A Small Town in Southern Illvaria: An Isekai LitRPG

A Budding Scientist in a Fantasy World, Book 1

By: Acaswell

Narrated by: Alexandra Ryan

A young woman must navigate the dangers of a strange new world filled with magic and mystery in this imaginative and highly detailed LitRPG adventure.

When Alice Verianna went to sleep, she was just another teen from the Denver suburbs. She definitely didn't expect to be transported to a magical alternate dimension, inhabited by monsters and presided over by a mysterious System. Here, people resemble RPG characters and everyone has access to their own status screens.

Grappling with the mechanics of the elusive System isn't the only challenge Alice faces. It seems an underground organization known as the Society of Starry Eyes has taken a particular interest in other dimensions. If they find out about Alice, they will stop at nothing to hunt her down and forcibly extract from her the secrets of her world.

Now, in addition to pursuing her own scientific endeavors, as well as learning to harness the magic that surrounds her, Alice must determine the Society's ultimate intention—and how she ended up here in first place. Before it's too late . . .

The first volume of the hit LitRPG adventure series—with almost two million views on Royal Road—now available on Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and Audible!

©2023 Acaswell (P)2023 Podium Audio

From the perspective of a dedicated researcher

I will keep this short, the MC isn't a monster hunter, adventurer or murder hobo. She is a researcher in mind and spirit. Originally from Earth, she finds herself on a new world and struggling for survival. In these Isekai stories we normally get MC's that either whine about what's not fare and become OP due to extreme plot armor or we get MC's that decide to get stronger as fast as possible so they don't have to worry so much about old monsters bullying them in their new "might makes right" world. With some crafting thrown into the mix of course. But that is not this story. This is a story about a girl that will defend herself but will not go looking for danger. She doesn't level to get stronger, she levels for other reasons. It's a completely different perspective and I really enjoyed it. Well done!

I love the slower pace and in depth look into the system this novel takes.

I love the slower pace and focus on the system. It’s one of my favorite parts of this genre so having it be a huge focus with a scientific lens is amazing.

However!

Start off was great. World building and uncover progresses together with main character learn about it. interactions are nice. Main character growing is visible. Even though you can see her actually be a hard working girl, the way the story flows sounds more like she has a hidden Luck stat perk that helps her a lot.
My biggest issue for the author is the use of word "however". In the 2nd half of the book it was like every other sentence started off or used "however". It was present so much that by the time I was in last 5 hours of the book, every time I heard the word, I had issue focusing on the story.

A good slice of life

This a good slice of life fantasy story. I will be getting the book. The narrator was excellent and very expressive.

solid book

overall pretty good and I will be continuing the series. two main complaints one being the repetitive information (not nearly as bad as some books I've read but it annoys me) and I wish that status sheets where at the end of chapters so they were more easily skipped in txt format I love them but I don't want to listen to 5 minutes of them every hour or so. otherwise like the world charters are good and I'm looking forward to seeing where the series goes

a few errors in knowledge but acceptable from a 15 year old kid

fun, and a slow burn, if you want fast passed action, go elsewhere, but fir the type of thing this is, it is perfect.

Very good, with some polishing would’ve been a 5

The story is interesting, I found myself just as curious as the mc about everything and excited to see where her experiments would lead. The book was very close to 5 stars, with a little more another round of edits and some polishing it would’ve been amazing, lots of repeat words and such. The character most definitely did not feel like a 15/16 year old. I think the story would’ve been better served if she was a phd student or a mid 20s woman working at a university or robotics company. Narrator was good but at some points the tone seemed a little off

Unique take on an isekai

Looking forward to the second one. I think the pace was a little slow. Just a bit too much internal dialogue. I also got a bit fed up with the full status screen readouts towards the middle. I typically haven’t minded these in other stories but this felt too long. Might recommend rethinking how to either make these easier to skip in audible by using more of those 0.5 chapters. Or just reading the relevant parts that changed.

I honestly loved it.

This book is serious like is really good. It's a very different type of EC tie that I have read before.
The fact that the main character is happening worried about disease from this play where she's been teleported to. Is vastly different than most of the other light knob is that I have Read of late. It's not a huge detail in the grand scheme of things. But it's nice to see a character. Actually do something and present the ideas. It's something that I never considered. Usually, when the all-powerful gods are whatever. Pulls you to another place. This stuff is all taken care of so it's nice to see a character that has to deal with this. Other than that it has a very interesting magic system. I thought the main character is very inchristine. I enjoyed her quite a bit and her struggles to Survi found the beginning of the book. Pretty interesting. I could see some people not liking it because of his slow pace. I love the kind of slice of life that we have going on here. I'm a big fan of the wondering ends wondering if this is gonna be a serious life that where it slowly expands the world to the reader. Who knows we'll see in the future? I thought the voice performance was excellent. And I thought the character were well written seriously. Highly recommend this book.

A young intellectual demands her fantasy world makes sense

This was a great find. I'm a bit of an armchair scientist myself and can see the raw drive to know and make rational sense of everything really well reflected in this little girl. Although it was realistic to have so much survival based action in the beginning, and she was certainly self conscious she was costing on luck to survive, IMHO it was a bit much. Still, I chalk it up to the Everett Many Worlds model being correct in this universe and we're just following along the lucky Alice who survived. After the survival bit, it gets much more believable on the story front. In any case it was enjoyable throughout. I would have liked more of a sense of completion to some of the questions and plot points I had, which makes it frustratingly hard that I'll have to wait for the next book to see some movement on that. But when it comes out, I will get it. I would have switched to the Kindle version of only that was available but the two editions are synced. Narration was really good but had a few clips I could tell were different takes. Not enough of an issue to cost a star, but room for improvement.

I recommend this to people who are more critical of the fantastical elements of fantasy because you can just feel how she is slowly closing the gap on the fantasy to make it reality. It's a unique feeling I have not seen in any other fantasy or litrpg or there. I'm excited to see more.