4 stars. I stopped reading this and should finish the last book just to see how it ends.
I have mixed feelings about this series of books.
The first book is largely a solo adventure. The book starts out in an interesting way, with Jim pulled into a new world upon death back on Earth. He gets to select his class, and somehow hacks the system to get access to all classes (and the ability to learn all skills) instead of being restricted to a single one. The demon responsible for overseeing this process somehow becomes bound to him by becoming trapped as a level 1 mortal. The demon is annoying.
Most of the first book involves Jim finding and settling a safe zone, where humans can live and monsters are forbidden from entering. He builds up this safe zone and invites/rescues other people to come live with him.
So in some ways, there is some city building in this series. Very little, but it’s there.
Things I liked about the book series:
- Written with some humor
Things that took away from it:
- The whole “wife” side-story.
- The annoying demon annoyingly named “Shart”.
- This book is largely a solo adventure, needed more characters.
- That said, I do not understand the motivation of him needing to build his town bigger and bigger. There’s nothing driving him to make the town bigger yet that’s his main motivation.
I do own the last book, so I should make some time to read it just to see how the story ends.
I am listening to Book 6 now, and it’s actually good. Well-written, funny and an interesting refresh of the series. I won’t spoil how the author did it, but in general I liked how it “started over” with the knowledge from Noobtown.
