/lit/ - Literature

>>21987127
>>21987310
Actually, I VERY tentatively inform you of the fourth possibility:

4. Apocalypse Gates: Rapture - A man's world is turned upside down as he is digitalized and forced to serve as an entertainment for other people in a virtual, post-apo version of Earth with zombies, fantasy monster and LitRPG system. The viewers observe his every step and his performance and entertainment-value will result in his further survival. A snarky AI. World full of bugs and incompetent developers patching stuff on the fly as the players abuse the shit out it.

Sounds familiar? Yeah, it was published three years BEFORE Dungeon Crawler Carl. A funny coincidence, ain't it?
It's not an amazing book, but a decent read. No harem in the first book, though. The protagonist is full-blown sociopath that gets himself a pudgy young Goth pussy that's no less socipathic. Funny read, goes to shit starting with the second book. Good enough for a single read, I guess.

I believe the first three options are better, though.

The Apocalypse Gates series was such a fucking disappointment it's hard to find words for it. The author's relatively popular, which made me think his books will be above average Harem stuff...and the first book, Rapture, had managed to convince me of that, for a time.

Now, listen what this book is about:

The protagonist is a ~27 guy that died and due to his participation in criogenic project had his brain frozen until the technology could revive him, which kinda happened, but in a bad way. He is forced to participate in...a Live TV show, where he is forced to survive in a post-apo Earth with fantasy elements...while using a bugged and unreliable Litrpg system prone to being constantly patched and changed at the whim of developers...trying to work with his manager, who's forbidden from explaining too much to him...and having his survival partialy based on how much viewers and fans can he gain, who can then support him if they like what he's doing.

Doesn't ring any bells? Well, it's basically Dungeon Crawler Carl, written two years before DCC started releasing chapters, but it's a Harem erotica and way worse than DCC. It's curious how many elements are similar, even if DCC is light years ahead in writing and quality. Not that it's bad to take story ideas and improving on them in every regard.

A sociopathic protagonist with an personality?
Some actually interesting litrpg stuff?
Artificial world used where dead people are inserted in for research and entertainment of the living?
Snarky AI that manages him?
Edgy as fuck relationship between two psychos?

It was so great at first! Yeah, there were hiccups, but it seemed to be one of those books that manage to get by thanks to the quality of their plot, characters and ideas, not the writing quality itself. When the story got to its edgier parts where the protagonist wants to fuck with a Goth girl he saved sometime before it becomes particularly interesting, the girl is 18 years old and want to fuck the shit out of the main character. But her father is an abusive asshole. So the protagonist kills him. He roughly fucks with his hot daughter not even 24 hours later. Dangerously based.

Starting with the second book, everything falls apart. The story is boring (there basically isn't one, there isn't even a concrete goal, just traveling). The protagonsit and his girl are reduced to unfunny sex freaks. Everything is about sex and BDSM, it's all the characters care about.The Litrpg system is boring as fuck and could just as well not exist. Nothing interesting happens. There is no reason to read, aside of sex scenes, which are relatively decent for the genre, but for BDSM fans. Damn disappointment, that's what it is.

First book 7.8/10
Rest of the series, 4/10 (6/10 if you are BDSM fan)