Fantasy Buddy Reads discussion
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The Perfect Run
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Vagabond Treehouse ~ [Fall 2025: World of Chains #1-3 (Wayward Bard) | The Perfect Run 1-3 (alternating)]
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LOL Iain on a Quest to Find More Books to Tempt Us With.
Timelord Iain wrote: "Switched over to Arrival: A Humorous Isekai LitRPG (I'm really in try everything mode, right now, to keep my interest and find something I want to read)...This has been fun so fa..."
Sounds fun! Bummer about Scum of the Earth not being as funny... how far did you get?
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T..."
I read the first hour... it's only 8hrs audio... I'll continue... it's still "Kane Good"... just without so much "Kane Humor"...
Bit too close to reality... that was the reviewer take, after an hour, when I got curious...
Weird aliens conquer Earth... 1 sniveling senator survives and becomes The Senator, for a large swath of America (repartitioned by our alien overloards)... Senator and the MC underling pretty much just try to make slaver sound good... they have 7 year olds working the mines...
Plot seems to involve a resistance, but seen from the side of the underling to the Senator... and a "police squad" going around killing people and drumming up fake confessions to keep the aliens happy, because it sounds like a recent murder was done by someone with access to police vehicles/etc...
And that's as far as I got... Gestapo situation...
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This is one of those books I picked up on monthly sale in March/April/May... can't remember if anyone else did... around the time I got Re:Monarch
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Lots of data sheets, but the AI / Cyborg is breaking the system alot faster than most LitRPGs, thanks to being a cyborg that doesn't have to sleep, can multitask, can learn skills perfectly from the System Tutorial when buying a skill, rather than learning it through practice like other people apparently have to... being able to do simulations... being a walking dungeon with component slots instead of a physical dungeon (recently got a dungeon aura to absorb some mana/XP from people nearby), etc etc etc... she's powerleveling like a field, and has 2 minions so far, a Rat King and a Spider Queen... dungeon bosses that surrendered to survive... the Rat King keeps trying to come up with ways to trick the cyborg and escape / get a new dungeon... the spider queen sounds like a hippie/surfer, and is much better at getting perks by being truthful but also a bit sneaky (having cyborg paralyze enemies and let spider kill to get shared XP... and buying a summoning dungeon upgrade to be able to summon more minions but also get the spider a nice lounging bedroom)...
I'm enjoying it... I looked into the author some more (Icalos), and they finished this story last year... 3rd audiobook due out soon, and I think there's enough chapters for 6 audiobooks total...
There's also a prequel sequel that explores the world of superheroes/villains that the cyborg comes from, but that seems to only have 2 ebooks and maybe wasn't successful enough to make audio, i dunno?... it's about a "Faceless minion" that's secretly controlling the world by shaping the superhero/villain war somehow?... it's described as a parody/comedy... kinda like Redshirts parodying the cannon fodder in Star Trek stories...
His newest story is called Bee dungeon, and has to do with a dungeon full of bees, apparently... but also a worldwide threat... I'm not really clear... it sounds like it might be a cozy litrpg, since one of the Royal Road reviewers said they didn't know how to describe it without making it sound boring, but they enjoy it... that feels like code for cozy/slice-of-life to me...
In more Terminator LitRPG discussion, I think the thing this most reminds me of is DIRE Saga:
Born
Seed
Time
DIRE: WARS
Dire: Sins
Dire: Hell
That's another series from the Threadbare guy, that started as a Worm fanfic... once I knew that, it explained alot about born, cause WORM is a pretty post-apocalyptic world, almost... and DIRE just went there with an EMT plotline taking out the power grid... anyway, it's a supervillain cyborg series that does all sorts of super powers and time travel shenanigans... sounds alot like this Terminator LitRPG basically... minus the LitRPG stats... DIRE Saga is big on kayfabe, the same as certain aspects of Threadbare and Small Medium series (the wrestling term for playing fictional good guy / bad guy personas)...
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Walks right past some kids being antagonized by bully/bandit-types, and they try to harass her, and she exterminates them, and continues on... the kids seek help with their own problems introduced in the first Interlude a few chapters ago, and now they're "valued allies" getting help meeting the requirements to become official dungeon explorers, who will help the MC in return... magical contract signed to that effect...
And now that I wrote that out, it's basically the scene where Arnold steals the biker clothes in Terminator, lol...
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When I finally noticed how long it was getting, the character sheet recital was 15-20 minutes... it even repeats the System footnotes about unknown cyborg part upgrades...
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Will definitely have to add to the wishlist, then. ^^
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House Andrews is starting to post Arabella snippets on their blog. I'm so excited! Hopefully this means the final Hidden Legacy trilogy soon :D
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I started Terminate the Other World #2... after the climax of the previous book, lots of XP was earned, and the Rat King sought to evolve... and stumbled onto the cyborg critter option, opening up alot of avenues for Serro... and greater integration into the AI systems (foiling it yet again)... now Serro wants all the critters to become cyborgs when they get the chance / enough XP & Levels... the spider queen just became a cyborg and is so angry at the Rat King... cyborgs can use mana to remove the need for sleep, and the spider was a hippie/stoner/sleeper type until now, and is now fully awake and not happy about it... LOLOL...
Iain, stop making it so tempting! XD
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The Explorator/Legion leader in the main town for now (I think he's the underling to the Magister, and gets all the shit jobs and report reading), is stuck dealing with the emergence of the MC, and he really reminds me of the governor of the town near Fa Ram, in Beware of Chicken... constantly bemoaning the headaches he's stuck with as a result of random things linked to the MC... altho now that they've met, things have been going alot better for him... for a day... now a war/invasion is happening... things are about to become a headache again...
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Ullyses the Spider Queen regained manual control of her sleep schedule... and just went into a weeklong coma, lol...
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"Life, uh, finds a way... and sometimes it has assistance"... Seero just accidentally created a new race of creatures, while healing a child of evil magic... (view spoiler)...
I love how any time the cyborg does something weird, it just freaks the Game Devs / Gods out (there's 2 that talk back and forth sometimes, in the footnotes, when giving the MC unique achievements/abilities/rewards for crazy actions... they also bicker a bit... can't decide if this is a game world or they're deities or what...)
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Look what I just spotted!This Inevitable Ruin
Currently listing an Oct 1 release date on the book's page. Unsure if that's real or not. The cover reveal hit Patreon last week so that's something. Exciting!
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I was hoping a pre-order would be up on Audible. No luck yet.
This is shaping up to be a fantastic holiday release season. BOC 4, DCC 7 and Stormlight 5! Now if only there wouldd be some news about Alecto the Ninth...
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I finally cleared alot of the books I started recently and then paused... now it's time to load up on a whole slew of other books I'm behind on reading for BRs...
My reading motivation has been all over the place this year due to family health stuff. I'm sad I missed several BRs I wanted to join but just... couldn't. It's ok though as I know they'll cycle back around eventually. This group is awesome like that.I got my husband started on DCC 2 this week. He's having just as much fun as the first book :) That series has been one of the best finds.
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Been about 1 week behind on BRs for the past 2-3 months now...
Trimmed out some BRs when I had to, that would have just made a bad situation worse... leaves me with some FOMO, looking at the notifications for the things I wish I had time for... but I don't want to quit the series I already started, even if half are re-reads... the re-reads keep me going when I slump a bit, and jumping ship to unscheduled LitRPGs and cozies keeps me going when I slump alot...
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Winter Lost -- Mercy Thompson #14 (new release)
Salem's Lot -- Stephen King Dark Tower Prep
Beast-Laid Plans -- Beaufort Scales #7
Over the Woodward Wall -- Up and Under #1
Midnight Blue-Light Special -- InCryptid #2 (re-read)
Nowhere Man -- Orphan X #2 (re-read)
Bayou Moon -- Edge #2 (re-read)
Disquiet Gods -- Sun Eater #6 (after many reschedules) (newest release)
The list of BRs coming up, from today to Monday:
Ascendant -- Songs of Chaos #1
Mirror Dance -- Vorkosigan #8 (re-read)
Land of Lost Things -- Book of Lost Things #2 (finale)
Along the Saltwise Sea -- Up and Under #2
Precursor -- Foreigner #4 (Arc 2, #1)
Into the Labyrinth -- Mage Errant #1 (1/2 of omnibus)
Monday, being June 15th, is also a busy BR day:
After Dark -- Mystery Book Club standalone for the month
Exposed -- Animorphs #27 -- I think this is 1st time reading this one, finally... 1-26 were re-reads -- 54 book series
Fate's Edge -- Edge #3 (re-read)
Risen -- Alex Verus #12 (re-read) (finale)
Flag in Exile -- Honor Harrington #5 (re-read) -- everything after this is new to me
But, then, there's only 14 more BRs for the rest of the month, which is decent...
Into the Windwracked Wilds -- Up and Under #3
Vigor Mortis 4 -- Vigor Mortis #4 :D (finale)
The Magos -- Warhammer 40k: Inquisition #7: Eisenhorn #4
Jewel of the Endless Erg -- Mage Errant #2 (2/2 of omnibus)
Mage's End Game -- Tournament of Shadows #6 (finale) -- Mystery Book Club monthly new release
Reaper Man -- Discworld #12
Experiment -- Animorphs #28
Steel's Edge -- Edge #4 (re-read) (finale)
Human Division -- Old Man's War #5 (re-read)
Under the Smokestrewn Sky -- Up and Under #4 (finale)
He Who Fights With Monsters 1 -- HWFWM #1
Soulbinder -- Spellslinger #4 (re-read)
Lightning-Struck Heart -- Tales of Verania #1
Big Man Upstairs -- DCI Logan #7 -- Mystery Book Club monthly continuing series read
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Audible keeps recommending The Primal Hunter to me now, with my recent listens, in the app on that home screen... it's one of those LitRPGs that's been on my radar for awhile, with nearly a dozen audiobooks... and it sounds super similar to He Who Fights with Monsters, which we're starting soon... both are about office managers thrown into a LitRPG world... and I already read The Daily Grind: A Slice-of-Life LitRPG, which is probably one of the things putting it on my recs list, even if they're quite different...
The Chosen One looks cute (RPG player glitches the tutorial ally so she isn't killed off at the end of the tutorial, and takes her on adventures)... but the fact it's being recommended to me because of Scum of the Earth is weird... the blurbs remind me of Forever Fantasy online, where the NPCs gain freedom, the game world starts breaking, and the goal is escape into the real world...
And now, for the recommendations I wanted to seek... whatever Audible thinks I'll like after the Terminator RPGs...
Heretical Fishing: A Cozy Guide to Annoying the Cults, Outsmarting the Fish, and Alienating Oneself #1-3
ShipCore #1.0-3.0
Most of the other stuff is already on my TBR, or has super bad reviews in their pop-ups on Audible, pushing me away...
So, NYT is doing a 100 best books of the past two decades thing--it apparently asked a bunch of authors to send in their favs, but also has a page where subscribers can submit their own top 10... my mom subscribes, and she hasn't read 10 books in the last 20 years (I'm not sure how I'm related to her) so she let me submit my 10... Sometimes books would autofill if the system recognized them (I'm guessing books that others had also listed) like The Lightning Thief and The Fifth Season, but it didn't recognize Children of Time and of course didn't know DCC or Wandering Inn--which I totally had to put down.I put down those 5, and also The Emperor's Soul (token Sanderson), A Deadly Education (for love of book), The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (for pure fun, rep, non-European inspirations and creativity), and two others I can't think of off the top of my head--mostly going for a mix of favorite books past 2000 and books that had big impacts, like Percy Jackson being a second wave Harry Potter and getting kids into reading, but doing a better job with diversity and education than HP, especially with inciting interest in world cultures and mythologies... even if the book itself isn't necessarily 5 star writing.
Anyway--if y'all know anyone with a NYT subscription, we should swarm the choices with more SFF books!
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I know Edging is a sex term... but it feels like the right word for me and my daily attempts to avoid a book slump, lately... I keep opening and closing so many of my BRs after a few pages/chapters, then jumping ship to LitRPGs when I run out of BR options... all over the place... gotta be close to 2 weeks behind on alot of stuff now, like so many people considering dropping out of more BRs... but I persevere...
Started The Path of Ascension yesterday, since we picked up the omnibus awhile back on Daily Deal or Audible monthly deals... reminds me a bit of Poor Man's Fight & Cradle, altho the premise reminds me more of a bunch of other LitRPGs I haven't started... kid gets a bad starting skill in the LitRPG/Cultivation system, and left to rot on a backwater planet... but really he just needs a good pairing skill, and suddenly he's Overpowered defensively...
One of the things I'm looking forward to in this series is that the timeline isn't as crunched as alot of other LitRPG series... MC starts at age 13, is age 16-17 now near the end of book 1, will be in his 30s/40s in a few more books, and is around age 200 in the newest chapters on Royal Road, which is basically on-par for anyone with any hope of staying on the eponymous "Path of Ascension" climbing from tier 1 to tier 25 in the Cultivation/RPG system... the world this is set on goes to tier 50, but if you get to tier 47ish you have to ascend to the next tier of reality/worlds that go up to tier 100 (not sure there's a limit to the system, just bubbles of influence... and there can only be 1 person max tier in a bubble that rules as emperor and keeps the system functioning)...
I think it takes thousands of years to reach tier 50... after reaching tier 10 on the Path, the MC gains a manager that helps guide their training, and she's a cat familiar that's like 62,000 years old...
Interesting about that timeline... I did pick up Path to Ascension as well so it's good to hear you're enjoying it!
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I'm unclear how long this series is going to run... the Path of Ascension the series is named after ended at Tier 25, and the main characters accomplished that 60 chapters ago, and the series is still going on Royal Road... Completing the Path comes with it's own problems tho, since it shifts the delicate balance of power among realms of the same tier range... people assist the military from Tier 15-35 in times of war (to avoid realm destruction when higher tiers participate), and Pathers are expected to progress at twice the speed of regular guild delvers (failing to meet the time limits and you "fall off the path")... when the story started, it had been several hundred years maybe 1000 since the last person finished the path (and the age they finish matters too)... during the course of the story, a famous married couple manages it, and then the MCs do, and maybe another couple pairs... it's causing alot of wars and upheaval...
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I don't think it's spelled out in the blurb, but the MC's "detrimental" talent is an ability that locks him at 1 MP to start, and gives him crazy mana regen... his tier 3 talent increases his MP to 10, and gives him a way to turn mana regen over max into increased MP cap (and he can use this to double his MP every tier, so by tier 25 he has 43 million MP)...
The AI system deems all talents with drawbacks as detrimental, even if they have strong upsides, which is what screwed him in chapter 1... but the regen is crazy, it's basically always 1 mana per second minimum, and he can reach 10% MP easily/instantly... reaching 100% is basically impossible without storing in mana crystals first... but if he just keeps spending, he's an infinite mana source... whereas other people can only generate a few hundred/thousand mana per day...
The main limiting factor is he can't cast spells he can't afford, early on, until his max MP goes up a fair bit... but he can cast channeling spells all day that others can only use for a few seconds/minutes... which...
And then by the halfway point of the book he realizes he can refill the mana of dungeons/rifts to get max rewards from max difficulty enemies... and the Emperor has plans to improve the kingdom and make reaching Tier 50 easier, someday, when he reaches Tier 45+
And it sounds like high tier people grow old/die/ascend after about 300,000 years max... people past tier 15 are considered immortal, but I dunno how immortal... age tends to get to people, when authors think about it... senility/accumulation of memories/etc...
This series is pretty pro-therapy, tho... and already made some oblique references to democracy, in reference to one of the other Realm Bubbles that runs elections instead of having an Emperor...
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Picked Arcane Ascension back up...
Read Sufficiently Advanced Magic when it was relatively new, and then On the Shoulders of Titans sometime after it came out... not doing a re-read and the long wait led to me losing focus/interest in the series, for awhile... I'm also not the biggest fan of Nick Podehl as a narrator, since he does so many LitRPGs, and occasionally creeps into other genres I read, too, like Chronos Files and Skinjacker (and apparently Valdemar and Kingkiller Chronicles)... but some of that might just be rollover distaste/ambivence with where the System Apocalypse series kinda fell apart for me...
ANYWAY... I'm revisiting the series... it's a LitRPG / Magical School series, with Towers to Climb and godlike beings called Visages that play a large part in the plot... also a fair bit of political intrigue... the 5th Arcane Ascension book is coming out soon, now, and it also turns out that 2 other series are heavily connected, both following the same important side character at different times in the past, with different names:
Sufficiently Advanced Magic -- the LitRPG / main series
On the Shoulders of Titans
The Torch that Ignites the Stars
The Silence of Unworthy Gods
Six Sacred Swords -- middle series, told by the MC to characters in Arcane Ascension series, 1st person POV...
Diamantine
Soulbrand
Forging Divinity -- oldest series in the timeline, 3rd person POV...
Stealing Sorcery
Defying Destiny
Author says War of Broken Mirrors is more like traditional fantasy, and Weapons and Wielders is lighter / funnier / fast-paced... not sure when I'll get to those series, tho... sounds like they become pretty relevant in book 4 of Arcane Ascension... enough for a note in the book blurbs...
Timelord Iain wrote: "I've officially derailed my BRs at this point... just doing whatever I want, and not worried about meeting schedules/deadlines anymore, at the moment..."Nothing wrong with that. Sometimes that's all you need :)
I have Sufficiently Advanced Magic in my TBR but all my LitRPG love goes to DCC right now :D I started The Butcher's Masquerade today. So funny how Carl is in trouble immediately and it's not his fault! (view spoiler)
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Timelord Iain wrote: "Not sure what you're talking about... that comment works for most DCC chapters, tho :D"(view spoiler)
I should probably go post on that old BR thread but I don't want spoilers :)
Nirkatze wrote: "OMG that interview between Donut & [spoilers removed] was so perfect...."I'm also enjoying Samantha more than I thought. Ch 27 (view spoiler)
OMG I loved that Conan reference! I remember that!
This series is pure gold. It's a new favorite for me :) I'm sad I missed the BR with everyone but I will be caught up for book 7 and future releases :D
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Fantasy Buddy Reads
Books mentioned in this topic
The Perfect Run (other topics)Beware of Chicken 5: A Xianxia Cultivation Novel (other topics)
The Wayward Bard (other topics)
Beware of Chicken 5: A Xianxia Cultivation Novel (other topics)
The Wayward Bard (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Nathan Lowell (other topics)Nathan Lowell (other topics)
Nina Bangs (other topics)
Reminds me of Threadbare, a bit, if only because the MC builds a cyborg critter army over time, and that's kinda close to cute critter golems, right?