The Upgrade Apocalypse, Book 1

A LitRPG Apocalypse Series

By: Charles Dean, R.A. Mejia

Narrated by: Daniel Wisniewski, Elizabeth Plant

Length: 16 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

When a group of former classmates gather for their 10-year reunion, old grudges resurface as old flames rekindle—and then things go straight to hell. As a shower of comets brings an invasion of reunion-crashing undead, the surviving alumni must band together in this litRPG apocalypse filled with dark humor, horror, and loot cards!

Join the survivors as they navigate a game of life, death, and more death, leveling skills and stats as a world-governing system urges them to struggle on for the sake of glorious battle.

Welcome to hell on Earth. Welcome to the Upgrade Apocalypse!

©2022 Ramon Mejia, Charles Dean (P)2023 Ramon Mejia, Charles Dean

ehhh...

I could have gone on without ever listening to this story. the girls are kinda annoying and the dude's voice at the beginning sounds muffled at random times as if talking through one of those cardboard tubes from a paper towel roll.
I found the story kinda boring. I skipped a good chunk of it, maybe I'd get intrigued, but nope.

freaking amazing

Holy crap was this book and story was amazing. kinda new to a card system but really worked. the narrators did an awesome job, and Lucy, by far, my favorite character, was the best comic relef I passed out, from laughing so hard.

not even a great narrator can save this one

so imagine Mark Tufo being strapped down and force to watch One life to live, Save the Bell the reunion and a crap ton of after school specials. Now he is told to write an LitRpg by gun point. that is this book.

Please Kill Lucy

story would be better if woke Lucy wasn't an annoying hypocritical alcoholic who believes bad jokes and jeopardizing everyone's lives with her comments is a good idea. Your in an apocalypse. Grow the f up or die already. Story does show promise if the author learns to include more game mechanics, especially before or after a battle. Characters forget to loot cards constantly. They fail to review cards or upgrade cards with unnecessary cards. They fail to explore the pros and cons of the system. They fail to review the new fort settings to see what the capabilities are. Could there be a store where you can trade or upgrade cards, buy gear or weapons, or fortify a base or yourself through construction or potions. Nope, don't worry about that. Just continue to follow the asshole who betrayed you twice into a rift you know nothing about. All bad guys are not this cliche. Lastly, why did the MC not eat the mind control zombie as it probably would have provided int or wis stats. Again, there's potential yet all of these little things add up, not including the entire groups childish, "let's monolog mid battle" attitudes would have put any of the characters 6 feet under...besides Gwen, who seems to be the only person with any basic instincts and common sense.

Unbelievable and Unlikable Characters

Fair warning, some examples may be used, so spoiler warning!

I really wanted to like this story, but couldn't and I ended up DNFing so far. I'll explain.

Per the description/blurb, you should know that these characters should be somewhere between 26-29ish since they're attending a 10-year High School Reunion. Unfortunately, instead of being written like adults long out of High School, they're written like teenagers still in High School. Plus, the authors try to be funny, yet most of the in-story jokes are misses because the characters lack the personality and charisma to pull it off.

You have at the time of me stopping:
AnxietyBoy - One of the male MCs and perhaps one of the most arguably likable characters until he does something dumb and sidesteps an issue between himself and AngryBroodyBoy. And, yes, while I said these characters are adults, the way they're written made me think of them as boys and girls rather than men and women. He's also in a love triangle.
AngryBroodyBoy - Second male MC and second most arguably likable character until he starts brooding about the issue that happen between himself and AnxietyBoy. Neither of them will talk it out. Even when two of the female characters told them that t hey should. He's also distrustful of everyone aside from his crush.
BadComedianGirl - The most annoying character to me. She spends all of the story insulting the other characters and dropping badly timed jokes. It's implied in story by another character that the authors intended for her to be a bad stand up comedian, but they write her as the supposed comedy relief character. You know, the bad ones, that drop out of place jokes that don't land and/or confuse cutting sarcasm or bluntness for being funny. My problem with her was that she insulted characters but when she got insulted, especially by a male character not in the immediate clique, AnxietyBoy would White Knight for her as if they were married and she couldn't handle being insulted. There was one moment where her and AngryBroodyBoy got into a back and forth of insults and she seemed to be able to handle it, but before that whenever AngryBroodyBoy was going to call her out on insulting someone, especially their appearance, by reminding her that she used to be fat, Anxietyboy would jump in and tell AngryBroodyBoy not to do that. It also seems like she's the authors' favorite or one of the author's favorites. There were a few times in the beginning where you think she's going to die and you're like, "Yes, thank you authors. You realized your mistake and maybe this story will get thousands times better." Only for the authors to deus ex machina a way for her to survive by way of someone getting a random heal skill, someone jumping in the path of a fatal attack meant for her, etc. etc. This is what also annoyed me.
SaviorComplexGirl - Perhaps the second most annoying character to me. I don't mind characters being heroic and wanting to help people. I don't mind if whole groups of characters CHOOSE ON THIER OWN WITHOUT COERCION TO DO THAT. What I do mind is when one solo character is guilt tripping and coercing everyone into saving people at the detriment of their lives without a care for the danger she's (or said character) is putting their friends in as if they're oblivious to the danger.
SciFiNerdGirl - AngryBroodyBoy's crush. Perhaps, if not the two male characters, then SciFiNerdGirl is a runner up as arguably one of the most likable characters in the group. She does have her "huh?" moments as they all do, but it's not as bad as the above two female characters.
(Later) VietnameseGirl - She has moments of neutrality with me, but there was a moment when she was conversing with AnxietyBoy about the aforementioned issue between him and AngryBroodyBoy that I felt embodied the entire problem with this story and the dialogue. Everyone recognizes that the two men who were, by their own words, joined at the hip like two brothers during high school obviously had a falling out. She asks him about it when they're alone, but she's dropping weird dialogue like "Tell me the deets" and is into the gossip about BadComedianGirl's prom date cheating on her, etc. at the same time during the conversation. It just felt...off...for a conversation that was supposed to be about something serious.

Which brings me to the ultimate issue. The unrealism of these characters, and not in a hyper-realistic way, just in a suspend disbelief way. There's a moment at the beginning of the story where all of the characters along with some not mentioned here are on an elevator that almost crashes and kills them. They climb out of the elevator and continue on to their reunion party as if nothing happened, with only one female character showing a hint of being traumatized. She's quickly drowned out by the ensemble cast. When they arrive at the reunion party, or just outside of it. Another elevator opens to reveal a monstrous looking man chomping, literally, on those inside with him. One of the women the man is eating on looks at the group and weakly requests help which causes SaviorComplexGirl to charge the monster man, AnxietyBoy to charge to help her, and AngryBroodyBoy to charge to help them. Long story short, they kill the dude and again, the only one who really shows some immediate trauma is the aforementioned woman who showed trauma after the elevator event. Everyone else goes into the reunion party as if nothing happened. Nobody attempts to help the people that Monstrous man was attacking (remember this) and instead they all go get their party, or in the case of BadComedianGirl, their drink on. AngryBroodyBoy starts flirting with SciFiNerdGirl to start off their budding love interest romance arc. Sure, there's a mention that the police were called and SciFiNerdGirl who was the reunion receptionist, so-to-speak, tells them this and that they don't have to stick around because the reunion has their information should the police want to talk to them, but it's severely unbelievable that everyone in that group, to specifically include AnxietyBoy, would just let that roll off their shoulders and keep it moving as if it were normal. Oh, I forgot to add, this is the first time anyone sees the game-like text boxes pop up when the three aforementioned warriors take down Monstrous Man. None of them really react to it. All three act like they didn't see anything until they're forced to admit within their small group that they did, but then still act like it was nothing.

The remember it part. Remember I said that nobody tried to help the people in the elevator. I brought that up because SaviorComplexGirl was in the midst of that situation, yet later on the authors force her to want to run to save someone anytime it seems like she hears a person in trouble and seemingly wounded to the detriment of her group. As I said, it's what made her annoying to me. To be fair, she admits to AnxietyBoy during a portion of the reunion party before things jump off that she's a bit traumatized by what she saw. So, the authors could argue that was a catalyst for her unreasonable savior complex, but I'm not buying it. She more so embodies a trope like all the other characters rather than depth.

Which brings me to the big bad, and there are obviously multiple big bads. One had some intrigue and it's what kept me listening. It's an entity that eerily sings old school songs, etc. related to what its doing when it drops in monsters or forces an event. Too bad.

The human big bad is, of course, a cartoon villain. His name rhymes with Chad. That should tell you nearly all you need to know, but Brad is the cookie-cutter-easy-to-identify-villain. He's rapey, he's a racist, he's a classist, he's rich, he's a narcissist, he's a sociopath, etc. etc. etc. Where I put the book down and DNF'd and maybe, just maybe might pick it up and try to power through is after a chapter where the authors force you to sit through 15 minutes of Brad's POV as Brad comes to the realization that he'd been villaining all wrong and the best way to be a villain is to trick people into loving you rather than be all hostile and threatening about it. I was fine with the POV chapter until I saw that it was going to be 15 minutes and I powered through it, I really did, but along with all the other aforementioned stuff, I lost interest. I'll leave this at that. Should I continue the story and feel like it gets mountains better (I doubt it) I'll update this if Audible lets me. Audible hasn't been letting me update. It gets stuck in review lately.

I want to like this but

The starting characters are way over blown characterization. Some get more fleshed out as it moves along but not really. It feels forced. There are times when people who are not with the group but are back in the parking garage are suddenly there and talking like they did not stay behind. Timer detonator suddenly became a remote control detonator. As for the voice work it was good. However the edits were really really bad. Sometimes you will get a line more than once. This happened a few times. It feels like a B movie script with B level production value but fun voice work.

it wants to be good... and Adault oriented?

Good idea for a story and I actually kept listening... but the dialog 😖. Gen z in full effect? The entire series is an innuendo but has to say "freak" or "freaking" but can't use a swear word? did a high school student afraid of their parents write this? just heard the word "shit". Maybe there's hope?

Exciting start to a new series

Have you ever finished a book and still been thinking about it as you start reading the next book and realize that the new book isn’t part of that world?

This book was that good.

A thrilling litRPG apocalypse experience!

The Upgrade Apocalypse, Book 1 by Charles Dean and R.A. Mejia, narrated by Daniel Wisniewski and Elizabeth Plant, delivers a thrilling litRPG apocalypse experience that will have you hooked from start to finish. With a darkly humorous tone, this story combines old grudges, undead invaders, and a game-like system that keeps the survivors fighting for their lives. The writing is sharp, the narrators bring the characters to life, and the result is a hellishly entertaining adventure that will leave you craving for more. Dive into the Upgrade Apocalypse, and embrace the chaos!

it's not for everyone but...

the narration was immaculate. Great job for voice actors. I see alot of reviews that call this book bad characters bad so forth and so forth I finished this book and I loved it the characters are written that way on purpose I highly enjoyed the system the characters powers are all based on now to adress the drunk in the room Lucy I absolutely loved her she is supposed to be a bad comedian absolutely addicted to alcohol and liquor she is written beautifully all the characters have there charm and misgivings even the main antagonist is written well makes my skin creep and God did I hate him good job you two can't wait to read the next book