Changing Faces

This is my first LitRPG, and one of only a handful of self-published books I've actually finished. To sum it up at the beginning: this was a really fun read, and I burned through it way faster than I thought I would.

Since I'm not overly familiar with the tropes of the genre, I can't really say how representative this one is. It has things that seem pretty standard, though, with the main character becoming aware of his stats and levels, and coming to grips with his life as a character in an RPG. That was all rather fun in its way. As a long time fan of RPGs it brought a smile to my face watching the character struggle with fetch quests and trying to game the system for some easy leveling.

But what really made this book stand out for me were the characterization and the natural feel of the relationships. The three primary characters really seemed to inhabit their roles, and the use of natural, modern language did a good job of avoiding the stilted prose of many traditionally published fantasies.

There are some minor quibbles I have. The beginning of the book seems to spend too much time on pointing out, and then waving away, the illogic of certain game systems. I don't really get why it was pointed out that Bloodwraith wasn't familiar with the money system, only for that fact to be ignored for the rest of the book, either. Also, I feel like Meara's change from existential despair to wise-cracking sidekick was kind of abrupt.

However, over all the book is well written, well paced, and fun to read.

One more thing I would like to point out in particular: The editing was surprisingly professional. There were no real typos that I noticed, although I a couple of places a non-standard use of hyphens made some sentences hard to parse. But this was head and shoulders above about 95% of the self pubbed books I've read thus far, and indeed better than some professional publishers put out.