Book 48 of 2026: Catharsis by Travis Bagwell.
⭐️⭐️⭐️: A dark but interesting LitRPG adventure, something of a blend of SF (in the framing world) and F (in the online world). Not being much of a gamer, and with one book of Dungeon Crawler Carl being my only other experience with LitRPG, I wasn’t sure where I’d end up on this, but it ended up keeping me invested. Where DCC uses a “what if the world became a game” setup, this is a more straightforward scenario as we follow the main character both in the real world and as they play a VR MMORPG game. Game mechanics were definitely present, but not so much as to bore me (who doesn’t play this kind of game), and the overall story arcs in and out of the game (including the requisite Evil Corporation Doing Sinister Things) were intriguing enough. This is a situation where I wish the publishing industry were in a different spot; I’m invested enough that I’d keep reading at ebook or mass market paperback prices ($6-$10), but not at trade paperback or hardcover prices ($20-$30), and unfortunately, the ebooks are only offered within the Kindle ecosystem, which I don’t do. I’ll definitely keep an eye out for used copies, though.
