Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from...

Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from narrating Apocalypse: Generic System. We'll get to that in a minute, but let's talk about the book itself, first.

I've got such mixed feelings about this one. Ultimately I'm giving the book 4 stars, but it could be anywhere between 3 and 5 depending on where you are in the story.

I feel like I came into this novel because of a lie, which I guess doesn't help. The main blurb talks about the MC being high and making crazy decisions. Be warned that in reality, this is literally just the first few paragraphs. There's no crazy hijinks, there's no humorous antics. It's just set up to get into a reasonably mediocre, generic adventure story.

But that's not why this book could swing anywhere from 3-5 stars. The 3 star stuff all comes at the front:

The first 70% of this book is super generic litRPG. There is zero world building: the characters have literally been kidnapped and thrust into a crazy, life altering, everyone-is-dying, monsters are everywhere world, but the characters have zero interest in knowing why they are there or what is happening to them. They are just transported to a world with computer game like mechanics and are like "cool, ok better defeat the boss."

The first 70% of this book also has zero emotion or character growth. For example (very minor spoiler), the MC loses a foot within the first chapter or so, but doesn't seem particularly bothered by this or mentally or physically agonised about what is a pretty major injury. There's plenty of references to him stomping around on a peg leg, but the dude seemingly has no issues with losing a limb.

Then we hit the last 30%, and it's like the author suddenly remembered all the things he left out of the first bit. The MC starts suffering PTSD flashbacks from his time before this all started. The leg gets mentioned more. We get hints at a wider world, though still no reason why this ordeal is happening to humanity. It's good, and the reason I could possibly give this book 5 stars. The ending gets creative and their solution to their problems start rising beyond generic and into interesting.

Unfortunately, in the last 30% we also get crafting. Now don't get me wrong, I love crafting. It's a brilliant part of gamelit. But the crafting in this book is just... painful. I'm sure the MC's incomprehensible musings about refraction, optics and lenses might make sense to someone more educated than myself, or to those reading (not listening) to the book where they could re-read at their own pace, but for me it just felt like 20-minute blocks of boring, hard to understand setup for non important items that the author desperately wanted the MC to miraculously find useful later down the track.

Anyway. My title for this review mentioned Troy McClure, so let's talk about that.

The narrator for this novel is terrible. He tries too hard and over acts on every sentence, leaving the book sound like it's narrated by a half-baked Troy McClure. My advice: listen to the sample before purchasing. Some people won't care about this. For others (like myself) it will be like nails down a blackboard. So yeah, be warned.

I'm not sure why so many other people have given this book glowing reviews, but for my money this book lives up to it's name. Generic.

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1 person found this helpful

This book was great!

I really enjoyed the characters ingenuity and journey I was taken on. I'm glad that the following two books of the series are available.

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Bit of a roller coaster

Bit of a ride emotional level wise but it keeps you invested cant wait to see how book 2 goes especially since the way this was written means you really cant predict anything big picture but if the style holds true should be excellent

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An ebjoyable listen that stumbles the finish.

Spoilerish.

It was an enjoyable arc until after the fire titan and world turtle fight where instead of dealing with the crushing consequences of being trapped and realising that they missed their window of oppotunity to win. jeb immediately comes up with a way to do the impossible commences a time skip and wins.... then its undercut by a random God influencing the tutorial you could have easily fit in a farming sequence to level 50 and the dystopian vibe was kinda ruined when they were allowed to openly subvert the tutorial.

The ending just came off as rushed and not alot of character development was achieved, maybe its saved for the second book but overall the start of the series should involve a bit more of everything.

Reserving my opinion for book 2.

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funny and clever.

I never review shit. this was fantastic. entertaining all the way through. I've read a lot of litrpgs at this was really easy to listen to the whole way.

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A great story

The story progression is great, the actor was fantastic, I'd read the book twice hahahah

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Want to love this but can’t

Firstly I will say the narrator was great. His performance was very good and is the main reason I give this book a rating as high as I do.
Possible spoilers ahead…
As to the storyline. That really felt like it missed the mark for me. It felt rushed and thin. You didn’t get much character development for any of the characters during the story. Little to no real background on them only brief mentions.
There was no time spent for any character to do what any normal human would. Freak out and panic or denial over being suddenly sucked into an alien video game world and forced to fight to the death, little information on why any of them other than the Main Character would pick Impossible. Which goes back to the lack of backstory for all the characters and development, there were small nods to some of their backstories but very brief and superficial. The assassin for example other than being cold and calculating you never get to know anything about her, she talks little and really doesn’t do much for the story overall.
There were some really great and interesting components. The MC class was very unique and quite brilliant being a cross between magical trap making and IFTTT programming logic. The MC losing his foot felt pointless. It had no actual effect to the MC or the progression of the story, the MC reacted to the whole thing with a shrug where anyone human would be devastated.
Then the ending. The premise of how they get out was good but ultimately very rushed. There was only a single hint and a fairly obvious one about the other side being there then from the moment the Character found out there was no way out it was only minutes before they found the solution then devised a plan. Built the thing they needed and got out. Really feel that whole arc should have been a lot longer and more subtle with more tribulation and difficulty to get there. With how easy it was it is pretty hard to believe no one else would have done something like it before. Then the ending itself with what happens to the MC was a real let down.

Overall this book has some great components to it but really fails the human factor and pace. With no real character development. Using PTSD in this book opens the door to some really interesting concepts of dealing with real lasting trauma within the litRPG world which I have not seen explored before in other books in the genre. PTSD is more than the occasional flashback as depicted in this book. So to use it as part of the MC foundation then treat it so casually was a missed opportunity and a let down.

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