Defender of Gallowind

Shyft, Book 1

By: J. Donald, M. Kraus

Narrated by: Pavi Proczko

When's the last time a game started with a real-life gunfight?

In the industrial wasteland of future America, Solomon Herrick spends his days wandering the streets and getting into trouble. Staying one step ahead of the local PD, his life is mostly spent immersed in history or aimless exploring - until Shyft comes along.

Whether that's a good thing or not is still up in the air.

Shyft 2.0, an immersive, open-world RPG, just entered beta, and though Solomon Herrick wasn't on the list, his friends knew a guy who could get them in. A chase and a gunfight later, Sol is deposited into the world with nothing but a few rags on his back and a nearby stick to defend himself.

With his friends gone, no knowledge of the game world, and zero guidance available, Solomon will have to rely on his ability to learn fast if he wants to not only figure out how to play the game but also figure out how to get out - if he even can.

Shyft is a new Gamelit / LitRPG series created by Mike Kraus and Justin Bell, writing under the M Kraus and J Donald pen names. Defenders of Gallowind is the first in a three-book, crunchy LitRPG series in the world of Shyft. Though, two more shorts exist and a range of soft and crunchy stories are already planned for this vast, varied, and complex universe.

©2019 Muonic Press Inc (P)2019 Muonic Press Inc

I enjoyed the book

I’ve really found myself enjoying the LitRpg world and with general and similar ways the characters get into a work and starting off as a newbie is always fun. This book had interesting and good works building. The dialog between characters was well done.

Shyft 1

So the story is good, even if it is a bit lax on giving a good reason for the MC and others to be in the game, in my opinion.

The performance is good, but I marked it down as there is a place in the audio that is messed up and I paid for a product that is flawed and messes up the performance. While also, calling the reading a performance is a bit lack luster in and of itself. Pavi, does a decent read, but there is no real performance involved, with little voice change and little inflection.

Overall a 5 but not the best in the LitRPG genre by any means. Which is a bit sad, because for some reason I just expected more.

Mehhh

The stat call outs were too frequent and there were many times I wanted to stop listening just from lack of caring or connection to the character. Towards the end it got a bit better and I'll probably listen to the next book once it comes out. Not as riveting as The Land series.

a good read

it is a good read, I enjoyed the book, I enjoyed the characterization and the sheer fact that the main character did not level up exceedingly quickly and seems that this will be a slow grow type of book

it's ok

boring too much excess detail that's not needed stats for everything not enough story. too much background noise.