Path of Darkness: BlackFlame Online Universe

Glory of Formation Emperor Series, Book 1

By: A. P. Gore, Patricia Jones

Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer

Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

Jon's days are numbered. The mine will consume his life any day. Will this offer to farm inside a game be any better? He wants nothing but to farm in the real world, and he's given that chance in a VRMMORPG. With a new lease on life, he accepts it.

But when he's robbed of his only tool to farm sufficient quota, he has no other option but to enter the deadliest forest of the region and die at the hands of a druid to obtain a skill that will help him reach his goals.

However, death awaits at every step in the forest, and he can't die more than thrice. What will Jon do?

©2019 A. P. Gore and Patricia Jones (P)2020 Tantor

annoying mc

the story and narration are pretty good...but the MC, who is supposed to be a mature grown man with many years of life experience including being married, acts like an unsocialized misogynistic homophobic 14 yr old boy. The side characters all seem pretty one dimensional.
i would love to know the rest of the story, but the MC takes any joy from the book away.

Good, but...

The MC is kinda stupid. I realize in the storyline he's pretty old and don't really know about the game, but that doesn't excuse his stupidity.

People try to give him advice but he, somehow, does not listen. Even near the ending, someone tells him there will be consequences and yet, he blithely goes ahead. He's, like, the embodiment of 'eff around and find out!'.

So yea, I love base building, but I really don't know about this. I may continue to read, if only to see if the MC gets any smarter.

Acceptable

Okay the main character is really clueless when it comes to video game. Even though he states that he has played before. There are areas in the book where I wanted to screen at the author for making him stupid. Then there are time, I think yes that is what a man would do and then complain about the consequences. I would have given the story 4 stars, but there are instances that were difficult to follow. I am not sure about the next book in the series. I will have to think long and hard about if I want to spend the credit or cash.

Solid LitRPG

I liked the premise of there being a kind of penal colony of real life prisoner being forced to be virtual farmers in game, it added a unique twist and character dynamics that I have not seen before in the litrpg genre. The MC is a novice gamer so you are seeing things through his eyes and sharing in the experience of him learning the game world. All in all the protagonist is likeble and the world is your standard MMORPG Swords and Sorcery fantasy game world.

I enjoyed alot, however I can't say I am hooked 50-50 on whether I move onto next book.

charter is super op

I really like this book looking forward to the next one. I hope some more crazy stuff happens. I like the class as well

The narrator is the main good thing about this book

The grammar in the book is terrible, and the senten I'm not even sure how th

Basic lazy LitRPG with glaring flaws and hate thrown in

Evil scheming corporation? Check.
Character with no choice but to enter game world? Check.
Instant game world breaking? Check.
Blatant misogyny and middle school level homophobia? Oh, check and double check.

I knew this wasn't going to be a stellar example of the LitRPG genre, based solely on lazy writing right from the get go, but figured it would be a good junk food title. there are some odd swearing choices, like MC thinking and saying "what the f" and "saved my a" (literally the letters being said ouloud), and then talking about f***ING 2 sentences later. Then came the juvenile references to some one getting together "with his woman", which was off putting. I stopped listening when MC was bathing, and a worker ran over to him with news, and there was a long "is he looking at my special parts? Is he gay?" description.

Solid skip. Don't waste your tome, there are better options.