An action-packed new Isekai LitRPG Series from the bestselling author of Reborn as a Demonic Tree!
Power up and become an unbeatable final boss. Damien Nightshade, a discarded royal masquerading as a Professor in one of the continent's greatest magic academies, is considered a mid-level boss—one fated to die in every playthrough.
Now, I have transmigrated into his body.
A game-like world has become my reality, and instead of being its hero, I'm cursed to die a pitiful death as a fated villain.
But why should I accept life as a third-rate villain when I can strive to become the unbeatable final boss?
Don't miss the start of this new Isekai LitRPG Series from Xkarnation, the bestselling author behind Reborn as a Demonic Tree.
Audio Narration by Marc Vietor is excellent. 5/5! So good work from the Audible team.
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I wanted to like this book from the start, but the MC turns into a railroaded, unbelievably illogical, and uncontrolled puppet character after his reincarnation. With what little input or control Damien's transmigrated mind retains, oft irrationally surrendered to his body's idiotic vampiric nature.
The vampires' characteristics seem to suggest they are Darwin Awards recipients in bipedal form.
The world-building's internal logic is ultimately harmed by this absurdity; its over-the-top nature and the fact that it's so in your face, nearly from the start, makes for an intensely poignant anti-hook for me, the reader/listener.
Damien's, let's call it, erratic behaviour changes after a while. I'd say rather abruptly so, and by chapter 11, about 2 hours into the audiobook, the characterisation flows better, with our MC gaining, as is directly stated, 'some/increased control' of his over-the-top game traits. 🙄
So be aware that holding out past the rough spots of the start may make for a more palatable read/listen. Some reasoning around it all is provided as the story unfolds, even though the premise still felt iffy to my mind.
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The worldbuilding is a bit unbelievable as to the extremes and excesses of what the nobility/aristocrats get up to, the seeming lack of laws, limiters, and whatnot, all while society is still working out.
The rationale and mentality of most characters, described throughout the story, of basically every station in life are skewed; I'd say tilted toward an extreme… oft just too illogical.
The big bad of this first book truly comes across as that of a poorly thought-out, low-quality computer game storyline 'Evil Overlord' who, in any less nonsensical reality, could not have come to be.
Overall, the story feels too forced. Like the MC at the start of the book, the plot as a whole feels railroaded, and just not consistently dynamic. It gives the sense of a snowballing plot, if not a direct avalanche in a burpee fashion. Listening to it has me rolling my eyes and sighing all too often.
For me the story is borderline as to if I will pick up the next or avoid.
I enjoyed this novel, despite it seeming similar to some other "thrust into your favourite book/game" stories.
What drew me in was the challenge of a vampire, hiding in a city that wants his kind exterminated, who must rise to a position sufficient to be protected from his fratricidal royal siblings. It says a lot about the writing style that I was totally absorbed even though I'm squeamish about morally grey characters, particularly when they are emotionally one-note.
The magic system seemed okay. I was particularly interested by the protagonist's powering gimmick. Most people were stuck with magic channels designed for one flavour of magic. Our MC Damien, on the other hand, found that forming a blood-bond with another practitioner could open a new affinity within him which matched the blood-bond's magical class. Could he leverage this loophole to become a magical Swiss-army-knife?
Had book two been available, I'd have immediately continued reading.
The fun part of these types of books is the main character working within the starting boundaries they are given. Like jumping into a pre-made gaming module. This has the MC so tightly controlled by descriptive tags that he can not make any choices for himself. Without self determination, what's the point? This is why I quit after only seventy pages.
I think I have to separate the premise from the overall plot. So, the premise is that a teenager dies on Earth and wakes up in his favorite game as a villain character that's fated to die in service of the plot. Standard trope nowadays, but it's one that I enjoy. The plot then, would be where the story goes over the course of this volume and unfortunately, not much of anywhere. I felt like the author spent too much time bouncing around locations to superficially set the stage for things when I would have preferred more forward progression on a local scale while introducing the larger elements as we go. I've read dozens of stories with a similar setup and this one has all the hallmarks of a story that isn't going anywhere any time soon.
The characters didn't quite do it for me, I think because I didn't see much in the way of personality. I may be splitting hairs, but the main character was less of a person to me and more of a collection of his video game character's traits. What's the difference? I think characterization can be found when you demonstrate what a character is willing to lose to cling to certain principles or values. Despite our MC having a variety of superficially negative traits, they never actually make things difficult for him. He's a vampire, but since he's a vampire noble he is unaffected by the sun. His lazy trait means he can't learn melee skills, but does he need them when he has vampiric super speed and strength along with skin that can only be cut by silver? He's a germophobe? Well, that just means his telekinesis becomes overpowered very early because he doesn't want to touch things.
The setting and magic were probably what worked best for me. Overall, the worldbuilding was pretty good with a couple kingdoms in a stalemate that teeters on war and is held in balance by the presence of vampires living in a nearby mountain range. If the human kingdoms commit too many resources to warring on each other, they risk weakening their defense against vampiric raids.
The magic is pretty good on the surface, with people having limited affinities and being held back by certain advancement bottlenecks, but the MC kind of undermines this since he can add extra affinities and basically knows everything about nearly everything, not just about the game world, but about how the magic works. This resulted in a lot of the alleged plot obstacles or difficulties being trivialized.
The writing was pretty solid, with things described clearly and the author manages a nice balance of humorous tone. There are a lot of punctuation mistakes for some reason, specifically the first letter of a sentence not being capitalized. Maybe a future revision will correct these. Personally, I also noticed some anachronisms like a character comparing something to a runaway train when it seems like there aren't any trains in this world.
From an enjoyment perspective, this one didn't really do it for me. I felt like the author spent too much time bouncing around to other povs and locations to superficially set up future plot points when I would have preferred he focus on smaller actions around his MC to start with. Things did happen, but to me they felt like a series of fetch quests rather than anything important.
I also felt like the whole opening chapter with the character in his previous life was a throwaway element. Personally, I thought the video game character of Damien had more potential for characterization, but it's all been watered down now that our MC is inhabiting him like an avatar and just playing the world like it's a game. It also doesn't help that I read this while also reading The Greatest Estate Developer, which just made it more obvious to me where this story was lacking by comparison.
This story might still be worth a read if you don't care as much as I do about plot progression or character personality. It wasn't bad by any means, and the novelty of playing a vampire character could be explored further in future volumes and might interest some readers.
Personally, I don't think I'll continue this series. I had a similar lukewarm feeling while reading the author's other series, so I think this author's style of storytelling just might not be for me.
I would like to preface that I didn't finish the book. I got about halfway into chapter 6 before the plot holes became too much for me to ignore. First of which is how he starts his new life a year before the plot of the game starts. Supposedly Fay, his human blood slave, kills him two days after the game starts i.e. a year and two days from when he wakes up. Instead of using that time to try to change his fate, he is treating Fay as if she could kill him at any moment.
He mentions that Damian Nightshade the character would have probably gone into town several times using a horse and carriage. However, Damian Nightshade the character killed the stable hand even before Damian our MC woke up in this world leaving the horses to die of dehydration.
Maybe that is only two plot holes but being only 47 pages into the book that was two plot holes too many for me.
This isn't a plot hole, but I did find it weird and distasteful that Damian only killed and fed from women. If I only chose to eat female pigs that would be seen as weird and I am side eyeing Damian for this.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Big fan of this author and his unique take and twist that he puts on things. Definitely one of the better starts to a story such as this that I’ve read.
a good book with out the goody hero mc that we see in every book nowadays. mc is a gray character that only cares about his survival and isn't afraid to do what must be done. book jumps away from tired tropes like mc saying I MUST GO ACCORDING TO PLOT, nope this guy uses all available advantages to get ahead and he is ruthless so he nipped the problems decisively. editing and writing are excellent and no obvious problems there. there are some problems however: book jumps around between povs a lot some are necessary but must are just fluff so author must regulate them better. thankfully pov shifts are short and don't disrupt the flow much. author must move the romantic subplot a little bit more to break the monotony if this trend of death and destruction continues for another book without break it will get boring, even he can add some harem? SPICE,definitely 😀 i hope mc doesn't spill the beans about being from another world because he's constantly giving hints to others and if he does, it will destroy the magic of the mc being unique.
The first third of the book is very hard to read as the MC is a slave of his characters diverse compulsions. Later on the story gets better but the MC stays a villain devoid of compassion and filled with illusions of his own grandeur.
The book is filled with diverse slavery and both sexual and non sexual abuse.
Criticism and comments
Why does a germaphobe force his slave to be naked at all times? That seems very counterintuitive..
The author made all vampires into horny primitives running around naked! Even so called noble vampires..
Be prepared for sentences that contain terms like "throat fucking" "sex slave" and "fuck toy"!
a hundred gold tax a month from a desolate hamlet of 500 people without trade, mining and noteworthy agriculture? Unless there is a famous casino or bordell that is hard to believe..
Why is a female arch mage refered to as "they "? Stupid genders crap!
It's funny that the deadly poison didn't matter anymore once the MC turned Zero.
Really disappointing. Kinda hard to believe this is the same author who wrote RaaDT. I freaking love that series. But to me this first book was rather poorly written in comparison. The worldbuilding in the other series was complex but coherent, and the characters were wild and unpredictable but the actions and choices they made made sense in the context of their characters' protrayal. However, every character in this book was a mess. Despite it being a first book, therefore the reader wouldn't have any hard expectations on how they would act, all the characters in this book were so OOC (which is so freaking weird like! this is the first book! why does it always feel like there was a character continuity error?!??) the actions and choices they made made little sense and was so jarring it was difficult to read.
I am a fan of the authors other work, reborn as a demonic tree. I went into this series with high expectations. The MC takes some time to adjust to. You have to remember he is a vampire and is sometimes more affected by his traits which is kind of a weird part of the story.
Power system is somewhat basic. MC grows in power and despite being told psychic mages are weak hes pretty strong. There are a decent few side characters but not enough time given to them.
Part of Damiens power is controlling others and he dabbles in human politics. The story progresses somewhat slowly. After finishing the book, id have started the next if it was out even though this was not my favorite book. It was a enjoyable read tho.
I really liked the beginning of the book alot. Then about midway 45/50% of the book, Fay someone that was supposed to kill him originally was becoming his blood queen. Then later on he was going to start a drug cartel; which I didn't like. For me personally, if he had followed closer to the game with Fay trying to kill him and something other than the drugs, I would've liked it more, because it was a well written book with interesting characters. But I don't see myself going for book 2.
I liked the book, i liked the characters and the development of those characters. The plot is interesting and engaging, and reminds me a bit of Overlord vibes. Just without the funny comedy.
I didn't like how the drama felt like the same gag over and over and over again. Like reborn as a demonic tree, I'm generally not a fan of a "fix anything problem," so we'll see how his blood powers progress in the next book.
So the guy is isakai into the body of a fated villain. There is some additional struggles at about 3/4 of the way through the book and more or less is done fighting and decides I'm going to become a drug Lord and get people addicted. at which point you are no longer fighting against your fate. You have buckled down and accepted it and should be destroyed. I did not finish.
It's been awhile since I've pulled an all-nighter because I was so engrossed in a story, but this one here had me biting my nails, heart pounding, wondering what would happen next. With it being a bit of the typical overpowered protagonist trope, I never wondered IF he would make it, but how much of his humanity would survive. Just watching his moral compass tick steadily southward and crying. Great story!
This book is a scratch the serial numbers off plagerism of the villian’s survival route, and not a particularly good one at that. It removed all that made ‘Survival Route’ interesting and replaced it with more violence and vampirism. Go read Villian’s Survival Route, it’s better than this.
This story has a plot i enjoy, and the writing ways good. But there was a few typos and continuity errors, i mainly noticed those around the gold to platinum conversions. But overall a story I'm invested in continuing.
I really like stories where we get to see things from a "villian's" perspective. The MC is interesting and I personally enjoy the fact that there are struggles and thought behind his actions. I am really looking forward to where this series goes!
Really enjoying this book and it's twists and turns. I hope that it continues to be interesting to keep the story going nicely and doesn't drag on too long.
In chapter 9 we are told that it is currently a year before the story of the game starts, and the game starts with Damien being two days away from getting killed by Fae and all the other "death flags", as well as being the head-professor. So why would our current Damien be in any way concerned about death-flags RIGHT NOW if they're all still a year away? And how does he keep Fae alive for a year if he does not have anyone buying food and all horses are dead? Also, how are player supposed to kill Game-Damien as a mid-tier boss, if he is killed two days after the game starts?
None of this makes sense. This comes close to AI gobbledigook. :( Stopped reading there.