Forever Fantasy Online

Amazing book with a stellar narration

Forever Fantasy Online is a LitRPG where the characters end up stuck in the game. You know, the ones where the characters play through a virtual reality system and then somehow end up stuck inside the game, being hit hurts, death is permanent, and all that fun stuff. I found this one to be unique compared to those that I’d read previously, almost like portal fantasy rather than LitRPG. NPCs (non-player characters) are people too. They’ve been stuck in a recurring nightmare where they’re forced to act out the game for the last 80 years. Naturally, they aren’t very fond of the ‘players’.

The two major POV characters, Tina and James, both have their own character arcs which are independent of each other. I enjoyed both POVs immensely, however, I preferred James’ POV more, I really enjoyed reading about him and found his chapters to be more relatable for me. While the book switches POV each chapter, I rarely found myself wanting to skip chapters to get back to a character I preferred.

Tina was preparing for a raid of the biggest, baddest dungeon in the game with a trial team to prepare for guild inductions. The change hit before the team entered the dungeon, and Tina is faced with the challenge of managing her team and ensuring their survival. I really enjoyed her survival arc as she struggled with managing an unfamiliar team.

Overall, I wasn’t a huge fan of Tina’s personality. She’s stubborn and controlling, but at the same time, she’s doing all she can to keep the other players alive. I admire her determination to save them all, and the challenges she perseveres through, but she constantly conflicts with members of the team she’s trying to save. In this, the authors have done a fantastic job of creating the conflicts that would likely arise when you throw people who were playing a game to relax into a situation where their lives depend on the game they were playing.

James, on the other hand, logged into the game in a lower level area where the NPCs quickly pick up on him being a player. James quickly finds that the NPCs were originally people in the Forever Fantasy Online world who’d been trapped in the game and forced to live by a script for 80 years. For some, this meant simply giving the same quest out millions of times. For others, this meant they were the character that was kidnapped every day for the players to go rescue. Needless to say, they weren’t very happy about their 80 years of nightmarish living.

James was easily one of my favourite characters. He reminded me a bit of Rachel Aaron’s Julius Heartstriker from the Heartstrikers series. He plays a healer and wants to do all he can to help the local NPCs and right the wrongs caused by the game.

Throughout this book, the authors do a great job of showing how their characters react to different scenarios and the growth they achieve. Over the course of the book, they go through some serious character development with their emotions and motivations quite clear for the reader.

One of the other things I really liked about this book is how it deals with common practices in video games. Characters who chose to play non-human characters have to learn how their new bodies work; how their tails work, what it’s like to have elven agility, what giant stone people like to eat. They also deal with characters who elected to play the opposite gender in the game and their sudden change in gender, and players who’ve bought their accounts online and are in end game content without having any idea how to play. Furthermore, the unrealistically shrunken maps are extended to make them more in line with what an actual landscape would be like, and bags/inventories hold a much more realistic number of items.

Overall, Rachel Aaron and Travis Bach have written an amazing story and a realistic LitRPG which deals really well with a number of different factors involved in gaming. They’ve created a great world with lots of interesting pieces of lore and filled it with realistic, well-developed characters. The stakes feel very real and from early on it’s evident just how much they stand to lose.

The only negative thing I can really say about this book is that it left me wanting more and that I’ll have to wait for the sequel. Josh Hurley’s narration of the audiobook is very well done too, and I enjoyed every moment I listened to it.

I’d recommend this book to people who enjoy:

* LitRPG
* Character Development
* Character Conflict
* Multiple POV
* Female POV
* Good Worldbuilding
* Battles

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

Amazing!

If you think this might be your thing? its your thing!


5 Stars. cannot wait for the next Book!

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Half a good book...

The James chapters are great! The Tina chapters are annoying. She's such a moron its hard to get through the chapters that follow her side of the story. Narration is good though and is done at a good speed so that's a plus.

It Got Me Hooked.

I'm an avid gamer so i took a punt and bought this. All i can say is i was hooked from the start. Great idea, well written, and great narrative. I cant wait for the next one.

Can't wait for the sequel

This book is as others said two individual stories but they link together as the two characters are siblings.

This book was well written and the main characters were likable and most definitely human. By this I mean they had faults and weren't your typical, I'm a badass and will kill everything in sight types.

In conclusion I would say give this book ago.

Additional note: there wasn't a lot of humor, so if you like your books to have a touch of humour then I'd give it a miss.

Hooked from the beginning!

As a lover of all things gaming I have read/listened to a fair few other similar stories such as Ready Player 1, armada, off to be a wizard series and the bobiverse.(all great too btw) and this one lived up to all of my expectations I loved the 2 storylines and as the chapters ticked by I was sure they couldn’t tie up all the loose ends then I found out it was a trilogy! One I am now very excited to continue with!! Both main characters were very different which added to the overall journey you are taken on. All the supporting characters were great and the audible narrator did a superb job with each character! I don’t want to give any spoilers but this story seemed that it would require a basic knowledge of gaming and WOW (world of warcraft) but I would say the author explains everything so well you could be a noob to the genre and still enjoy it! Can’t wait for the next one!!

I’m hooked already

What would happen if an MMORPG became real in an instant? This story follows the perspectives of two real world siblings in the MMORPG game when this happens, in their very different locations and situations.
As a long time player and raider in WoW, I found this full of hilarious references and very relatable situations. There was some significant character development but not a huge amount since the events of the book only cover a couple of days and I’m looking forward to more of that in the future books.
This book is dealing with the immediate effects of the change, of the game suddenly being real, with a cast of both players (now in their avatars’ bodies) and non-player characters (NPCs) suddenly freed from the restrictions of the game.
The two point of view characters are both likeable, relatable and flawed which is just how I like my characters. I hope we get things from more points of view in future books though.
Overall, this is a great start to a series and I’m excited for more to come!

1 of 2 people found this review helpful