Series Review: The Land By Aleron Kong

I honestly never heard of LitRPG books until a friend of my started talking about writing one. I was full of questions. He ended up suggesting a few series to read in LitRPG. I was hesitant at first, because I do love playing RPG video games, but never considered reading a story that was like a video game. So decided to take the plunge. Wow, what a ride!

I started my adventure with Aleron Kong and his LitRPG series called The Land.

I won’t lie, the first book took me several weeks to finish. It took me awhile to adjust to how LitRPG books work.

One of the major differences of a LitRPG compared to a regular novel is there are regular status updates on the character and “game play”. In this particular series, it happened with tabled charts showing the progression of the characters points, level attributes, upgrades, ect.

At first this was very jarring to me, because I felt liked it halted the story big time. On the other hand, I did like knowing all the progression and upgrades as the story progressed. I think for me, it was just getting used to this kind of new reading style. Once I did, I literally could not put these freaking books down. I felt like I was right there with Richter as he stepped into The Land and began a wild journey of adventure and exploration.

aThe story starts out with a group of real life gamers playing a video game. One of the players ends up finding a hard to reach place in the game that he’s been searching for a long time. He’s expecting epic loot, but ends up finding himself catapulted into a new reality.

Once inside The Land, Richter quickly makes new friends and enemies as well as discovers an old place of power, which he claims and plans to erect a village. He quickly becomes a powerhouse as he racks up points and power, determined to find as much loot as possible and rise to the top.

Right now this book has eight books with a ninth on the way soon. The titles are…

Founding, Forging, Alliances, Catacombs, Swarm, Raiders, Predators, Monsters.

This book is set in a fantasy type setting with swords, dwarfs, elves, magic, monsters, and many more fun and imaginative things. There’s a lot of exploration and learning about this new world. There’s also lots of fighting action with sprites, goblins, demons, banished gods, and hordes of monstrous creatures.

Most of the books are good read with about 400 some pages, but watch out, because Kong breaks from that and delivers a whopping 2000+ page book in number seven Predators.

I really loved the creativity and fun Kong seemed to have while writing this series. I also loved watching the quick progression of Richter and his village. Sometimes the story would take very unexpected turns that kept me on the edge of my seat.

The story does get progressively more crude (as in crude jokes and scenes) as it continues. A handful of the crude scenes did rub me the wrong way a few times. But it wasn’t enough to stop me from reading. Also, Kong does have a tendency to spend a lot of time in explaining backstory, story elements, and information about status updates that did get to be a bit much. When it did, I just skim read until I got to the good parts. Again, not enough to keep me from the reading.

I really enjoyed diving into this new genre, and I’m glad I picked this series to do it with. If you are curious about LitRPG or looking for a good gaming type experience (without actually playing a video game), then check this out. It will be an adventure you won’t forget!