How I, a Normal High School Student, Went to Royal Academy and Avoided Being Trapped in Hiatus Vol. 1: A LitRPG Adventure

This Academy Extra, Book 1

By: Kal Griffith

Narrated by: J.S. Arquin

After a tragic accident ends Samson's life, he's given a second chance by Aki, the grim reaper in a tracksuit.

Aki, a fellow fan of Samson's favorite light novel series, My Royal Academia, offers to help him, but only if he agrees to one condition: save the story from its hiatus.

Reincarnated into the very real world in the first chapter of the novel, Samson discovers he's been granted the unique ability of Jack of All Trades. Now able to learn any skill, talent, or weapon, Samson must navigate the everyday life of the prestigious Royal Academy, armed with the invaluable knowledge of the novel's most crucial secrets. But the stakes are higher than he could have ever imagined, as the fate of the story and his own life are inextricably linked.

Joined by the kind-hearted and determined Princess Victoria Somerset, her charismatic and confident brother Prince Nathaniel Somerset, and the wise and steadfast Mr. Stephen Ebenezer, Samson must rewrite the fate of My Royal Academia while embracing the challenges and joys of academy life.

It's a race against the clock to prevent the looming hiatus.

©2023 Kal Griffith (P)2024 Podium Audio

Story was enjoyable

The story was very easy to listen to. Characters polarized you to care about them

Would not be a fan of the web novel he's stuck in.

Is that how popular web novels work? The author uses the comment section for the MC's dialog? Idk. But the author of the original ain't so much that great at writing. I don't think there can be so much "world building" that a book can be popular where the MC is such a dud. Dude can't even form a proper sentence most time.

Short and Meta

So if you like progression fantasy and litrpgs because the genres are defined by the protagonist becoming stronger to overcome obstacles, then you are probably going to be disappointed that most of the conflicts and obstacles in this book are the bad writing choices by a light novel writer who refuses to do any plotting. Instead, this character is reborn into their world as a side character and forced to fix these issues for the author.

That's a fun enough premise that I don't even mind that it is very similar to an anime about romance games for girls. However, the issue is that I don't read bad web novels; in fact, the number of users on Royal Road that read the fictions that aren't on the Best Rated list is a frighteningly small audience. There are other websites and maybe terrible writing plagues Asian light novels too (and presumably they have a larger audience base), but it's a lot of jokes about writer incompetence that could easily be avoided with a minimum of improved craft. Imagine if someone wrote a comedy about how someone keeps failing to tie their shoes because they insist on doing it one-handed and blind-folded, but that this is somehow funny to a tiny group of people because they also give themselves completely avoidable handicaps. As a result, the jokes didn't land.

Plus, there's not much progression and what little there is doesn't seem to matter that much because despite the character having full knowledge of the events that take place in the novel including cheats, there's always someone who is one step ahead of him and he always has to reveal another skill or item or other surprise twist to win a conflict. I want the characters in litrpg to become mighty and have skills and abilities and items that I know about and for these systems to be complex enough that I can imagine what character I would build and how I would overcome problems. Instead, I just started waiting for whatever new rabbit the main character would pull out of his hat and thus I got bored.

Further, there's this thing that some writers in the space do where every male character (or all but one and that one is usually a nerd or gay or somehow made a non-sexual competitor) is incompetent, evil, or both incompetent and evil. Only the main character can be awesome and I'm just so incredibly bored by it. How much more fun would it be if their rivals were exceptional talents who are genuinely nice people? Then the main character would have to look at how manipulative they are being and maybe check their behavior and grow though. . . and that just wouldn't work in this rather silly (but fun) setup. Part of the jokes in this one are that the main characters are all charicatures so I guess the jokes about bad writing have to have characters that are poorly written. . . but the result is still that they are less than great.

Finally, J.S. Arquin is a narrator I like, but the slowdown on this one is ridiculous. If you're going to write a tiny novel, that's fine, but don't get the narrator to ruin their performance so you can pretend it is over 10 hours long. It's a tiny book. Write a bigger one or live with fewer sales.

interesting story idea.

this story had me wondering how the author got the idea to write this story. I mean it was intriguing the whole way through. I'll be excites when the next one comes out.

an interesting idea One of the best series I've ever read

so I have seen many people dislike this story And at first it seems really really slow and actually really strange and weird I just took a shot on it however the more I think about it and I'm not sure if this is the writer's intention but I believe the story is supposed to be progressive based on the story within the story basically the main character is supposed to fix a broken novel that ends up being pretty bad at first that is reflected by the few people who read it And the story is weird and seems weird at first as well it's pretty boring and doesn't make much sense but as it continues to grow it seems to get way more interesting which I think is the writer's attempt to grow the stories interest based on the events that take place within it kind of like fixing the broken story and at the same time making this story seem really well built I could be reading too much into it but that's my take on it I've started to really really enjoy it after the tournament about halfway through.....

re-edit
also of a heads up I finished all seven books and I really enjoyed the series definitely worth the read in my opinion but it depends if it's your taste I actually really enjoyed the series

I enjoyed it so much in fact that I listened to it twice there are a couple slip-ups a couple plot holes misnaming etc but they happen so sporadically that you can just ignore them and if you're not paying attention you might just miss them.... but the main character Samson is fantastic throughout the entire series The way he creates fixes and just generally has fun in a crazy situation is honestly the gleaming gem of the story.... also the characters in interactions are nice there are a few questions that I don't seem to have the answer for a good example is from book to book we know that in the story it says he is consciously aware of time passing when the story is on summer break in between books problem is when you start the books off it he acts like this is the first time he's seen the characters since the last novel.... a great example of this is I think in book two or three he has the whole summer with his instructor Stephen And then he meets Steven the first day of school and he says it's good to see you again... and Steven reminds him that they spent the whole summer together this happens a few other times but It's just minor things that aren't really worth complaining about.... The villains are top class the characters stay the same relatively but you do get some change and it's quite nice.... overall if you're curious please stick through it


please don't look at the negative reviews here and see that it's four stars... look at the written reviews there's only a few so when you have two people say It was bad and they don't give much reason It's going to affect the rating heavily....