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[Narilka]

Timelord Iain wrote: "My July Reading Plan is called the Nirkatze Method...

Be a week late for everything, and/or only start stuff that somebody commented on and said they started...

It was great being all caught up i..."

It is definitely more fun when there are folks to BR with :)

[Nirkatze]

Timelord Iain wrote: "My July Reading Plan is called the Nirkatze Method...

Be a week late for everything, and/or only start stuff that somebody commented on and said they started...

It was great being all caught up i..."

Hey, I'm caught up this month!! For now....

[RachelG.]

I just finished Domestication and really enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to the next one. John is an interesting character and I enjoyed how some of the other characters are changing and growing. I hope to find out more about his past and what the doom points are all about.

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Doom Points play out over the first 3 books, and he opens up about his backstory with the older sister on the farm eventually... Character and animal growth in the series is great fun...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Jumped back to Earthen Contenders with book 4, unaffiliated healer tonight .. definitely been doing a lot of solo LitRPGs lately, since I know most others have a lower tolerance for the genre so it's an easy solo decision...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

The MC in Earthen Contenders is getting crazy OP, soloing raids now, like he's playing old WoW expansion content, thanks to all his world first perks... His struggles are social, since he has to do group quests to break through class evolution bottlenecks and his class penalizes group play... Had to join a guild in this book to do a 100 man raid deathless...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

MC is getting sillier OP in Earthen Contenders... Needs it tho I guess, since the adversary is creeping into the training world in ways he shouldn't be able to... MCs evolution raid was some weird bugged raid with mind control hiding glitchy enemies underneath, a final boss that the MC couldn't see and was all in his guild/raid's head where they stood still and fought imagined enemies and took mental damage he had to heal, and trying to explain the situation caused stepford wife alien invasion reactions where allies and enemies paused and stated at him... After a level 700 creature showed up and he barely escaped... Unclear if his guild is corrupted now, since the creature disappeared a few days later and the guild members returned with missing memories... Then the MC got some weird class evolution that hides itself from the system/allies, causes all skills/spells to have a 1% chance of killing people, and a bunch of other stuff ... Trying to make the MC an antisocial nomadic wanderer out of an apocalypse movie... MclC is starting to think the Adversary is hacking the system and it's linked to his glitchy entry into this world and all the other bugs he's encountered... Keeps it interesting...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

He can also now harvest essence from monsters and gain stats like a bestiary perk mechanic or Disgaea 5... And several other stat leeching abilities...

[Narilka]

Mother of Learning: ARC 2 half way through Ch 10 (view spoiler)[I'm glad Zorian is seeing more of the world and chasing down those leads he was given. It adds to the mystery that someone was already killing mind mages ahead of the time loop. What was it assumed that they might know?? Hmm.

I'm disappointed with the other Aranea clans. The one that won't help due to previous agreements I understand and they were nice. But the second group he visits that basically tried to mind rape him - yuck.

The witch is pretty funny sending Zorian on an impossible mission. I bet he circles back to that before the end of the book.

The time loop degrading has been mentioned once or twice. I wonder if that will become more serious in this book or a future one. (hide spoiler)]

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Finished Blackmist, book 1 of My Best Friend is an Eldritch Horror... The series name is a bit of a misnomer/spoiler, since the initial meeting has Henry the Eldritch Horror seeking to destroy the world after a botched summoning, and a series of events leaves them bound together and swapping a soul fragment, so Henry mellows and Damien gets a strong familiar .. Henry then hibernates for 4 years and is woken up as Damien is testing to enter magic school, and the plot picks up from there and becomes a magic academia book/series with an overarching apocalypse plot when Henry finds 5 siblings have also made it into the world and been trapped somehow... I'll continue the Omni us soon...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Read A Small Town in Southern Illvaria this morning... start of the Budding Scientist in a Fantasy World series...

Truly felt like a cross between Wandering Inn (Erin's rough intro), Full Murderhobo (stranded in the middle of nowhere for 3 months through winter and starts talking to a pet rock), and He Who Fight With Monster (someone from a magicless world thrust into a magical world/system)...

Alice is alot smarter than Erin to start, and studies everything with an eye to the scientific method, which is refreshing, which also leads to alot of questions about the System and Mana and how they work, which actually kinda reminds me of System Apocalypse, which had a questline to that effect... the nature of the system, and what I've seen/spoiled based on future book titles, makes me think of HWFWM (view spoiler)[I think the issues with Conservation of Mass/Mana indicate things are unstable in this magical world, and the gains/losses are causing transference outside of the Society of Starry Eyes experiments... I don't think Alice was brought through, I think she was sucked through to fill a vacuum... only time will tell... there's 2 enemy POVs that happen occasionally, that create more questions than answers (hide spoiler)]

All the science experiments really sucked me into the story, especially as evidence piles up that contradicts assumed world knowledge by the inhabitants...

[Nirkatze]

Now you need to read all the other books you snapped up during that sale before the sale ends, so we know whether to splurge or not...

[Narilka]

Should be doable since it's a two week sale :D

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

I have BRa to get back to, soon...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

I don't think I've been as annoyed with an MC as during The Society of Starry Eyes yesterday, when the MC merged 2 low level perks into a more useful higher level perk... perks she used to read a bit faster and manage time better merged into the ability to read books while sleeping... :D

EDIT: I know I'm being unfair here... I just kinda found it funny to be pissed off, 12hrs after the fact... and kinda paused at work when I realized it was happening too... the original perk upgrade, I mean...

[Narilka]

Mother of Learning: ARC 2 through Ch 15 (view spoiler)[Interesting! So Zorian has found the limits on his memory and is forgetting things. I was wondering! Plus he's back at school and things have really changed with the aranea dead. This just gets more and more interesting. I like that he's found magic to help bring his knowledge forward, so that's great.

With so many people whose lives he cares about, and likely will want to save, that's going to be quite a challenge unless he and/or his friends can figure out how to bring others into the loop with him. Or Zorian will have some hard choices ahead. (hide spoiler)]

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

You're treading on some things I can only answer because I've seen spoilers for the books I haven't read yet...

[Narilka]

No problem at all :) I know my questions will be answered eventually. Or at least I'll find out what he does.

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

I'm gonna try The Grand Game, by Tom Elliott:

The Grand Game
Way of the Wolf
The World Nexus
House Wolf
Wolf in the Void
A Scion's Duty
Ancient Debts
The Lost Reclaimed
Dreams of Power -- out October 2025

They're all on Whispersync pricing with KU... I just stumbled into them, collecting Bingo books for another group I dip my toe in... one of the bingo boxes was recommendations from a favorite author, and I just searched Ilona Andrews recommendation blog posts and found He Who Fights With Monsters from a post last month... in the same post she mentioned this series, and some similarities between the 2 (shadow/assassin class)... and the blurb caught my eye... and I've been zooming through so many LitRPGs lately... so why not?... 9 books is a respectable amount of content, and it sounds like it might be building towards an ending sooner than later, as the MC reaches top tier power/threat level foes...

[Narilka]

As always, let us know how it goes.

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Started... bit of a slow start... mostly because it starts basically from scratch, with MC reborn into some LitRPG game world, with very little but gut intuition about his previous life (altho the Gods/top tier entities claim he was evil, he doesn't seem to think he was and senses he hadn't murdered anyone and is averse to alot of things he's doing, but learning to take the necessary actions to survive and eventually further his own goals... as a result, the early chapters are a bit slow/weak, since this isn't a series that immediately makes the MC OP... which is nice, actually... reddit/etc says the payoffs are there, given time, and I look forward to seeing that... MC's stealth skills have been climbing and after getting through a couple tough fights with slimes and goblins his combat is catching up... and the first hints of his affinity for wolves (which clearly becomes a thing considering 3 series titles include Wolf in them)... 36 chapters in out of 90ish, and the MC is still working his way through the starter dungeon... fellow initiates have broken into factions and one has enslaved the other... I think the MC will return and deal with that before the end of the book...

This is also one of the few litRPGs I've seen where characters have multiple lives... players start with 3 lives and can die twice and reincarnate in a few hours... not sure if that can be increased, and/or how much of a thing it'll be in the series...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

And finished... really enjoyed it... different from alot of the LitRPGs I've read lately... altho I saw similarities to some Cultivation progression fantasy books and maybe the Antventure Begins / Chrysalis...

I saw some people on reddit call this type of LitRPG James Bond LitRPG... nothing groundbreaking in the genre, but satisfying action / espionage / etc... done well it's fun and enjoyable... and I can see that...

Alot of the things I expected to happen in the 2nd half of the book happened... also a bunch of unexpected stuff too... gonna jump into book 2 and see where it goes from here... it only does full stat sheets at the start and end of each book, basically... otherwise it just covers changes as they happen, so less feel of needing to skip ahead to continue with the story...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

I guess I just forgot about the mid-story stat sheets, since they're pretty short... the last few books I've read have included skill descriptions and algebra formulas for how skills work which makes them take 5-10x as long to get through...

BUT... this is the first LitRPG I've seen where the chapter numbers don't reset to 1 with each book, so the numbers match Royal Road, which is nice...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

You know... now that I think about it... this might also be the first LitRPG I've read with a full-on reputation system...

As introduced at the start, there are 3 main mega-factions, Light, Dark, and Shadow (which is kind of a mix of Darkness and Light and how they interact, but also in conflict with both over whether they're a 3rd faction or should rule over the 2 other factions to maintain "balance")... the MC quickly finds a 4th faction, tho, Wolves (altho they might be a mostly extinct faction that the MC is rekindling?), and from blurbs of the series, I think there's might be a 5th and/or 6th faction floating around, Void and Forerunners... Void sounds like Eldritch entities that want to exterminate everything, and make up the spaces between sectors/realms...

Also, at the start of book 2, the MC earned an extra life for completing the starter dungeon, so that's on the table, and not a completely finite resource... altho camping the spawn point / safe zone to rekill until dead permanently is still a risk, if you piss off other factions/deities (which happened to the MC in book 1 and he has a bounty to watch out for a in book 2, and things are only gonna be worse in book 3 once the week long non-aggression agreement with the other deity he pissed off runs out...

Back to reputations... the system is notable, because his status with each keeps increasing and decreasing based on his action, but in unusual ways, because he does evil things for good causes, and good things for selfish reasons, so he manages to raise both without lowering the opposite...

[Nirkatze]

Huh, interesting, considering how integral rep systems are in a lot of games...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

I was gonna read the first 3 and pause, but then book 3 ended with a hook/cliffhanger for the start of book 4, with an ancient golem/guardian that could maybe infodump some historical answers... now book 4 ended with MC in danger and in the middle of a bunch of quests...

The first 3 books had great pause points, since it really felt like doing a WoW expansion, where each book is a zone with questlines and factions and rep to grind, etc... book 1 was starter dungeon, book 2 was surface and a new zone that was being hidden while Dark Forces tried to claim... book 2 ended with MC thwarting that and going off to the Capital City, and things got more complicated there... book 4 has him jumping between capital city and the book 2 zone he built connections in, and starts a multi-book plot for him to start the Wolf Faction and claim the zone as his own home base... as well as a corrupted Nether Zone he discovered as a hidden exit to a dungeon in the capital city... lots going on, being pulled in multiple directions...

I also learned alot more about the Factions/Powers... it's more of an old god / new god thing, or nature spirit vs mortal spirit from Heartstrikers/DFZ... the old Prime/Primal gods are all animal bloodlines, and the humans killed them all because they were warring too much and damaging the stability of the Game/World/etc... ofc, MC is continuing down the path to becoming Wolf Prime (he isn't the Old Primes, after all)... also, the guardians indicated the Primes and Guardians did alot to protect the realm from Nether forces, which certail sound very Cthulhu at the upper tiers... book 4 ended with the MC fleeing a Stygian Overloard that was described as an enormous flying blob with tentacles... and like double his level (he's level 140ish, it's 300 minimum)...

The leveling system of the game talking about levels like normal, but when comparing power, it's always in tiers, which are multiples of 10... so the MC is Tier 14...

Powers, the human gods that replaced Primes, are level 500+... and I feel like the system probably goes to 1000, or Tier 100 (a more traditional level cap)...

Skills and spells have their own levels and tiers that work different... tiers of spells use more skill slots which are split into attributes and the higher the attribute the more slots (seems to be stat divided by 2 slots?)... and then tier 1 spells/skills use 1 slot, tier 2 uses 5, tier 3 uses 10, tier 4 uses 15, and tier 5 uses 30... not too sure what tier 6+ use since only monsters and powers have had those so far... and then based on tier there's level caps that seem to be somewhere in the 100-250 range so far?... the stealth skills the MC uses alot are higher than his XP level...

Then the game has class mergers, unique evolutions, class and bloodline traits, skill variations that let you specialize them in different ways, a ton of subsystems to keep track of...

[RachelG.]

I added this one to my tbr pile. It sounds interesting.

[Narilka]

We finished Beware of Chicken. My husband really enjoyed it. I'm sure we'll move on to the second one soon-ish.

For myself... Mother of Learning: ARC 2 almost through Ch 23 (view spoiler)[I really like that Zorian has taken Zwim into confidence in this iteration. Zwim is such a perfectionist that I could see him helping to pick apart the puzzle that is the timeloop quite well.

I also hope Zorian tries to just shut down/destroy that teleporter that's stealing souls.

All the things Zorian is going to need to account for when this thing finally unravels and he's back in linear time again is growing by the page. He's going to need a list lol (hide spoiler)]

[RachelG.]

@Iain- Were there plans to read Reborn as a Demonic Tree 4? I kind of forgot about it but the audiobook I had a hold on is available which prompted me.

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

We can read that this week if you want... I laid out vague plans at the start of the year, before they delayed the releases of 4-5 to spread them out more, and we didn't love #3 as much... hopefully #4 is back to top form...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Also, did you read Mother of Learning ARC 2 and hate it?... your comment header says you rated it 1 star back in December, but I see no indication that you read ARC 1...

[RachelG.]

Timelord Iain wrote: "Also, did you read Mother of Learning ARC 2 and hate it?... your comment header says you rated it 1 star back in December, but I see no indication that you read ARC 1..."

I only read #2 for a challenge last year and didn't care for it but I don't like time loops or time travel usually and I did come into the series without reading the first book. I typically just avoid stories with time loops in the first place.

[RachelG.]

Timelord Iain wrote: "We can read that this week if you want... I laid out vague plans at the start of the year, before they delayed the releases of 4-5 to spread them out more, and we didn't love #3 as much... hopefull..."

I plan to read it through KU mostly so whenever you would like works for me. I was just reminded of it's availability when the audio hold was available.

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

I would be mostly lost if I started Mother of Learning in the middle
... It's very much 25-50% part of a single larger story, since it's a web serial released as multiple audiobooks... And it starts with a large side adventure/exploration from where much of the first 25% took place, opening up options for future loops...

Anyways, I generally squeeze in non-BRs and last minute BRa whenever I want these days, since my BR commitments are down a bit from earlier this year, but my daily reading is up 50%...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Started a bit ago and read half Demonic Tree 4... Liking it a lot more than 3... Has the cozy mentor/pupil stuff I like, some competition stuff, Worldwalker beast shenanigans... Good times...

[RachelG.]

Timelord Iain wrote: "Started a bit ago and read half Demonic Tree 4... Liking it a lot more than 3... Has the cozy mentor/pupil stuff I like, some competition stuff, Worldwalker beast shenanigans... Good times..."

I am up to chapter 10 and feel like I can see a lot of growth (pun not intended) with Ashlock. He really is taking a fatherly role in the others and I feel like this is the first time I am seeing that more.

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

I finished near the end of my work shift and for sure... he always had that protective instinct for what's her name, the main cultivator girl from book 1, but it's growing to cover his top tier, but when the "daughter" is hurt, he goes into full Protective Mode, and let's his demonic nature out more... also, she calls him dad alot in this one, especially since she's mentoring now and is referencing him alot more often...

I think book 5 is gonna be interesting... it sounds like (view spoiler)[the bio dad woke up from some ascension hibernation, and isn't happy to have felt Ashlock ascending to Nascent Star in his territory... so it's gonna be clash of the dads... and I'm sure Ashlock is going to win custody... he already has from daughter comments in this one... (hide spoiler)]

[Narilka]

I have about an hour left of Mother of Learning: ARC 2. (view spoiler)[What a way to make an entrance Zack lol Good on Kirielle for protecting her brother!

I was wondering if Zorian would feel bad about how he attacks the aranea. I'm glad he mentioned it, even if briefly. His actions - he could easily turn into a villain if he gets too complacent with the timeloop. It would easily shift a person's morals if they know there were never any permanent consequences for their actions. Which we know isn't always the case but still.

So it took the two of them together to finally gain access to the snake ghost. I had to pause when they first started to talk to it. Given the time I have left, I'm guessing this is going to be the hook for arc 3. But an hour is still a lot of pages so who knows :) (hide spoiler)]

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

You're gonna have to refresh me, honestly... it's been so long, since I waited another few months for you, that I've forgotten the hook for book 3... other than the implications that (view spoiler)[the Red villain guy has left the loop, I think? (hide spoiler)]

[Narilka]

I finished MoL 2. Wow. You might want to relisten to the last chapter again before book 3. Super spoilers - don't read if you want the series to be a surprise. (view spoiler)[They reveal that the time loop isn't just a time loop but a pocket dimension used to train up that contains a copy of everything. And that only one person can actually exit. And that Red Robe has already exited basically leaving Zorian and Zack royally screwed. For now anyway!

I'm glad that it means the original aranea aren't actually dead. It's also very impressive that message the spider left him in her memory packet.

There were sooo many red herrings. I wonder how much of the copy is actually accurate. Is it 100% and there really will be an invasion when they exit? Or were things added for training purposes? I also really hope they can figure out how to exit and keep their advancement/learnings from all the looping. (hide spoiler)]

So I have two audio BRs up next, Teller of Small Fortunes and Isles of the Emberdark. I'll be back for Arc 3 in the second half of August.

[RachelG.]

Finished Demonic Tree 4 and I really enjoyed it. Quite an epic battle and lots of room to see how the story progresses. I agree that #5 will be good. Too bad the audio doesn't appear to be out until January 2026.

[Narilka]

Looks like GRs is in the process of changing its logo.

I also noticed they've closed down comments to their official posts.

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Told ya Demonic tree 4 was good :)

Noticed the new g font in goodreads on mobile...

Started a Mother of Learning re-read to prep for MoL ARC 3...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Been a bit lax with commenting, the past few days...

Re-read ARC 1, and loved it... maybe moreso on re-read, knowing what's coming and appreciating the foreshadowing / blink and you miss it stuff, like all Zach's comments to Zorian that don't mean much in Loop 0... or near the end of ARC 1 when Zach says (view spoiler)[you're so annoying, Zorian... next time I see you I'm going to punch you in the face... which he does near the end of ARC 2 (hide spoiler)]

I also appreciate how great the time travel mechanic is in this series compared to some others... pretty much all potential plot holes are accounted for... the obvious thing to do is to approach Zach immediately... but the plot blocks that for like 8 months and the ardor wanes... which allows other things to happen... and the revelations about Zorian's (view spoiler)[empathy magic shine a light on his antisocial tendencies previously, in a great eureka moment (hide spoiler)]

Going into ARC 2, and the first 6-12+ chapters (that I've re-read so far), it reaffirms my comments about Rachel's one star rating... reading the book without already being invested in why Zorian is away on a side quest avoiding school would be boring AF, for sure... they're not the best chapters, but I appreciate that it's all prep work for the 2nd half of the story/series...

[Narilka]

I agree - that series needs to be read in order. A lot of book 2 relies on knowledge of book 1 for the highest impact. Like (view spoiler)[there's no way I'd be sad about a bunch of dead spiders normally without all the background from book 1. (hide spoiler)]

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

I also forgot to mention how much I love the growth of Zorian's relationship with Kirielle throughout the book/series...

And how weird it is to have a book where the 2 mainest characters are Z-names and unrelated...

[Nirkatze]

Finally got around to reading Mother of Learning Arc 1 yesterday and really enjoyed it. Kinda cozy, almost. Y'know, I almost don't think of this as time travel? Or I want to put time loops and time travel in different categories. Time travel feels like it should be wider and have more control--or not just be one's personal timeline. More like time reset.

My favorite so far is probably (view spoiler)[Zorian's little sister, and their relationship. I really like how he's learned more about her, and what her life has been like under their parents, through the time loop.

I also find it interesting how Zorian starts out as secondary to Zach in the time loop--and then kind of just watches from the sidelines and does his own research. We know that Zach is fighting his own battle--but we don't get to see it. Just the ripples. It's an interesting story mechanic.

I really like the empathy plotline and the spiders! I was not expecting that twist at all. (hide spoiler)]

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Timey-wimey covers it all in an umbrella :D

Time loops have similar themes but different execution... still largely about the butterfly effect of changing past actions, less constrained by risks of a grandfather paradox...

Zach is like Andy Samberg in Palm Springs... (view spoiler)[stuck in the loop for so long that he's a bit jaded to it all, going through the motions, well aware of all the possibilties...

Zorian is like with Christina Milliani joins the loop and disrupts the loop and makes new things start happening, and figuring out the mechanics, and more likely to find the solution, in the end...

Zach has the advantage of power levels and mana supply, but Zorian finds much more creative and interconnected solutions, connecting disparate things he learns from classmates like Kyle and the spiders and later on other things too...

Zach has been in the loop for decades, Zorian has been in the loop for years by the end of book 1... and puts alot more time into studying soul magic... among other things... (hide spoiler)]

[Narilka]

I'm glad you enjoyed it :) I don't normally enjoy time travel books but this one is working for me. I think perhaps I'm more Ok with time loops vs traditional time travel which always feels like a cop out at the end.

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Or the opposite... underutilized...

I was surprised how little time looping happened in the Dark Lord Davi duology...

Outlander lured me in with minimal time travel...

Rip Through Time has foreknowledge and some weird uses of time travel later on...

I know there's a smidge of time travel in 11/22/63 by Stephen King...