Azarinth Healer: Book Five by Rhaegar
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One thing I'll give these books: for someone who likes to fight quite this hard, she sure as hell has absolutely no problems making friends with monsters of alllllll types. It's actually rather funny. Almost like the series is trying to teach me to pick fights with everyone I ever see just so I can get closer to them all.

It's soooo close to fantastic advice. Right? At least, the novel really proves the concept. So, that's good enough for me! Demons, necromancer kings, asshole elves, almost lovecraftian fae, ancient beings that snuff out suns, elementals... it just doesn't matter. If she can punch them, she can be a TRUE friend and they'll be TRUE friends to her.

So heartwarming.

And on top of that, we've got MASSIVE amounts of leveling and healing going on. Quite amusing.

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Azarinth Healer: Book Four by Rhaegar
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's nice, if not being THE boss, then A boss. It's fun being stronger than all your friends and most of your enemies after being just barely able to handle them before.

It's a time to visit friends, touch grass, trounce low-level enemies that are plaguing her friends, and get voted in as not only the richest moneybags in a town she helped found, but people even give her veto rights. Like fools. Because she's gone in two seconds to be an insane battle maniac. But she's makes a huge name for herself. For being insane for resistance building.

You know, hurting yourself in the worst ways possible to level your skills. Like an insane person. And doing it everywhere that everyone fears.

Fun stuff.

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Azarinth Healer: Book Three by Rhaegar
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After the admittedly dark dealings and tragedies of the previous novel, doing a good job with characterization and recouping and growing as a person, we now go back to the roots of the series and strike off solo again. All to level hard and fast. And make a few new friends on the way.

This is still a good LitRPG. Lots of skillups, undead bashing, and dungeon delving. Fun for exactly what it is.

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Azarinth Healer: Book Two by Rhaegar
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm very impressed by how solid this LitRPG has become. The speed of development of powers and levels has really taken a drop after 200, but that's all for the benefit of actual story and character development.

It was great to see her joining the Shadow's Hand guild, getting training, learning to work as a team. And the big reversal was surprisingly epic in scope. No spoilers, but I was glued to my seat.

I won't say that the quality of writing improved since the first novel, but the pacing definitely did. I find it very easy to like every member of the team. And that includes our punchy-healer hero, of course. :)

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Azarinth Healer: Book One by Rhaegar
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With a premise of a "healer" that's really just a monk class that restores a ton, making them almost unkillable, it seems like a pretty simple and obvious kind of LitRPG.

But weirdly, it's the speed of the leveling (past level 200) in just the first novel that really makes it stick. Fast, fast, fast. Plotting, location, hell, even character development. She can only be a solo fighter for so long, flitting from place to place, before something snaps. Even introverts need something more.

Quite satisfying, all told. Maybe not the best I've read, but I'm enjoying it. And if any of these in the genre are anything to go by, I know it generally gets wild and strange from here on out. At least, the good ones do.

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The Legend of Randidly Ghosthound 14: A LitRPG Adventure by Noret Flood
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is easily one of the very best books in the series.

Why? Its pacing, its humor, its plot progression were all excellent. I loved everything surrounding the dust storm back at home. I love the farming. I even loved the 42 pages of excel spreadsheet skills and progression. (Not even joking, it should have been annoying as hell, but they way it came out, it was just nerdy as hell. But a lot of this is just mood and quirk.)

The really good stuff is the weight of everything that came before and the re-integration into late-form Randidly. It's not just emotional growth, or the regression, but the balance between the self and the monolithic quest to protect his people and destroy the Nexus.

This novel really shows it. Not telling it. But showing it.

And for that, top props.

And damn this author for ending it right there. UUGGGGHHHH.

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There Are No Giant Crabs in This Novel: A Novel of Giant Crabs by Jason Pargin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wiiiiiiiild. MindF, nuts, chaotic, funny, batshit cray plotting, and yet, brilliant.

You'd think I'd be prepped for this kind of great mental abuse or the freaking fantastic one-liners that not only infest my tongue but sit rent free in my head, or the kind of plot shenanigans that would make good Doctor Who shit itself, but noooo, not even being used to the previous John Dies at the End novels quite prepared me for THIS JUMBO PANTY TWIST.

The title doesn't even do it justice. Trailer park idiots having plot armor doesn't come even close to justice. It could be read as a novel of one crazy thing happening after another, of course, but the idea set-ups really kinda transcend all that. Hell, I could say There Are NO Jumbo Straw Men Arguments in This Novel with as much honesty as the title gives us, but not even that does it justice, because we ARE dealing with idiots after all. Just smart enough to live, with luck enough for Stitch, and an inverse proportion of self-preservation.

But they care. They have a jumbo amount of care, you might say.

And a jumbo problem, too. Mountains of body parts, mind controlling super intelligences, scourges, time-accelerated colonies, portals, and yes, crabs. And pretty boys that like to set things on fire. Including Best Buy.

Muahahahahaha this novel was crazy fun. Way out there. Wacky. And even, oddly, rather hard-hitting in the feels. I didn't expect that.

Nuts.

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