Book picks similar to
Cat Core by Dean Henegar


litrpg
fantasy
dungeon-core
gamelit

The Game


Terry Schott - 2012
    The best players are celebrities, adored and worshiped by countless fans. Zack is a superstar among players.His final play may change the world, forever...

Battlefield Reclaimer


David North - 2021
    They require quests and accomplishments that simply don't exist in the world. Some say the World Law itself is broken and that the world is falling apart.In comes Sam Hastern.His family has been cursed by one of these classes for the last fifty years. No one has ever managed to level it, condemning them to the lowest paying jobs and life in a barren village.The class is called Battlefield Reclaimer.There's one more little problem.Sam's about to have it even worse, when a dungeon exploration leaves him looking distinctly non-human.---*In this work, you'll find leveling, crafting, experience-based progression, rare classes, evolving classes, and strange races.The world runs on mana crystals, beast cores, spirit veins, alchemical pills, and enchantments. The environment is hostile and filled with monsters and elemental storms.

Awakening


Levi Werner - 2021
    He can't even use the cutting-edge hardware that would allow him to play in the full-immersion-games that have become so popular. This all changes when he hears from New Universal Frontiers, the company with the best game out there: World of Magic.They offer him the ability to use their hardware despite his injuries, but at a cost... he can never leave the game.Once in the game world, Lox quickly realizes that there is a lot more to this new realm than just a game. Given a class that everyone thinks is useless due its inherent dangers, Lox begins a long and painful series of trials, some of them explosive, almost all of them dangerous as he masters his magical abilities.As Lox explores the depths of this world's magic system, he soon discovers there is a lot more going on here than anyone ever expected.

Wrong Divinity: Oh Sh*t! I F*cking Hate Spiders!


Dustin Tigner - 2021
    Souls are durable things, you see, like kids: they bounce.And bounce he did, into the abyss between worlds, drifting until one excited soul watcher fished him out and found him a new home, a heaven for gamers and nerds and everything in between.It was all he could have ever wanted in the afterlife, down to choosing his class, killing mobs, and exploring a beautiful, fantasy world chock full of mysteries yet to be discovered.At least . . . it would have been those things if that first day had gone a little, tiny bit differently.Instead, he now finds himself locked in the middle of an eternal conflict between light and shadow—humans and monsters—potentially being the enemy to all.Wrong Divinity is the start of a new GameLit series that balances comedy with serious themes. It's an isekai, a portal fantasy, to the spirit realm. Join Dhane, our underdog, as he explores his new world, a world full of unique characters, RPG mechanics, and spiders—ugly, terrifying spiders—while he learns what it means to be an Arachnomancer.

A Quest of Heroes


Morgan Rice - 2012
    A Quest for Heroes revolves around the epic coming of age story of one special boy, a 14 year old from a small village on the outskirts of the Kingdom of the Ring. The youngest of four, the least favorite of his father, hated by his brothers, Thorgrin senses he is different from the others. He dreams of becoming a great warrior, of joining the King’s men and protecting the Ring from the hordes of creatures on the other side of the Canyon. When he comes of age and is forbidden by his father to try out for the King’s Legion, he refuses to take no for an answer: he journeys out on his own, determined to force his way into King’s Court and be taken seriously. But King’s Court is rife with its own family dramas, power struggles, ambitions, jealousy, violence and betrayal. King MacGil must choose an heir from amongst his children, and the ancient Dynasty Sword, the source of all their power, still sits untouched, waiting for the chosen one to arrive. Thorgrin arrives as an outsider and battles to be accepted, and to join the King’s Legion. Thorgrin comes to learn he has mysterious powers he does not understand, that he has a special gift, and a special destiny. Against all odds he falls in love with the king’s daughter, and as their forbidden relationship blossoms, he discovers he has powerful rivals. As he struggles to make sense of his powers, the king’s sorcerer takes him under his wing and tells him of a mother he never knew, in a land far away, beyond the Canyon, beyond even the land of the Dragons. Before Thorgrin can venture out and become the warrior he yearns to be, he must complete his training. But this may be cut short, as he finds himself propelled into the center of royal plots and counterplots, ones that may threaten his love and bring him down—and the entire kingdom with him. With its sophisticated world-building and characterization, A Quest for Heroes is an epic tale of friends and lovers, of rivals and suitors, of knights and dragons, of intrigues and political machinations, of coming of age, of broken hearts, of deception, ambition and betrayal. It is a tale of honor and courage, of fate and destiny, of sorcery. It is a fantasy that brings us into a world we will never forget, and which will appeal to all ages and genders. It is 82,000 words.

Tech Duinn


Ryan DeBruyn - 2020
    A prison planet designed for blood sport. The Sovereign Empire’s power was a lie.Brutally trained his entire short life to be a Sovereign Elite and defend the Empire, Azrael instead finds himself a prisoner. Not even eight years old, and without system access, Azrael is abandoned on Tech Duinn. He must rely on his hunting trainers to keep his identity secret. There is no doubt that if people learn his last name, he would wake up in the arena… if he woke up at all.While fleeing the takeover of Mur, the group discovers how deep despair can drag them. Soon, only the praise of the bloody mob in the Arena Pit Dungeon keeps them alive. Surviving seems impossible, yet Azrael vows to not only live, but to find a way off-world.Azrael lives only because of applause. Others will die for it. Death or escape is the only way out of the cycle.

Oh Great! I was Reincarnated as a Farmer


Benjamin Kerei - 2021
    He’s not the hero. He’s not the villain. He’s certainly not the chosen one who is there to save the world. He’s a clerical error.It could be a bad joke, but apparently, it happens so often that they have a standard procedure for returning you. That standard procedure doesn't apply to Arnold.Now stuck on a new earth, in a new universe, with no way home, Arnold must use his gaming skills to figure out how to level his farmer class to 100 and gain a second class which doesn't make him want to beat his head against the wall. There is just one small problem: farmers don't gain experience from killing monsters. Like at all.Follow Arnold on his hilarious journey as he stubbornly comes to grips with his new reality and tries to change his destiny from that of your typical farmer.

Evolve (The Scourge Wars #1)


Derek Belfield - 2019
    When an assassin's bullet takes his life during his victory speech, he is conscripted from the afterlife by the Lord of Light, Lucidus. Slate is thrust into the game-like world of Somnium where he has been reincarnated into the body of a parasite and given one mission: evolve or die. If he can channel the monster inside and utilize his military and political experience to establish Lucidus' personal army, the Scourge, he might have a chance to evolve before his many enemies find him and send him to a permanent death.

AlterWorld


D. Rus - 2013
    Whenever you play your favorite online game, beware: your mind might merge with the virtual world and dump its comatose host. Woe be to those stuck forever in Tetris! And still they're the lucky ones compared to those burning alive eternally within the scorched hulls of tank simulators. But some unfortunates - the handicapped and the terminally ill, shell-shocked army vets, wronged crime victims and other society misfits - choose to flee real life willingly, escaping to the limitless world of online sword and sorcery MMORPGs. Once a seasoned gamer and now a terminal cancer patient, Max grasps at this final chance to preserve his life and identity. So he goes for it - goes for the promise of immortality shared with a few trusty friends and the woman he loves. Together they roam the roads of AlterWorld and sample its agony and ecstasy born of absolute freedom.

Mana Daemons


Chris Vines - 2020
    A dying alien brings a dire warning, information, and aid. Will it be enough? The group is informed that the Essence Wave of the Daemon invasion is coming. The friendly aliens have modified the incoming Daemon attack to give mankind a chance by turning it into an augmented reality game system, but their warning may be too late. Along with the warning, the aliens leave a final, inconceivable gift—magical nanotech armor that may just be the key to saving the world.

All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault


James Alan Gardner - 2017
    Boasting capes and costumes and amazing super-powers that only make sense if you don't think about them too hard, they fight an eternal battle for truth and justice . . . mostly.Darklings are creatures of myth and magic: ghosts, vampires, were-beasts, and the like. Their very presence warps reality. Doors creak at their approach. Cobwebs gather where they linger.Kim Lam is an ordinary college student until a freak scientific accident (what else?) transforms Kim and three housemates into Sparks--and drafts them into the never-ending war between the Light and Dark. They struggle to master their new abilities--and (of course) to design cool costumes and come up with great hero-names.Turns out that "accident" was just the first salvo in a Mad Genius's latest diabolical scheme. Now it's up to four newbie heroes to save the day, before they even have a chance to figure out what their team's name should be!

The Reborn


Edward Brody - 2017
     No more 9-to-5 job. No more studio apartment. No more reality TV. Finally, he's in a place where he can call home, a place with people he can call friends. But as more people want to trade their real world lives to get inside Eden's Gate, the government of the outside world wants the "game" shut down at all costs. Gunnar must learn to survive, grow in power and find a way to send a message back to his old home. "We're fine. We're alive. Eden's Gate is real." Eden's Gate is a LitRPG adventure.

Dungeon Crawler Carl


Matt Dinniman - 2020
    The buildings and all the people inside, they've all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.Only a few dare venture inside. But once you're in, you can't get out. And what's worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it's game over. In this game, it's not about your strength or your dexterity. It's about your views and your followers. It's about building an audience and killing those goblins with style.You can't just survive here. You gotta survive big.You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that "it" factor, you may just find yourself with a following. That's the only way to truly survive in this game, with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy. They call it Dungeon Crawler World. But for Carl, it's anything but a game.

The Rook


Daniel O'Malley - 2012
    With no recollection of who she is, Myfanwy must follow the instructions her former self left behind to discover her identity and track down the agents who want to destroy her.She soon learns that she is a Rook, a high-ranking member of a secret organization called the Chequy that battles the many supernatural forces at work in Britain. She also discovers that she possesses a rare, potentially deadly supernatural ability of her own. In her quest to uncover which member of the Chequy betrayed her and why, Myfanwy encounters a person with four bodies, an aristocratic woman who can enter her dreams, a secret training facility where children are transformed into deadly fighters, and a conspiracy more vast than she ever could have imagined.Filled with characters both fascinating and fantastical, The Rook is a richly inventive, suspenseful, and often wry thriller that marks an ambitious debut from a promising young writer.

Six Sacred Swords


Andrew Rowe - 2019
     Keras Selyrian is already well on the way to cutting his name into the annals of legend. He’s fought false divinities, thieving sorcerers, and corrupt demigods — and left them defeated in his wake. But he’s a long way from home, and Kaldwyn offers a different brand of danger than he’s used to. He’s already got a sword of unfathomable power, but it’s damaged and leaking world-annihilating mana, so he’s in the market for a new one. Possibly six. The more the better, really. The Six Sacred Swords are Kaldwyn’s most famous artifacts, forged as the only means to defeat the god beasts. Each sword must be earned by a worthy champion, and no single person has ever managed to collect them all. Not yet, at least. Keras is just getting started. Additional Info: Six Sacred Swords is a light-hearted fantasy adventure inspired by Japanese game series like The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and Fire Emblem. It takes place in the same universe as the Arcane Ascension novels, but years earlier and with a different protagonist. While the books are interconnected, they can be read on their own in any order.