When the party Fortune’s Folly slew a mountain-sized monstrosity of teeth and tendrils, the next obvious step was to go spelunking down its throat. When they found a foreboding portal within the corpse of said megafauna, they walked right through it. That’s just how they do things.
Don’t ask questions.
Level 10 has been reached. The challenges required to enter Deijin’s Descent have been conquered. Now, to bring the world one step closer to the second phase of System rollout, Arlo and crew must survive the legendary Delve itself. To have any hope against the avatar threat, the world’s Delvers need the tools this next phase will unlock.
Fortune’s Folly is willing to do whatever it takes.
Even if that means making deals with the enemy.
And even if the world outside is passing them by, faster, and faster, and faster…
Book 3 of Mage Tank, a new Isekai LitRPG adventure that features steady progression, intelligent characters who spend time making intentional build choices, and tons of laughs.
Overall, I found this one a bit of a slog to read. Not exactly bad, but also not really all that enjoyable.
The good: The story is still somewhat interesting. Character interactions are decent and somewhat funny more often then not.
The bad: About a third of this book was dedicated to skill descriptions and random conversations about skills. It's heavy-handed and not overly interesting imho. The tension seems to have evaporated and this book feels largely aimless after they get out of the dungeon. Including politics could have been done well, but the entire thing mostly felt like a gimmick (1-10 from talking with a god, cascading into all of the other stuff just "going his way").
I still will probably pick up the next book... But it's gonna be pretty low on my priority list.
It is only book 3 and I’m getting burned out on this series. I enjoy the overall story, but the repetitive jokes and skill descriptions are getting on my nerves. It took me too long to finish this one. I’m going to take a break from this series and maybe come back to it later.
DNF. Got like 85% through when suddenly there's a bunch of "they" characters. It's like nails on a chalkboard, trying to figure out if the author is talking about a single character, multiple characters or multiple things. I tried just bearing through it, but those characters aren't just a quick mention and gone. If the author is willing to do this for that long, clearly his material wasn't meant for me. I'm sure plenty of people will love that nonbinary characters were introduced, but I don't have the patience for it anymore.
This book is meandering, dithering, dawdling, dallying, dilly-dallying, faffing, fiddling, floundering, flapping, flustering, fidgeting, fumbling, and generally ambling about in that grand parade of perpetual nattering about nothing in particular occasionally, almost accidentally, nudging the plot forward as if by clerical error.
While the intermittent rambling internal monologues added something to the first book. This entire book feels like it's trapped in these internal debates about skills, politics, whatever even combat is marred by almost chapters worth of internal dialogue between attacks.
Arlo doing napkin 4d math early was the least interesting thing I've read in a long time, that whole initial puzzle was a slogggg. It's an incredibly difficult read this time around.
Also most the book is jumping from evolution and spell descriptions to the next evolution and spell description. Might be interesting for some I guess.
This is a tough read. Honestly at best most of the chapters were skimmed. If this is indicative of where the series is heading I'm jumping off here.
This book does a lot of very cool stuff. The new powers, new settings, and new enemies are all interesting and exciting. The action is very fun and varied, including fights, puzzles, detective, and politics sections.
In order to introduce so much new and complex stuff, it is more straightforward than previous books and explores the characters less. It's not completely one sided, but it's pretty severe. I thought it was worth it.
Overall, a bit of a departure from the previous books, but it created a lot of new and interesting ground for the series to explore in the future.
Another great installment. Cornman is in the top tier of LitRPG authors.
This series has a lot more voice and personality that most of the competition. Great MC. Interesting side characters. Unexpected plot twists. Cool worldbuilding. Epic Fights. Thought provoking internal monologue and amusing banter. Just a fun series in the vein of Dungeon Crawler Carl if you love LitRPG. Game nerd novels for the discerning connoisseur with an elevated palette for the genre.
Read the ebook on Kindle and listened to the audiobook on Audible
I definitely love the first book and was slightly bored in the second. The third book was right up my alley. We watch Arlington go through a special delve and change the whole system. They have political strife and gods with secret intents. There is a new power who will bring the end of the world. This book is action packed with so many cool level ups!!!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
If you've read the other books in this series then you know what to expect. Cornman does a good job weaving his fascinating world into crazy stuff that the nation characters get into. Another fun entry in the series!
After enjoying books 1 and 2 this one fell off a cliff. Page after page of skippable debates, moralising, and over explanations. Literally hundreds of pages could have been edited out, and it would have made no difference to how little story happens. I thought I was reading HWFWM for a while with how much ethics the MC was discussing while browbeating gods, kings, and local leaders, all while spending half the book stuck inside the MC's soul space.