Book picks similar to
Into a Dark Adventure by Belart Wright


litrpg
abandoned
no-thanks
tried-reading-but-didn-t-like

The Fields of Durandor


Steven J. Shelley - 2016
    No job. No prospects. He lives in one of the most crime-ridden apartment blocks on the west coast. His girlfriend uses him for a place to stay. His father is on life support. Rent is due next week… Games are Nick’s passion. He's played them all - well, the old screen ones anyway. He's never been able to afford an Immersion tank and the amazing games that come with them, but he's seen the web casts. He knows the names of every superstar pixel runner. His heroes. So when he's picked out of the crowd to participate in a competitive, quest-driven dark fantasy RPG, his brain melts. Could this be his opportunity to get ahead? Or will he be chewed up by the machine, just another failed pixel runner by the side of the road? STRENGTH BUILD is a LitRPG serial. The Fields of Durandor is the first episode, with more to come in the coming weeks!

Birth of a Wordsmith


Justin Miller - 2016
    What happens when a game becomes your life? What happens when your life becomes a game? Follow Christopher Weston as he dives too deeply into the newest hit game, learning the skills needed to survive in this brave new world.

Ripcord Online Book 1


Brian Simons - 2017
    I was ready for the uplink. There was just one thing I had to do first. I had to die. Ripcord was a revolutionary new product that launched people into a virtual reality world just moments before death, sparing them their painful end-of-life memories and allowing them to live in a video game utopia for all time. At least, that’s how it was advertised. No one ever came back to say whether Ripcord lived up to its promise. It was a one-way ticket for those lucky enough to get in. Well, maybe “lucky” isn’t the right word for it. My wife had been in Ripcord for two years. I was finally ready to go find her. When I got there though, it was nothing like I had expected and she was nowhere to be found. Oh, and did I mention something is killing everyone off? “Griefing” players that were already grieving. If I ever wanted to see my wife again, I’d have to get a lot stronger, learn how to level up in this strange new world, and hope she found a way to survive this long…

Shattered Lands


Darren Pillsbury - 2017
     Welcome to the Shattered Lands, the first truly immersive video game where you see, hear, touch, taste, and feel the game. In this online fantasy world of dragons, elves, wizards, and magic, two best friends enter at the same time and take very different paths. Daniel desperately wants to break free of his ‘nice-guy’ life in the real world… until his choices end in tragedy. Eric wants unlimited power by any means necessary. Assassin or summoner of demons, it makes no different. Join them on their quest – both inside the game and out – as they navigate the violence, the triumphs, the treachery, and the danger… Of the Shattered Lands. Shattered Lands is the first book in a LitRPG series.

Monster (The Beetle, #1)


Sergey Belsky - 2019
    

Game Break: Hayden's Book 1


G.S. Hodgson - 2016
    Seek out a comfortable chair to marvel at the sight of two setting suns or revel in bloody battle on the Plains of Deadalon, destroying skeleton warriors with your devastating magic. Whatever your heart desires, Waara will provideeeeeeeeee Error304, Error 6799, Report! Critical Failure! Click here for customer support. That is unless your name is Hayden and you wake up in a pitch black mine, with no idea how you got there and are thrust into an unimaginable world of pain and heart attack inducing adventures/catastrophes. “Waara will provide ‘MY ASS’. Can you believe that PR ‘crap’? Come and find out what happened to me and we will see if you still want to play, ‘The Land of Waara,’ ” Hayden griped. “What the hell is that? Get it off me Spike. A little help would be nice.” Game Break is a LITRPG Series There is some swearing and a bit of nudity, but all in good taste, I hope.

Resurgence


Joshua W. Nelson - 2016
    Since the beginning of online gaming this has always been the norm; you paid the company and they let you play their game. So it's no surprise that Alex Stanton was living every gamer's dream. It was the opposite for him. He was getting payed to play. The latest generation of virtual reality gaming, in both appearance and hardware, was being beta tested by the largest retailer of online gaming, AltCon. Never before seen graphical detail, joined with a first-time, fully functional, whole body immersion system was likely to put AltCon entirely out of reach of their competitors. But before they could go live, they wanted Beta testers. Serious Beta testers. So serious, AltCon was willing to pay a salary to each tester, ensuring their lives revolved around the Beta, and the Beta only. Beta testers join for one reason, to experience new content never seen by another player. Alex, along with his group mates Dan, Jason, and Wayne will experience every nuance the game has to offer, and all before the rest of the world. The entire scenario is unreal; from the tests to be selected as a Beta candidate, to the six month wait to qualify, to the almost life-like quality of the game itself. The company pulled out all the stops. If there was a heaven for gamers, it would look exactly like this game: Resurgence. But odd things start happening from the outset. Things Alex can't explain. But like every hard-core gamer, Alex has no problem ignoring the little things to focus on the grander design; winning the game. Whether that be discovering new content, finishing epic quests, or finding the rarest of items. In time, even the littlest of things can pile up, and Alex is forced to ask himself, “What’s really going on in Resurgence?”

The Digital Frontier


Alex Mulder - 2015
     Now the fate of an entire world rests on his shoulders. MMORPGs had stopped being a part of Luke’s life years ago. That is, until he tried Yvvaros, an online sandbox role playing game only accessible through the latest in virtual reality technology. The game sucked him in almost instantly. Luke discovered a world with new stakes, rewards, and philosophical complexities deeper than anything he could have expected. The human experience exists on a spectrum. One person’s reality may be fantasy or even hallucination to someone else. One person’s sense of what’s important is even more subjective. As Luke quickly learned, it was hard to justify living in a world of rejection over a world of adventure, excitement, and connection. He began a new life in Yvvaros, just as vivid and maybe even more compelling than his existence in the outside world. Earth has already been explored, and the next frontier is closer to home than anyone could have imagined.

Shepherd's Wolf


M. Andrew Reid - 2013
    Many play for power and fame; others play to escape the pain and loneliness of real life. One boy, paralyzed at birth, knows no other world. For Ben Shepherd, Verdia is home. The Shepherd is Verdia’s most famous and mysterious blacksmith, constructing armor and weapons for elite and wealthy players while hiding from public view. Players ponder the Shepherd’s true identity, and Ben creates his masterpieces in isolation. Ben discovers friendship in the form of an enormous white wolf - a creature unique in all of Verdia. As news of the boy and his wolf spreads, Ben becomes the target of greed, envy, and fear; Ben’s tranquil life is shattered. A band of strangers, united by compassion, will battle a perilous landscape and unrelenting enemies to deliver the Shepherd and his wolf to a new home. To succeed, they must enlist the help of an enemy - a player who is as powerful as he is hated. They will discover that a small group of friends can face impossible odds, and that a hero can hide beneath a villain’s mask.

Mageblood


Christopher Johns - 2020
    Gifts from the game gods for every person. The perfect magic for every user.Seth, a popular streamer, can’t wait to see what this new world has in store. It’s sure to be a blast for a guy who always plays a caster, and his friends are going to be right in the thick of it with him! The game boasts algorithms designed to read biometrics and brain patterns to find the perfect magical fit for the user—magic so personalized that no two casters will ever be the same. In fact, the game company is so sure they will always be right that you can’t remake your character.The unthinkable happened. The safeties and the guarantees failed, not just once but apparently only to them. The company has informed them that the system is infallible: there is nothing they will do. Players must use what they are given, so Seth and his team have no other choice—they need to grind it out and evolve their gifts in time to stream.Loading… Welcome to Mephisto’s Magic Online!

The Sequestered Seminary of Sawtorn (Zectas #5)


John Nest - 2016
    There, he hopes to find a miracle. As the Brotherhood of Beggars informed him that a Thaumaturge may live there, in the form of the true Magietrois. However, Smoke's quest for his friends' resurrection is on constrained time. Duke Burmistrz of Centzo City plans to attack Verbrannt within a year's time.

Lost Lands: The Game - Atlantis


A.E. McCullough - 2014
    Grouping up with his online friends, he had an enjoyable night of gaming and even completed the Tomb of Immortality. However, at the end of the dungeon they meet a strange wizard with a compelling offer to ‘Beta Test’ a new expansion. Since every gamer dreams of being the first to explore new areas, they agree. Nonetheless, they were not ready for what came next. Mac and his friends find themselves pulled into the game and that they have become their avatars. At first, it is exciting until they realize that they are trapped inside the game. When they find themselves attacked, the Outlanders quickly realize how dangerous their new reality can be. Vowing to return home, the survivors set off to find the legendary city of Atlantis in hopes that the Dragon Kings may know of a way back to the real world. The Outlanders soon discover that they aren’t the first gamers to be pulled into game, just the latest. But more than that, they have become pawns between two rival wizards in a long standing feud. Can the Outlanders survive the game world long enough to return home?

The Broken Battlemage


D. Levesque - 2020
    Little did he know that the job that only he could do would end up having him looking after thousands of uploaded minds for what would amount to more than 10,000 years. Earth is one step away from a nuclear war, and Paradigm Alpha’s solution to saving what they can of humanity is to upload their brains to The Doomsday System. But while most of the minds would be stored while they sleep, Jeff doesn’t have that option. As the only one who can seem to be uploaded digitally and remain awake, he will be kept alive, as it were, in order to help humanity 10,000 years from now. However, thanks to time compression in the system, it will only be 1,000 years for him. Can Jeff survive mentally for that long? That is where The Doomsday System’s game might help. Join Jeff as he explores this unknown world from one end to the other for the next thousand years. However, there is one tiny little issue. The class the AIs gave him, Battlemage, which sounded so awesome at the time, is broken. He is a Battlemage who can’t seem to use magic as a normal Battlemage. This is safe for teens as there is no sex and no extreme swearing.

Universe Online - Rise of Rex: Part 1


Ryan 'Viken' HenningNata Valerio - 2016
     Even with our modern technology, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis cannot be treated or cured. I've been bed or chair bound since I was a kid. The advent of Virtual Reality technology has given me a chance for a new life. Or rather dozens of them. Heh. I'm an avid gamer, and I wouldn't have it any other way. In the games I could be what I wanted to be, who I wanted to be. A mighty warrior, a powerful spellcaster, the charming rogue. The crafter. The builder. All of those and more have helped to greatly alleviated my problems. But a new game is coming out; one with the power to change the world. It uses a brand new technology, based around the first ever deep immersion Dive Pod. With it there is no more game lag or graphical limits. It is being heralded as the greatest breakthrough in Virtual Reality technologies since its founding. And the first and only game for it: Universe Online. No longer will players be stuck on a single large world to explore. No longer will there a limit to what you can do, what you can be. Fly spaceships between the stars, conquer planets, create custom technology. Mine, Build, Destroy. Explore. Rule. This is my story, and my path in Universe Online.

First Draw


Tim Moon - 2019
    War and rebellion roil the nation, sowing chaos among the surrounding kingdoms. Darkness often finds a foothold when chaos reigns, thriving on the torment of the mortal realm. In times of great need, the light calls upon beings of destiny to stem the tide. Though you may blaze your own path, know that you have the power to shape the future. Choose well.Forced to join a virtual world, Luke Rivers delves into Drezkarn, a land of swords and magic. For a fantasy game, things don't start off the way he imagined and he quickly finds himself in terrible situations. While his frame of reference for fantasy RPGs was limited by a rough childhood, the experience of a life spent fighting for survival pays off.