![Threadbare Volume 1: Stuff and Nonsense by [Seiple, Andrew]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51oHr6WTupL._SY346_.jpg)
I absolutely loved this. It combines a heartwarming tale of a teddy bear's unconditional love for his little girl with a LitRPG with well-explained and open-ended mechanics. Moreover, it also has some great gamer (and programmer) humor, with deities in the setting like "Nurph" (obsessed with fairness), "Gank" (murderous), and "Weeky" (collects knowledge).
You're going to want to say a lot of the names in the story aloud. It's filled with puns.
The systems side of the story allows for a whole bunch of broken combinations of abilities, which is both lampshaded and directly exploited by characters. Without going into too much detail, this is a story that I expect optimizers to love (especially the sequel).
The only major issue that I have with the game mechanics side is that level progression appears to be much faster for some characters than others, even with the same character classes. While there are some explanations for this, like that it becomes harder to advance after a certain point (much like in many RPGs), and that it's easier to advance when you're in a difficult or life-threatening situation, this never feels sufficient to explain why sometimes characters can advance more in a single evening (without combat) than others do in their entire childhood. This isn't enough to significantly hurt my interest in the story, I just recommend going in with the knowledge that leveling feels very inconsistent.
A lot of story events are driven by bad decision making. Normally, I don't like this, but the author generally does a good job of explaining why these bad decisions are being made. This made it palatable, even when I was face-palming at some of the things the character did.
I quickly found myself investing in the characters, which isn't common for me. There are a lot of interesting people in this setting, and even some of the villains are *interesting* and I want to know more about what makes them tick.
Don't go into this expecting a lot of romance. There are little hints of it here and there with some of the side characters, but this is ultimately mostly about a bear and a little girl, not adults pursuing relationships. I actually found that quite refreshing.
Overall, this is one of the best LitRPGs I've read, and one of the best fantasy novels I've read recently in general.
- File Size: 2589 KB
- Print Length: 240 pages
- Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
- Publication Date: December 21, 2017
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B078KGS4V4
- Text-to-Speech:
Enabled
- Word Wise: Enabled
- Lending: Not Enabled
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#111,929 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #2079 in Sword & Sorcery Fantasy eBooks
- #1348 in Fantasy Adventure Fiction
- #2553 in Epic Fantasy (Kindle Store)
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