He Who Fights with Monsters: A LitRPG Adventure

He Who Fights with Monsters, Book 1

By: Shirtaloon, Travis Deverell

Narrated by: Heath Miller

Selected as one of Audible's best audiobooks of 2021

Jason wakes up in a mysterious world of magic and monsters.

It’s not easy making the career jump from office-supplies-store middle manager to heroic interdimensional adventurer. At least, Jason tries to be heroic, but it's hard to be good when all your powers are evil.

He’ll face off against cannibals, cultists, wizards, monsters...and that’s just on the first day. He’s going to need courage, he’s going to need wit, and he’s going to need some magic powers of his own. But first, he’s going to need pants.

After cementing itself as one of the best-rated serial novels on Royal Road with an astonishing 13 million views, He Who Fights with Monsters is now brought to you in professionally formatted audio.

©2021 Shirtaloon (P)2021 Podium Audio

Great!

Took a flyer on a new title. This is one that I'm going to keep.

I'm liking the the character development. We see (at least somewhat) believable characters who have moments of insensitivity, moments of apology, and who grow. We have a good-natured protagonist (23 years old, male, Australian) with lots of personality, perhaps fitting some Australian character tropes. I like the way that interactions between teammates are handled.

I'm liking the worldbuilding. Our character has entered a new world. While I do read books with intense worldbuilding, this one has a deft touch. Cities and locations are described in an accessible level of detail, enough to picture the locations without being swamped with details.

Although this is a LitRPG, we really and truly are not inundated with lists of stats. The character receives a new ability. It's named, and that's about it - up until we need to learn more about it. We see sections of his character sheet when they are relevant, we're not inundated with character sheet reviews. It's quite refreshing.

I think the narration's truly great. It's a good performance, easy to listen to, with characters coming to life.

This is well above average for the genre, a book full of personality. 4.5 to 5 stars.

Wow.

As an avid gamer and someone relatively new to audio books, I cannot express enough how awesome this book was. The story might be slow to some, however if you’ve played any MMO before then you’ll understand. The performance from the narrator was both engaging and convincing. I often found myself sucked into this world completely ignoring my own surroundings lol. Point is: just download it, you won’t regret it.

Awesome

WOW i was not expecting that Rollercoaster of emotions at the end especially since the story was on the lighter side of things except on some storylines with some characters and i don't know what to think of the MC since at first he is just kinda dumb muddling through everything but apparently he just becomes a mastermind with authority issues but i guess that's fine the only truly annoying thing was the combat log like why make so long just to say the attack didn't take effect JUST say that! but overall a good experience and can't wait for the next one!!

Good storyWith an OK narrator

Story was well written with good character development and very interesting backgrounds. It fell down as an audiobook because of the narrator it’s very difficult to tell one character part from another fortunately the author put in enough he said she said to make it clear who was talking at different times

Main Character is the only negative I have

It’s not that the main character is so awful it ruins the story. In fact, he’s not even that bad most of the time, but for some reason the author has him randomly getting super preachy (I’m going to get preachy about his preachiness) about his ideals which at times can come off as a little unrealistic given the situation he finds himself in. It creates this weird moment where you just want the story to continue but the main character is busy talking from the perspective of his main world (our own) and trying to hold the people of his isekai to standards that not even the people of this world can match. I suppose Jason (the MC) is meant to be unlikable to a certain extent, but it does slightly detract from the overall experience when even you as the reader just wish he would shut up and move on. Part of it also feels like the author is using his fantasy book to preach at you his own ideals, like it’s a self-insert when the preaching starts. For example; about half way into the book Jason starts talking to his rich noble friend about how everyone in his position was unfairly placed there by birth (not true) and everyone committing crimes does so to put food on the table (also not true). It’s kind of surreal because he’s making this childish comparison to real life meanwhile he is in his mid twenties and should already know that’s an oversimplified way of looking at people, yet he’s stating it confidently in a intelligent way like a cult leader speaking to his followers. Whether it’s intended for him to be this naive and idealistic while acting the opposite, or if it’s just the author doing a weird self-insert to put out some broad beliefs, I don’t like the vibe of it. I can see younger people without life experiences agreeing with the main character on a lot of it, but to me it just feels forced or something.