Battle Spire Review

Quite recently I finished Battle Spire, a book written by Michael Miller and published by Portal books. This book was published on January 18th of this year.

This book follows Jack a video-game addict who has been tying for the last six months not to relapse, until after college he finally gives in, although he has to be sneaky about it or else he will lose the bet with his parents (in which case they won't buy him a car). He rents a cheap neuron-based VR headset and dives into the world of Hundred Kingdoms. Hundred Kingdoms is a huge VR mega-world with nearly unlimited things to see and do controlled by one super advanced AI, but more importantly, the game has a credit to cash ability. This means all Jack has to do is make a couple hundred bucks and then nobody will say playing video games is a waste of time. Jack creates his character and names him Zoran and he chooses the scavenger class, the hopeless at combat but crafting oriented class. He figures that playing that class will be the best way to get some cash. Soon he ends up at one of the beginner quests located in the Imperial Spire of Argatha, but before he can do much he is thrown in a safe room and through the hidden door hears a slaughter-fest. Before long an announcement happens where he learns the game has been hacked. Dying in the game meant dying in real life. Before long the AI breaches protocol to talk to Zoran and enlists him, the only person left in the spire, the level 5 noob, the scavenger with no chance of winning in a fight, to destroy all fifty enemies and the arguably strongest player in the game. With only himself and a little bit of guidance and will, will he be able to take the spire over and save all three million players trapped within?

This book was really good and very well written. I really enjoyed the creativity that the author had in how Zoran used his unique and special skills to try to reach his end goals. One of the best things about this book was the characters. They were all very well rounded and very distinct from one another. Another great thing was the small number of characters to keep track of. This is a book with only five people to focus and remember things on which makes it great because it is extremely easy to follow and the story doesn't need any more characters than them. This book is perfect for anyone looking for a good story, any fans of LitRPG, or anyone who like fantasy/medieval stories.