Surviving a plane crash wasn’t easy, but surviving the apocalypse will be nearly impossible. Nigel Fletcher finds himself stranded on a deserted island with nothing but his journal and the clothes on his back. Not only must he locate food, water, and shelter to survive, but Nigel will also have to combat wave after wave of savage monsters intent on ridding the world of humanity.
Clearing these waves grows progressively harder as each week brings additional monsters, new mutations, and behind them all, a living terror with an insatiable appetite for human flesh. To have even the slightest chance of surviving, Nigel will need to build up his island base to perfection with what limited resources he has available. Crafting weapons, taming beasts, erecting towers.... It will take an enormous amount of grit and determination to transform this deserted island into one of humanity’s last bastions of hope. Will it be enough?
When I read the title Clearing Waves and learned the MC is on a small tropical island, my first thought was that he was going to try and escape through the massive waves coming in from the ocean. Yeah, that's not what's happening here.
Nigel is an interesting guy. He's survived a plane crash. He has no interest in women, even though the island eventually gets some. Instead, he focuses on the waves of creatures coming at him as part of a post -apocalyptic invasion by dragon like creatures called Stryvid.
The book starts off well, as he has some early success. The problem is that the number of creatures starts to rise rapidly, and their abilities get better, which forces the MC into constantly innovating new ways to kill them more efficiently.
Because of the repetition the book does have some dead spots, where the next wave isn't dissimilar enough from the last wave. For me, that hit at the 40% mark and continued to midway through the book. After that, things get better and the book ends strong.
I won't spoil anything further, but book 1 only scratches the surface of how many waves Nigel has to face. I was hoping we'd get to see more of the apocalypse, or maybe come up with a way for him to kill the Stryvid earlier rather than later.
Either way, there aren't many books like this out there, and Nigel can get quite creative when he wants to. The editing is decent if not perfect, and the tables didn't bother me. In fact, I found the book more enjoyable because of the tables and the choices within them.
At the beginning of the story we are introduced to Chuck or well he wants us to call him Nigel since he comes from a long line of Chucks who have all been lumber jacks. Yes lumber jacks and yes he was teased about how much wood he could chuck. Anyways, Chuck had recently got in an argument at work that turned into a fight and he lost his job.
He decided to get away from it all and fly to somewhere where English is not spoken. Unfortunately things did not go his or the planes way that day. A dark shape fell from the sky and hit the plane’s wing. No one really saw what it was but the damage had been done. The plane started dropping fast. The pilot fought the plane and kept them up for another 15 minutes before it all ended. The plane split in half and there was a big fire. After that nothing, Chuck, errr Nigel was floating on the ocean for 4 or 5 days with only rain water helping him survive.
He was able to past a reef and onto a sandy beach. He had nothing with him really. No luggage or anything from the plane, so no volleyball sidekick in this story. He kind of looked around trying to figure out what to do. There was no light, no volleyball, no phone, not a single luxury. He did find fruit, small animals and water, so that shouldn’t be an issue. Next he had to think about a shelter. But a killer headache hit Nigel and he blacked out. When he woke up, it was night time and he saw a message in front of him. It said congratulations on being part of the 90% of your race that survived and it gave him credits. What is going on here?
This was a fun take on the LitRPG or GameLit system apocalypse genre with a focus on tower defense. The protagonist survives a plane crash during the system apocalypse event and ends up alone on an island where he has to survive waves of enemies that come from the sea. There is heavy focus on the tower defense aspect of this that is definitely inspired by tower defense video games.
I didn't like that it is written in diary format instead of real time. It also ends on a cliffhanger with no word on if or when any sequels will be available. Some of the humor and situations felt a little off. The book had a fast pace, I was interested in seeing what happened, and overall I enjoyed it.
Under normal circumstances I would probably rate this book 3 stars for "I liked it" but since this is a newer author I will rate it 4 stars in order to combat the algorithm.
Mistakes: Anything I found will be listed on Goodreads. Found it to be pretty well edited though. There are a few tech upgrades that he has that I never saw him actually do.
Plot: Island tower defense book. Really enjoyed this for the most part. His tamer class is OP because he doesn’t really need to do anything for it to work.
Characters: They are okay. The scene with the marine trying to kill him was corny. He was able to make him a stout ally way to easily.
as progression fantasy goes, this was interesting. Tower Defense is something I've not seen handled before, so if you accept the idea that the GM basically sets you up with scaling resources from the beginning you're good to go. This is a bit like suspending disbeleif in typical fantasy books I suppose: this doesn't have to happen in your general progression because the MC goes and does stuff around the world, rather than the world being forced into his small area of it.
That aside, I enjoyed the writing. My second Australian one, too.
This was an ok book. I recall only one instance of a word being a homonym. It was well edited.
I did not like all the slang used in this book. I didn't understand about 3/4 of the slang. It really ruined the immersion in the story.
The other big factor ruining the book for me was the nonstop switching between past tense and present tense. The author needed to stay in the past tense.
If the author is new to writing, this is an excellent start. If the author isn't new to writing, he needs to go back and take some classes.
This was an interesting different type of book. Not only was it a tower defense style post apocalyptic book, but it is also told in journal format. We only read what the MC has decided to write down in his journal. Because of this, you do not get any engaging combat or sense of urgency. You find out after the fact what happened.
I took off a star because of this literary choice. Otherwise it was very interesting.
I enjoyed it, it wasn't what I normally read but I has a thirst for lit rpg. I didn't enjoy the mc much but I sont think I was the correct audience anyways. The plot was pretty good not a ton of world building since mostly on small island. Fun read anyways, haven't seen Towrr Defence before
This book was really entertaining as the story started off good and just kept building a more complex but interesting world as the book progressed. The MC is interesting as he is more like a normal person than a paragon of the human race. Overall it was very interesting.
My son is really into LitRPG. This book was a hit with him and I listened to it also. The narrator does an amazing job and is entertaining. The story flows well and is enjoyable.
If you are similar to myself you enjoy a book that has one person starting out with nothing except a new system and how they conquer the system. This is similar to that! I really enjoyed how he was able to tame the animals to help him out.
The tower defense concept works really well. The constant attacks leads to a story centered around town building which is fun. The characters are interesting, too. I didn’t love the cliffhanger at the end though.
I think this is the first tower defence style litrpg I've read and I must say my expectations weren't high. The author's skilful execution of the journal style narrative, clever humour and solid world building proved me wrong though. Would recommend!
I enjoyed this book and I am looking forward to the next book in the series. Hopefully that comes soon because I don’t like waiting for the next book in a series.
The characters are flat and uninspired. The building is quick and has no satisfaction. The idea is nice enough, there is just a lack of polish in the execution.