Gamelit’s a big focus and passion of mine because it is the genre I didn’t know existed nor that I needed when I got started as a writer. I was always a sci-fi and fantasy guy and the most GameLit thing I experienced prior were anime like Sword Art Online or So I’m a Spider So What. Once I found gems like Dungeon Crawler Carl, Cradle, and others, I was reading everything I could in the genre. Not only that, but I’m writing in the space too, with six books out under my name, another five under a pen name, and many more to come.
As an out-of-shape nerd, Gabriel Rivera had more pressing issues than outlandish things like godhood: Evacuating the city, joining the military, and protecting his family. Simple right? When the grim fate of his world is revealed, Gabriel joins the Reclaimer Project to save his family. A lowly F-ranker, he’s weaker than even the worst recruits. Good thing he’s too stubborn for his own good. Through blood and sweat Gabriel aims to grow stronger and rise above the rest. Deadly traps lurk around every corner, mysterious factions move in the shadows, and dormant powers within him manifest in wild and dangerous ways. Battered, bruised, and beaten, Gabriel refuses to stay down. For only in the fires of The Crucible are legends forged.
When I was first introduced to the world of GameLit and Progression I was struggling to get into it. Most of it felt dry, samey, and worst of all they liked to throw up walls of stats at every possible opportunity. Preferably at the worst possible time to do so.
Dungeon Crawler Carl did none of that.
The setting wasn’t your cookie-cutter fantasy world. It was a dark world where contestants are thrown into a messed-up game to fight for their lives. One filled with comedy so good it was easy to miss just how bad things really were for Carl and the others participating in the Dungeon Crawl.
Of all the GameLit I read, this one got me hooked into the genre.
A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible.
In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth—from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds—collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground.
The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.
One of the things I desperately want more of in the GameLit genre is more sci-fi stories.
I’ll even take sci-fi fantasy ones, I love those too. And Iron Prince is just that. An awesome sci-fi fantasy read and a chunky one at that.
It follows Reidon Ward, a poor kid who’s been dealt a rough hand in life to put it mildly. But even with the whole world stacked up against him he buckles down and gets in to the Galen’s Institute where he starts climbing the ladder from a nobody to a capable warrior.
This story really hits home for me because there are so many people I’ve seen life deal a bad hand and they just give up. I myself was on the edge of becoming one of those before a brush with the reaper snapped me back to my senses. And I love that about Iron prince. The dude has been dealt the worst possible hand and yet he strives for excellence. He struggles against his weaknesses, against people trying to put him down and keep him there, and he succeeds.
If that’s not an inspiring tale I don’t know what is.
Reidon Ward will become a god. He doesn't know it yet, of course. Reidon was born weak, sickly and small. Afflicted with a painful disease and abandoned by his parents because of it, he has had to fight tooth and nail for every minor advantage life has allowed him.His perseverance has not gone unnoticed, however, and when the most powerful artificial intelligence in human history takes an interest in him, things began to change quickly. Granted a CAD—a Combat Assistance Device—with awful specs but an infinite potential for growth, Reidon finds himself at the bottom of his class at the…
Savage Dominion is just plain fun and worth the read. But you know how it’s even better? On audio, narrated by Luke Daniels. Seriously, pick up the audio if you can. Luke’s narration alone is worth every penny.
Here we have a big, dumb nerd who honestly wasn’t hero material but when a wolf shows up to ruin his already bad date, our man sacrifices himself. This doesn’t go unnoticed and he is given the chance to become an eternal, basically a demi-god. Only he ends up being one for the “baddies” according to the solar court.
So Maulkin has to overcome everyone thinking he’s the devil, learn how this new world of his works, and all of that while being more brawns than brains in one of the funniest characters I’ve read in a good long while.
Maulkin didn't know dying would mean a new eternity of dungeon delving, monster slaying, and glory hunting. If he had, he wouldn't have been so worried about kicking the bucket on a date gone even more wrong than usual.
Reborn in the wild world of Amaranth, Maulkin finds himself in a hulking demi-human body with a sword of a size to match. Marked as an Eternal, a fledging immortal of boundless potential, Maulkin soon discovers he's been given a mission by the elder pantheon of this new realm:
Grow stronger. Ascend to godhood. Spread chaos in their name.
Bastion is a story about a demi-god who did nothing wrong and yet the whole world thinks he did.
The question is, did he?
We don’t know and neither does Scorio. He is brought to this world without a clue as to who he is and immediately put into danger. The second he gets out he is told he is a monster and they try to kill him.
What initially seems to be a simple quest for revenge and seeking more power grows into a journey of self-discovery. Not only of what Scorio is capable of doing but who he really is. All while fighting a system hell bent on keeping him down.
What can I say? I love a good underdog story.
Oh and this beauty legitimately feels like reading two books. Somewhere around the middle I swear the first book ends and the second one begins.
At first I picked up the book because I thought it’d be a good laugh. I mean, with a title like “Beware of Chicken” how could it not be?
Turns out I was right but it was so much more than that.
As I read I found myself in a slice of life tale about farming. Which normally is not my jam at all. I love action and comedy. Slice of life stuff is just too slow for me. But the story picks up fairly quickly.
You know the cultivation/xianxia trope where some martial artist wants to grow to ultimate power and rule the heavens?
Yeah Jin wants nothing to do with that. The dude just wants to farm and be left alone.
But his chicken does.
So effectively we have a main character who wants to avoid all the standard tropes and a chicken who lives and breathes them. The contrast between the two of them, especially by the end, is so fantastic it’s comical and I loved every page of it.
A laugh-out-loud, slice-of-life martial-arts fantasy about . . . farming????
Jin Rou wanted to be a cultivator. A man powerful enough to defy the heavens. A master of martial arts. A lord of spiritual power. Unfortunately for him, he died, and now I’m stuck in his body.
Arrogant Masters? Heavenly Tribulations? All that violence and bloodshed? Yeah, no thanks. I’m getting out of here.
Farm life sounds pretty great. Tilling a field by hand is fun when you’ve got the strength of ten men—though maybe I shouldn’t have fed those Spirit Herbs to my pet rooster. I’m not used to…
Wendy Lee Hermance was heard on National Public Radio (NPR) stations with her Missouri Folklore series in the 1980s. She earned a journalism degree from Stephens College, served as Editor and Features Writer for Midwestern and Southern university and regional publications, then settled into writing real estate contracts. In 2012 she attended University of Sydney, earning a master’s degree by research thesis. Her books include Where I’m Going with this Poem, a memoir in poetry and prose. Weird Foods of Portugal: Adventures of an Expatmarks her return to feature writing as collections of narrative non-fiction stories.
Weird Foods of Portugal describes the author's first years trying to make sense of a strange new place and a home there for herself.
Witty, dreamlike, and at times jarring, the book sizzles with social commentary looking back at America and beautiful, finely drawn descriptions of Portugal and its people. Part dark-humor cautionary tale, part travel adventure, ultimately, Hermance's book of narrative non-fiction serves as affirmation for any who wish to make a similar move themselves.
"Wendy Lee Hermance describes Portugal´s colorful people and places - including taxi drivers and animals - with a poet´s empathy and dark humor. Part travel adventure, part cautionary tale, Weird Foods of Portugal is at it´s heart, affirmation for all who consider making such a move themselves."
