The Tower of Aetherius: A Progression Fantasy

Odyssey of the Ethereal, Book 1

By: Jamie Kojola

Narrated by: Diana Richardson

Waking up as one's video game avatar is no walk in the park—in fact, it's a harrowing tower climb—in this witty isekai for fans of geeky, badass women.

When Aesca Lampi wakes up in the form of her character from Eldest Fantasy Wars Online, she's annoyed by the historical inaccuracies. (Video-game-style scrolls? Really?) That is, until a building collapses on top of her, revealing she's on a fantastical island centered around the impossibly tall, glowing Tower of Aetherius . . . with an array of dangerous creatures—including jaguar hybrids, velociraptors, and giant, flesh-eating lizards—in the way. (Oh, joy.)

OK, so she's dead. Now what? In order to become a true Aetherian, Aesca is challenged by the god Aetherius himself to make her way through all one hundred levels of the tower and free the world from the tyranny of Oizys, Goddess of Misery. Aesca's mission seems relatively simple: solve the puzzles, forge alliances, regenerate when killed, move on. But soon she's involving herself in elf-human border negotiations and running from black vipers.

As the climb gets ever more harrowing and a host of deities begins to interfere, Aesca will need all her strength, cleverness, and wit—plus her trusty dragon-cat, Arkaziel—to ascend the levels and fight Oizys before it's too late. And she doesn't even have a help menu to assist her . . .

The first volume of the hit progression-fantasy series—with more than 750,000 views on Royal Road—now available on Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and Audible!

©2023 Theresa M. Paavola (P)2023 Podium Audio

An excellent start to an Epic Journey

A tale about discovering godlike powers by overcoming challenges with a snarky feline companion. There's combat, puzzles, crafting, and Midwesterner jokes.

Two Thumbs way Up!!

I was entertained, There is no Harem so thanks for that Author, I was a little worried with the lovers part that came up but it is safe and clean. Diana has a great Voice range and kinda reminded me of Andrea Parsneau and will look forward to more from this Narrator. The Story is Solid and Fast Moving. I mean it moves right along. Unlike other tower climbers this one has some serious Umpf!!! Need the next book asap please!

fun

fun book really liked the narrator the plot is solid. i love the idea of a cat dragon

Pretty Solid

Firstly, let me just express my EXTREME gratitude towards the author for not having any stupid status menus or readouts in this book at all. I never really understood that LitRPG trope since status menus are for people playing a game to see the status of their characters and not for the actual characters themselves to see. Anyway, let's get into the actual review.

I found the book to be interesting on the whole and I liked the wide variety of levels/floors/worlds that were in it. I also liked the general concept of the book and the main characters were both likeable and had good chemistry together. The book kept up a fast pace throughout, which was both good and bad. It kept things new and fresh and made sure that if the reader didn't happen to like a particular level, it was over pretty quickly, but also made all the characters that the MC meets seem paper thin. This was especially true of the love interest in the book, which weirdly gets developed mostly after the fact in a flashback for no reason. That was odd. Anyway, I just didn't feel any connection to any of the secondary characters at all. None.

Another issue I had with the book was the lack of good descriptions on what was going on in the scene. Since pretty much the entire book is about new locations and fighting, a lack of a good picture of what was happening just kind of cripples the book. The author has a good imagination, but hasn't really learned how to share it well, unfortunately. It isn't horribly done by any means, but it could have been a great book instead of just a good one with better imagery.

Overall, my recommendation is to give it a go. It's a pretty good time and mostly quite enjoyable. I will probably read the sequel to this when released, but I'm not super confident it will be any good. This book covers half a tower, and the author has set up the goal for MC to beat ten. There is no way the author has the ability to make so much more of the same soup into something tasty, so I'm skeptical where things will go from here.

fantastic start

This was a fantastic start to a new series. I highly recommend it for anyone looking for a book in the isikai genre

Differently Good

At first I disliked the speed and ease of progression. As the book progressed, it became I nice change of pace from most progression fantasy. The humor was excellent and I really liked the accents of Rea and Ark. Completely atypical of narration. Just simple OP MC and shenanigans.

I enjoyed it

Over all pretty good. The only really annoying part was the MCs accent. I hate that Minasotin accent. I could ignore it most of the time, but every now and then it was over emphasized and it would be like nails on a chalkboard. That is not the narrators fault, but the choice of the author. Understand this just my opinion, and I have no problems with people from Minnesota, I just don't enjoy their accent. I also don't enjoy an overdone southern bell either.

Boring and useless padding

I only got about 2.5hrs in before deciding to drop this. It took about 2 days to even get through this on x1.35 speed no less but NOTHING happens. She is literally walking around making stupid ass jokes to herself that doesn't even makes sense to US the listeners and then she'll randomly make a pop culture reference that does absolutely nothing but extends the nothing that's happening in the story. Not to mention the author can't even keep track of what she's doing. First off she's jumping through the air like the hulk(I'm pretty sure she made this reference as well) flying over water, then suddenly gets hit by something now she's by a pool? Where tf did the pool come from. where you just jumping over the f****** ocean??? Then she's outside on a cliff she falls grabs on a loose rock then she's suddenly in a cave?? Like wtf? She's just randomly in new places over and over again with no detail on how she's just there. Then man she's looting everything she's coming across (that's fine in games where you have a almost infinite bag space everyone loots everything they see until they know what's actually valuable). But this isn't the problem she sees a dead body then a ghost and just starts talking how the hot dead elf guy is totally her type? Bro what is this story even? The only interesting thing that happened so far is her getting in a fight but the entire fight was like 2 minutes long with 15 minutes of her inner monologuing. so far it's like 2.5hrs of monologue and pop culture references... Terrible and based on the reviews nothing is going to happen until like 1/3 through and still nothing. Getting a refund.... 1/5 DNF.

One of the worst Litrpg I have heard

If you like books that have an MC that is narcissistic, selfish, hypocritical, lazy and when she wants has a savior complex then this is the book for you. I thought it was going to be a good book as it started out great. But after a few chapters you discover that the author really likes to add homosexual scenes in the book. The author also likes to do flashbacks that dont move the story forward in the first half of the book.

The MC is really stupid in one chapter then has a sudden infusion of brilliance in the next. The hypocrisy of the MC is so obvious but I dont think the author saw it. At one point the MC tells her companion that he should not punch down and attack those that he knows are weaker than him. Then in the very next chapter she does exactly that.

I can say that the companion of the MC is my favorite part as that character seems to be thought out. I was tempted to stop listening around chapter 25 but I had a morbid curiosity as to how bad the book could get. It was bad.

The person that is narrator did a very good job.

power fantasy gone wrong

I can't finish this. Every time there's even slightly a struggle the mc is just too powerful right off the bat and its just over as soon as it gets interesting. I got fed up with the mc getting moony eyed and flirting with a sexy woman every chance the writer got. twice in the first third of the book. The most interesting part about the mc is that she's from Minnesota. Since the introverted gamer librarian personality she's supposed to have got thrown out the window instantly.