As an author, I’m fascinated with the fictional quest for power and the challenges and changes that journey both entails and provokes. Progression fantasy, beyond all the numbers and formalized rankings, is about the character first… not just people growing stronger, but how that growth impacts them on a fundamental level. It's something central to my own fiction, and as I’ve explored the progression fantasy genre, I’ve loved seeing the different ways other authors tackle that same idea. The worlds, people, and magic systems vary wildly between different series in the genre, but that central conflict’s impact on those engaged in it remains uniquely compelling.
Progression fantasy is a young genre, and currently divides into a handful of different categories, the largest of which are LitRPGs and Cultivation fiction.
Dungeon Crawler Carl is almost universally praised as the best of the former.
I love it because it takes an impossible situation—Earth being transformed into a dungeon-delving murder reality show for the rest of the universe—and somehow injects equal mixes of humor and pathos.
I love that the main characters, the titular Carl and his cat, Donut, are the perfect emotional counterparts to the subgenre’s traditionally crunchy numbers… levels, skills, spells, and increasingly overpowered items all exist but don’t overshadow the essential humanity at the story’s center.
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.
On the opposite end of the spectrum from LitRPGs are cultivation books, which pattern themselves after Chinese wuxia novels: martial arts, Dao inspirations, and worlds of constant conflict.
Unsouled takes this concept and makes it accessible. In a world where everyone can cultivate their soul to grow stronger, Lindon is unique in lacking a soul at all.
Derided as useless by his clan, he struggles to find his own path to power.
I love how determined Lindon is, first in trying to make up for his handicap with cleverness and tricks, and then in trying to turn that weakness into a strength.
He is the perfect entry point into a dangerous, chaotic world of sacred artists, and watching his growth over the series has been a real treat.
Sacred artists follow a thousand Paths to power, using their souls to control the forces of the natural world.Lindon is Unsouled, forbidden to learn the sacred arts of his clan.When faced with a looming fate he cannot ignore, he must rise beyond anything he's ever known...and forge his own Path.
"Witches take on the patriarchy in this epic feminist fantasy." Spirit Sight book 1 volume 1 is an award-winning debut epic fantasy novel written by Ross Hightower, the first in the six-book Spirit Song series. Winner of numerous awards, including the Readers Favorite Fantasy Finalist and the Eric B Hoffer…
Shadeslinger is another LitRPG but belongs to the subgenre known as VRMMO.
The characters are playing a full-immersion, virtual reality MMO, and it’s the game world that provides the framework of levels, skills, and advancement. It’s not a subgenre that I always love, but Shadeslinger and its sequels are an exception to that rule!
I love how the author leans into the game nature of the world to create constant challenges and global threats, and I love the main character’s me-against-the-world attitude, which changes as he finds an in-game family beyond anything he had in the real world.
But my favorite aspect is one unique to this subgenre… as someone who played MMOs for decades, these books do an incredible job of capturing that atmosphere while injecting humanity and pathos into the mix.
Corporate flameout Ned Altimer dreams of leaving his world behind. So when Earthblood Online splashes onto the VRMMO scene, he dives in and never looks back.
His advantages are twofold: exclusive access to the game’s three-day Head Start period, and a ridiculously handsome talking axe named Frank who has knowledge of the game’s deepest secrets…if the magnificent Frank ever feels like sharing them.
But those advantages also make Ned a target. Once the Head Start period ends, his fellow players will stop at nothing to rip that suave, violent-yet-disarmingly-charismatic axe right out of his hands.
Iron Prince is unique in this list (and among most progression fantasy books) in that it takes place in the distant future, on one of many planets in a galaxy at war.
Instead of mystical cores or game or system-imposed leveling constructs, individuals are given CADs (combat assistance devices) that largely do the same thing.
What I love about the book is that the main character, Rei, is the ultimate underdog. He’s done everything he could to achieve success despite his shortcomings, only to get crushed by peers and a governing system that abhors weakness.
His determination to push on is one of my favorite traits in characters, and ensures that we, the audience, remain engaged, even as he learns to leverage his unique gifts. Smart and never boring, I can’t wait for the sequel!
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…
On the planet of the Sentient Cities, City of Mann is by all accounts an ordinary city. Leaving his home for Epicurea where he gets his first job as an intern at CitiCorp, life as a grown up City could not be any better. But as the questions of existence…
Defiance of the Fall started as a web series and has some of the classic hallmarks of such… brief chapters ending in cliffhangers and a need to always recap what’s just happened.
Worse, the prose starts out very rough, though it improves with each successive book in the series.
So, why did I include it? Because it distills progression fantasy down to its purest form, to what some readers summarize as “Numbers go brrrr.”
In other words, there is always action and advancement happening. The dopamine hits for the reader never stop, and the main character, Zac, doesn’t either.
If there’s a problem, he’s cutting through it, and if he can’t, he’ll go on some sort of cosmic traveling trip to get strong enough to do so. Power is his all-consuming focus, and that is progression fantasy.
In the post-Break world of superpowers, necromancy is the gift nobody wants. Everyone knows what happens to Crows; they go mad, and they go bad. That's what happened with David Jameson, an otherwise unremarkable man who came home one day and killed his wife, orphaning their five-year-old son, Damian.
Thirteen years later, Damian has learned that he too is a Crow, doomed to become a killer, and only enrollment at the Academy of Superheroes might help change his fate. His classmates despise him, his teachers want him expelled, and his mom's ghost hasn't said a word since reappearing when he was nine, but Damian will take control of his destiny or die in the process.
A fast-paced literary thriller with a strong sci-fi element and loaded with existential questions. Beyond the entertainment value, this book takes a hard look at the perilous world of publishing, which is on a crash course to meet the nascent, no-holds-barred world of AI. Could these worlds co-exist, or will…
1184 BCE. Ramesses III, who will become the last of the great pharaohs, is returning home from battle. He will one day assume the throne of the Egyptian empire, and the plots against him and his children have already started. Even a god can die.
