Altar of Steel: An Apocalyptic LitRPG Adventure

by Ken Lange

When the System arrived and the Valhalla Protocol activated, kicking off the apocalypse, Iain Clark started his journey with one to reunite with his scattered friends and family to ensure their survival. Safety in numbers, as they say. And finally, after many months of troubles and trials, fighting aliens and monsters alike, Iain and his party stand at the cusp of completing that goal.

Of course, it couldn’t be that easy, because when it comes to the System, it never is. Thanks to a compulsory System Quest, Iain faces an army of millions controlled by twisted alien-hybrids consumed by their own hatred. Unable to do anything else, he’ll have to fight his way through a cursed land and destroy those at the center of yet another plot to subjugate his world.

But for the people he cares about, this is just one more step in the journey. Besides, the boom is good, and blowing up the bad guys never gets old.

374 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 26, 2026

About the author

Ken Lange is a current resident of the 'Big Easy', along with his partner and evil yet loving cats. Any delay, typo or missed edit can and will be blamed on the latter's interference.

He arrived at this career a little later in life and his work reflects it. Most of his characters won't be in their twenties and they aren't always warm and fuzzy. He is of the opinion, that middle aged adults are woefully underrepresented in fiction and has made it his mission to plug that gap.

Translation, he's middle aged and crotchety.

Reviews

[Travis]

Altar of Steel is the 7th and final book in this series, and I have to say: I'm not impressed. The ending did that whole jump forward several years, then do the flashback thing to explain what happened, only this book used a whooping 2 paragraphs to cover all that ground. I get that authors get tired of a series, and just want it to end, but my god man, 2 paragraphs to cover ten years of time when you'd take entire books to cover less than one day? Seriously? Not cool. But, regardless, the series is finished, and if there are more books published in this universe in the future, I'll probably read them if I run across them in my travels, but I'm certainly not going to bother keeping track of such releases if they do show up.
But, for what it's worth, if you've liked the rest of the series, no real reason to avoid this one, because the story is decent enough, even if it does sell itself short at the end. Anyway, I'm off to find something else to read, I feel like I've wasted enough time on this one.

[Lisa Diggs]

well that was unexpected

Another good book but the ending was not what I wanted to see. Hopefully Ken will come back to the series and fill in the rest of the blanks. This series was huge and a lot of potential for even more….

[Peter]

Great book

Stellar work once again from Ken Lange! Lots of action and adventure, magic and monsters. Looking forward to seeing what comes next!