The God Machine: An Isekai LitRPG

The God Machine, Book 1

By: EmergencyComplaints

Narrated by: Sean William Doyle

A scrappy young off-worlder fights for his life while searching for his missing family in this thrilling LitRPG fantasy series from the author of Ascendant.

When Luke Bennet wakes in a world where time flows differently than it does on Earth, he discovers his family, gone missing over the last year, has been dead for a hundred years here. Left to survive in the wilderness as marmots, murderous goblins, giant spiders, and a two-ton raccoon all try to kill him, Aros's latest off-worlder must depend on his newly acquired system to help him level up and live to fight another day.

When Luke finally wends his way to civilization, the locals think he's a Guardian—whatever that means. Soon he's brawling in a fight club to earn his keep and hone his skills. But danger finds him both in and outside the ring, and now the dreaded inquisitors are on his tail. With the beautiful, sharp-tongued Zea by his side, he'll have to up his stats and locate the God Machine as quickly as possible if he wants to bring his family back.

But nothing's as it appears in this new city, and Luke's own system seems to be trying to manipulate him. If he can't trust it, who can he trust?

The first volume of the hit LitRPG adventure series—with more than 600,000 views on Royal Road—now available on Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and Audible!

©2023 David Sherman (P)2023 Podium Audio

Has potential but marred by "plot armor"

Best system "fairy", helpful all around. Mc had so much time to game and fiddle with the system, yet didn't. Continuously ignored his guts/signs/senses/advice and gets in trouble, gets saved by plot armor skill. So much wasted potential, maybe author is dumbing down mc for drama? Could've been done better. Narrator is decent and had a pleasant cadence.

The MC is an idiot.

The story is ok but the MC is too stupid to live. He makes mistake after mistake and never learns.

He is from another world and is trying to hide , keeps using language from another world, dose t take advise . To be honest I began wishing he would just die.

Started off pretty decent, turned frustrating

It feels like the author tried too hard to dumb down his protagonist. Why someone would do that deliberately, I couldn't say.


There are just too many times in this story where Luke would say or do something so unbelievably stupid and naive that it would completely draw me out of the narrative. It contrasts so drastically with how he is 70% of the time that it feels forced.


It doesn't help that he's always bitching and moaning - one of the ugliest, insufferable traits a protagonist can have.


Basically, we've got a protagonist put in a world with such a hilariously overpowered set of abilities and boons that are completely outweighed by his lack of guile or basic intelligence. He's the kind of naive that I'd feel it irresponsible for a parent to let him out of the house without an escort, less he walked right into a stranger's van.


I'd have honestly rather he had NO advantages, but just wasn't an idiot.

Most idiotic MC in all progression fantasy

This author has two other series with very intelligent MC’s. I highly recommend those titles (Keiran: The eternal mage and Ascendant).

I bought this audible after thoroughly enjoying those other series and wanting more.
Unlike those titles, this MC is so stupid, it’s like the book was written by a different author. His stupidity is obvious to everyone around him too, so I suspect the author is intentionally making him frustratingly dimwitted.

This makes the story incredibly unenjoyable. The protagonist of this story is the equivalent of the blond girl in 90’s slasher movies that chooses to hide in a corner with no escape route and is the first character to get killed off.

Unlike those horror movies however, the MC skates by despite his dumb decisions either thanks to sheet luck or plot armour shenanigans.

I’m disappointed by this series and will not finish it.

Other reviews

The others reviews are correct, this MC is a total moron and he has way to much plot armor. Let me give you a couple examples 1 ) He decides to sleep out in the open of a hostile world 2 ) He keeps attacking the Goblins when they outnumber him greatly 3 ) He trusts this super predator bird way to much. 4 ) The system even told him that his brother was killed by them and he was 15 levels higher than the MC.

Then you have the author that didn't want to flush out any Magic system and keeps the MC as a melee meat head.