to join Unity with Gunnar, she doesn’t even notice how lewd Aaron is being. And you better believe that someone who had to read her captor’s moods for years, and was raped, again for years, would notice a guy being inappropriately sexual toward both her and the only other woman in the guild, whether of not she understood the dumb Earth slang Aaron uses.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Atlas.
859 reviews39 followers
November 22, 2018
* * *
3 / 5

~mini review~

What did I like about The Sands? I liked that it showed us a whole new area of Eden's Gate, that Gunnar's character underwent some change and some development, and that we got quite a few new characters. What I wasn't so fond of was the sense that the overall plot wasn't really being advanced - this felt like a side novel of sorts, a little "Gunnar adventure" story that was fun but wasn't all that relevant - and how the author seems to have entirely forgotten about the developments that he teased at the end of book two (which don't appear in book four either!).

The Sands feels like Brody got distracted from telling the story of Eden's Gate and just wrote about something exciting that happened to Gunnar. And yeah, it was kinda cool - there's fights, drugs, a terrifying warlord, conspiracy theories etc. The Sands felt like the book equivalent of watching a filler TV episode.

Read my proper reviews on my blog: http://atlasrisingbooks.wordpress.com
8 reviews1 follower
April 13, 2018
An excellent story with great progress

Having stepped away from Gunnar and his friends for a while, I was somewhat dreading getting back into the world of Eden's Gate. Not because the writing is bad, but because I was worried I would be lost. I hate that feeling, when you've walked away from a book or a series for a bit only to find that you have to start over completely. Well, I was pleasantly surprised when I popped into the story and everything came back. Gunnar has an incredible story to tell about the Endless Sands and his experience with a terrible person. The story pacing is excellent and the progress of the side story with Crylight is perfect. I'm very pleased with the book as a whole, and I look forward to reading book 4 in the near future.
1 review
March 28, 2022
Idiotic Main Character

The way he thinks about women is like from a teenage nerdy boy's fantasy. It actually bothers me. On top of that, it seems like Gunnar's starting to have a harem of women... Starting to feel like I'm experiencing an unoriginal anime plot 😂
For someone who kept explaining that he played sooo many MMOs in the first two books, the mc still makes the dumbest mistakes that any just-above-casual gamer would NOT make. It's really annoying, to be honest.

I do love the descriptions of the world, the brutality, but also the plot, despite my earlier grievances. It is interesting enough for me to see how Gunnar will proceed with all this new news, and if he will soon be a bit more mature in his thinking. I also want to know how those on Earth may go on.
5 reviews
March 25, 2018
Apparently the MC has undergone a lobotomy.
At every possible turn he makes truly imbecilic decisions just so that the author can demonstrate how his world works to readers who he believes have also had lobotomies.

That's not uncommon, fantasy authors are no less inclined to treat their readers like idiots (and get 5 star ratings for it) than any other, but Brody's methodology and execution in The Sands are cack-handed at best.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe the reasoning is to offer readers the chance to feel superior to the MC by offering thirteen different pantomime "Look Behind You!" moments a page.

The Sands fails to feel like time well spent either way.
69 reviews
August 3, 2018
Can’t wait for more!

I have thoroughly enjoyed this series and I am a bit sad that I only have one more book to go (of the currently published books, that is)!

This book takes an interesting side trip that dovetails perfectly with the main story and helps to develop the main character more thoroughly.

Great read!

(I will add here that all of the books could use a bit more proofreading. There are many grammatical and typographical errors that could easily be corrected, especially in the digital versions.)
Profile Image for Foyiwae Andrews.
5 reviews
April 9, 2019
Book 3 is a development in plot and worldbuilding

Book 3 was interesting. I like the further development of the world and the NPCs to show not everyone is innocent. I also enjoy the hackers and their attempts to get into the game, and the consequences of that. I would say it dragged a bit in the bloodletters camp. I know it was necessary plot but it did feel a bit boring compared to everything else that has happened. I also want to find out more about Rachel, and glad to see Gunnar thinking of her again. Overall not a bad book, but I still feel the first one was the best.
Profile Image for Lubos Elexa.
378 reviews3 followers
November 25, 2022
Nastal čas opustiť túto sériu. Toľko "bugov" pokope len kvôli tomu, aby sme zistili, že príde vojna. Postava, ktorá chce byť šéfom, ale nešéfuje ničomu. Chce byť bojovníkom, ale jej postava prešlapuje na mieste. Samé výmeny názorov, obkecávanie každej sprostosti (zvitkov, zbraní), nulový progres. Autor robí idiota chvíľu z hlavnej postavy, potom z NPC, lúzer porazí každého, ale súboje sú neprehľadné. Ak sa už vytvorí niečo, čo by mohlo vyzerať ako mechanizmus fungujúci aj neskôr, autor poprie sám seba a nabudúce postava buď "osprostie", alebo sa udeje niečo iné. Hasta la vista, Gunnar...
1,001 reviews13 followers
October 2, 2018
Awesome but dark

This book was barker than the first couple. That said, it was quite enjoyable and open up new plots. Our MC is a bit behind level wide but is broadening his skill base and should become formidable. Hope the next books have him grind up some more levels as to become an impediment to the darker factions. There will have to be some answer from the good doctor as the reborn will take over by attrition alone if not checked. We shall see...... On to the next book¡
Profile Image for Lisa.
20 reviews1 follower
May 20, 2020
Best addition to the series so far!

I’m glad that I have continued to read Eden’s Gate, even through all of the typos, grammatical errors and profanity in the first two books. This book was far better than the previous two both in the story and lack of errors. The author would do well to go back and make corrections to the first two novels to encourage people to continue to read his stories.
7 reviews
January 6, 2018
Gate series

I love these books! gunner isn't perfect but that's what makes these books make you feel like you can understand why he does the stuff he does. I can't wait to read more! Completely finished the trilogy in 3 days just because I was hooked. I'm looking forward to continue reading them.
Profile Image for Harvey AD.
2 reviews1 follower
January 28, 2018
Great Series

If you like The Land series by Aleron Kong, you'll like this. This series actually outstrips The Land in some ways. The plot is more complex and there seems to be just a little more detail put into fleshing out the supporting cast. If you haven't read the Land series yet, pick it up after you finish this one; you won't regret it.
123 reviews3 followers
March 31, 2018
Weakest book in the series by far

The plot hook is horribly cliche and the contrived reasons for depriving the MC of aid and items is annoying to read. None of the new characters had any time to be fleshed out and the moral choices were ridiculously overblown to the point of being meaningless. I hope this isn't a portent for what was such a promising series.
68 reviews4 followers
April 3, 2018
A solidly good read

Solid story with good character growth. The MC's power progression is measured and in no danger of feeling overpowered too soon.
The actions are believable for the setting, with gamers acting as gamers most likely would.
All in all a good ride. Will be eagerly awaiting the next installment.
15 reviews
October 30, 2018
Edit this shit

Excellent story until the flow is destroyed when you read a sentence like "rattled my head in agreement" or "he said snapping his lips". Seriously, I love the genre, and I will be reading the next book in this series but if it wasnt free on Amazon Prime I wouldnt pay for it. This ain't the mist village.
Profile Image for Lundos.
406 reviews12 followers
October 20, 2020
The pacing is starting to annoy me and so is the main character. Obviously, he's part wish fulfillment and part ... well that's all. I don't really mind, but at least he could have been more interesting or being put in more interesting situations. All the plans are either changed almost instantly or postponed and the main character is the most naive person since Snow White.

Profile Image for Sheri Smith.
29 reviews1 follower
January 21, 2021
Agin Absolutely Loved This Book

I play an rpg type ap and I love it. It’s wonderful to immerse yourself in a book that follows a lot of the same concepts. Loved this books characters. Dryden what a jerk. Loved the dragon have to say this. Wonderful read. Going straight into book 4. I hope you have book 5 done or in the works Edward.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 111 reviews

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