Book 4 of 2024: Codename: Freedom: Survive Week One

[thistlechaser]

Codename: Freedom: Survive Week One by Apollos Thorne.

Quick synopsis: Set decades in the future, the US government sets up the most realistic VR game ever to train super soldiers.

Plot: Lucius is a teenager who dreams of becoming a pro gamer. He spends all of his waking hours either gaming or trying to get his social media follower numbers up.

The US government is starting a special super soldier (and other nefarious things) program. They create an ultra-realistic VR game to train gamers and professional athletes to become soldiers. The game is impossible to tell from reality, including pain.

Lucius meets a number of other people within the game, including love interest Victoria.

He and all the other gamers and athletes have to work together to defend their starter town from a massive goblin attack.

Writing/editing: Sadly this story was really held back by the writing/editing. I don't know how many times I repeated "I wish the author had had an editor". So imagine my surprise when he named an editor and thanked them in the credits! I really, really hope he didn't pay that person money, because this book was just so full of writing/editing errors.

I mostly enjoyed the story. This is book one of four, but I won't be continuing the series. Per reviews, book #2 is 90% the main character working out (lifting weights/running) and turns out the love interest is an alien from space.

Edit: By the time I was done writing this review, I talked myself into trying book 2. I can always DNF it if needed.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: This is a LitRPG book, and those are usually the worst of the worst books. Female characters usually exist only to throw themselves sexually at the main character. The main character becomes stronger and better than everyone else by the end of the book. But none of that happened in this book! Kudos to the author!

I really liked that the main character had (mostly) believable effects of his injury. I really, really liked that the female characters were actual characters with their own personalities and motives; in most LitRPG books, female characters exist only to lay down and spread their legs on command.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: 3.5. I really liked the story, but wow the writing and editing were rough. Both were much better than usual for LitRPG books (top tier LitRPG writing/editing!) but when judged on a scale of regular books? Not very good at all.

Comments

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting warnings, not just praise.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Both are important, yeah!