Ordinary Hero

by Ellis Michaels

Sometimes life IS a game. There's nothing out-of-the-ordinary about James Callahan. He's just your average, everyday college student. But when James finds a mysterious scroll on the desk of one of his professors, his life quickly becomes anything but ordinary.After a series of strange events, James learns that he's the only one who can defeat Carter Livingston, a powerful gang leader responsible for robbing banks all over the city. With the help of a few beautiful women he befriends, James sets out to put an end to Carter's reign of terror once and for all.But does he have what it takes to defeat Carter and his gang? This book contains adult situations and language. Read at your own risk.

341 pages, Paperback

Published December 20, 2018

About the author

Ellis Michaels started writing professionally in 2014 after working in the mental health field for 15 years. A passionate book lover since childhood, Ellis has always been an avid reader. When not reading or writing, Ellis enjoys spending time with friends and family, playing and listening to music, traveling, fitness, and going to the beach.

In addition to the fiction Ellis Michaels has published in the LitRPG, GameLit, science-fiction, and fantasy genres, he's written one nonfiction book - a memoir about living with a rare illness called Behcet's disease. In 2020, Ellis quit his job of 15 years to focus exclusively on writing. He's never been happier.

Reviews

[Nila (digitalcreativepages)]

The book was a game, and all the characters its players. I found the book extremely funny, perhaps unbelievable was the keyword. It had a James Bond kind of a vibe going on throughout its pages. It was obvious from page 1, the book read like a dream, a make-believe virtual augmented reality world where a thin scrawny young man could save all these gorgeous, absolute flawless, sexy babes from life threatening situations and fight perfectly against the bad guys with guns and knifes.

A scroll on their professor's desk, four students signing it, saw James and his classmates going through a weird transformation into either extremely good heroes or bad villains. Our main character was the hero and his classmate Carter the villain who robbed banks and killed people, the evil joker. All the four characters were in some kind of augmented, virtual world kinda game where all the four had to complete it to get out of it; fears, dreams, desires, and crafts of each character were tapped into and narrated as a story. Whew.. this felt like an adult version of the game Jumanji. Quests, leveling up, skills increase, fights, sex and orgy were all written continually in cycles in every other chapter

If you read the book like a game with levels and powering up and learning skills then it is fun, but if you read it like a a literary fiction, then it wouldn't make any sense.

I enjoyed it it it was a fast one hour read, it was obvious that this was not meant for analysis but to be read with widened eyes and raised eyebrows. I knew everything was written euphemistically, in a hyperbole.

This book was every nerdy guy's wet dream with babes, sex, killing the bad guys, and winning the game. Babes and goons afoot. Sex and fights galore, nerdy hero winning the game, saving the world and hot flawless babes made this a weirdly fun read.

Oh yes, I did hop, skip, and jump through this book!!

"What happens in alternate simulated realities stays in alternate simulated realities"

[Maraud3r]

Thanks for wasting my time with a false and deceptive premise Ellis Michaels. I'll be certain not to read another book of yours ever again!

No, just no. Absolutely no. I absolutely hate the whole "HAHA, it was just a game!" switch and bait with a burning passion. It makes me angry as hell. Because it means that anything and everything that happened, was ultimatively entirely meaningless. It had no purpose, no impact, mattered not a bit.

For me, it leads to an instant black list of the author and outspoken critic in any venue I can find. If you go for a VR setting, have the goddamn balls to admit to it rather than trying to deceive your audience. It's not some new and great plot twist, it's not something that hasn't been done to death, it's stale, lame and renders the entire story retroactively completely meaningless.

Further, Kasie is about the most unlikeable love interest I've ever met. Both the ingame variant and the real one. The ingame variant is self explanatory, the real one helps someone break into their apartment, hook the guy up to a VR while putting him into an artificial coma but it's all okay because now she loves him!

[Gilbert Stack]

One of the things that separates out a good LitRPG novel from a poor one is if the gaming experience impacts the player in his/her real life. Ordinary Hero seems designed for that purpose as it takes place in a simulation of the characters’ world and initially they do not realize that they are playing a game.

The action is fairly straightforward, balanced between James (our hero) having as much sex with as many women as is humanly possible (or probably more than is humanly possible) and James getting into dangerous situations in his need to keep impressing the women as a hero. There wasn’t a lot of depth here, but I think that might have been on purpose. If the storyline had been much more complex, James probably didn’t have the goods to resolve it. Still, watching him stumble through his virtual environment, figure out he’s in a game, and decide to play (in many senses of the word) was entertaining.

Michaels had the good sense not to end the story when James defeated the big bad, but instead brought James back to the real world where he had to interact with people he knew in the game and think about what he wanted from his life. There’s actually room for a sequel here as the player who was the big bad is clearly very angry that an “ordinary” guy like James managed to defeat him. It’s also nice to see James using his experience to change his life.

I received this book from Free Audiobook Codes in exchange for an honest review.

If you liked this review, you can find more at www.gilbertstack.com/reviews.

[Michael Burnett]

Good book

Good book I can't wait to read the next book in the series I would recommend this book to anyone

[Kelly Ross]

Just not my thing. They need to make a new genre called GameLit Porn. I prefer more story and a few steamy scenes. This is mostly steamy scenes and a tiny bit of story tossed in.

[M]

Edit: **The way that the protagonist enters the game** was an interesting twist, **even if sometimes the game itself** was a little simplistic.
I initially didn't like that once he left the game he only had the experience from it, but I guess that adds to the realism. I'm used to fantasy/sci-fi where the protagonist actually gains powers.
That he forgives what happens to him is a little odd to me. Being put in an almost perfect virtual reality without being forewarned, and especially having a roommate allow strangers access to my unconscious body would have been a huge issue (instant, 100% relationship killer) for me, but if the protagonist is OK with it then...

Overall, pretty standard fare with an interesting twist or two. 3.5 stars.