Alpha Test Book Review

Well, I did say I would eventually break my resolution. It's been a few months but I do have another book review and I hope to get back on track. I read Alpha Test by David R. Pendleton. The book was published on March 30, 2018. 

Alpha Test has a certain gimmick when compared to other LitRPG books. The main character, Devon, has never been able to walk. When he is given the chance to alpha test the hyper realistic world of Angromoria he was excited at the prospect and signed up immediately. Sleepless nights are what follow as he anxiously awaits the delivery of the pod that will take him to a world where anything is possible. When the system finally arrives he is taken to a world where anything is possible, and he can do what he never could have hoped for before. He can run, walk, climb, and sort of skip. He made himself a Gnome and goes by the name Gnobody. After his first play session he attempts to log out, only to find he can't. He learns his mind doesn't want to go back to that crippled body and he must make a new life for himself in Angromoria. He is labled an alpha because of that, there are a few other alphas as well. None able to log out, all disabled in real life, all with a large bounty on their head. The people to get a first kill on an alpha get a lot of real life money, life changing amounts. With the whole game hunting for alphas like him and with a non combat oriented class, Devon is going to do his best to survive the onslaught coming for him. 

Overall the story of this book was really good, I enjoyed it and it made a good read. The dialogue was well written and seemed like they could be real conversations. I did have a few issues with the book though. The first of which was how quickly Devon learned to utilize his new legs, he had trouble walking and running at first but within the first few minutes of playing the game he is climbing trees and the fact that he had never been able to run or walk before is pretty much forgotten after the first couple chapters. I also thought the reason he couldn't get out was not a good one. I think it was kind of a dumb reason and the author could have handled it better. I also thought the time in the game had lots of plot holes. For example, there is a countdown that happens somewhere in the book and every two lines of dialogue a minute has gone by. Another example of a time plothole is the fact that in game time progresses much slower than in real life. You can live a day in the game which equates to an hour in life. My issue is not with that, many other books have utilized that same idea, my issue is that there is a real life stream of all the players that is only behind a few hours. However, that shouldn't be possible because the stream would have to be running at 24x speed. Another issue I had with the book was the main character had a romantic relationship but within a week that other character had left everything in her life behind to travel the world with the main character. I think that relationship moved way too fast in that aspect. My final issue with the book was the stats. They were way too in depth. There would be incredibly obscure and specific stats like dancing, or drug tolerance, or politician, or any other number of obscure stats. There were so many and none were well explained. They did not format well Kindle or on a computer so I pretty much skipped the games stats. They definitely needed to be trimmed down because nobody needs to read the value of 50 different stats. I know I listed a lot of negatives but I just felt like those were things that could be ironed out, overall I enjoyed the book and found it to be a good read. My criticisms weren't really anything to major throughout the story just little plot holes I found or things I didn't like that could have been fixed with a more thorough proofreader. The stats were my only major criticism but overall the book had good dialogue, a great story, creative takes on LitRPG, and a unique crafting system. I do recommend this book to anyone who has enjoyed reading LitRPG or fantasy novels in the past. 

The whole idea of the series is that there are multiple different rounds of testing the game has to go through before release. My guess is that the author intended for those different testing rounds to each have their own books. Sadly though, the author passed away soon after publishing this book. It sounds like he had started book two and they hoped to finish and release that book within a year, but the book was published over two years ago. Please check out this book because it was a really enjoyable read, even as a standalone, and I wish the Pendleton family the best.