Book picks similar to
Future Mage by R.H. Nolan


litrpg
sci-fi
post-appocalypse
apocalypse

The RPG Apocalypse


Jeremy Chambless - 2021
    Well, maybe it is now.Every day is the same for Joseph. Study; go to class; repeat. He can't help wondering what it's all for? Who is it all for? Life is dull and there's no prospect of that changing. Is some excitement too much to ask for?"Get to safety if you wish to survive!"Joseph's prayers are answered, but not in a way he could ever have expected. Goblins, ghouls, kobolds and a myriad of monsters and mythical creatures have spawned all over the college campus and beyond. The carnage is shocking.If he's going to survive the RPG apocalypse, Joseph is going to have to figure out the new rules fast. And is it wrong to feel so alive, when so many other people have died?

Stolen Lives


Keith Ahrens - 2020
    All stats against them. It’s fight or die.When Caleb reported for his normal shift, he never expected to go from the front seat of his ambulance to a bloody battlefield in a medieval Fey Realm.Kidnapped and beaten unconscious, he wakes up with a concussion and a fresh tattoo. While this might not be totally unusual for him,having the tattoo project the image of his stats and equipment like an old school tabletop RPG kind of is.He finds himself thrown into a cell with three strangers who’ve also been abducted. Even worse, they’re all from different time periods due to the disjointed flow of time between the real world and this realm,hardly able to understand each other.They’ll have to learn to work together. Months of training will lead to a yearly battle they were kidnapped to fight in. It’s law.But Caleb has other plans. Outnumbered and under-armed, but lured by freedom, he can either stay and fight in the games, or try to lead the escape to the only gate back to their world. Either way, it’s live or die.

Nullform 1


Dem Mikhailov - 2021
    In this world, you have nothing — even your limbs are rented, and you'll have to pay up every day. In this world, you must complete tasks assigned to you by the System or be fined and stripped of everything, including your arms and legs. In this world, you're under unrelenting supervision. But in dark corners hidden from the System's watchful eye, violence, brutality, and lawlessness abound.In this world, you're assigned a number. You're a volitional Nullform. Now it's up to you to adapt to this reality and try to survive without ending up crippled. Just don't mess up, or you'll be wishing you were dead as you dig yourself deeper into an endless pit of debt. This world will not take pity on you. You'll have to work tirelessly to earn the right to live another day…Read the first book in a new series from the author who brought you Clan Dominance: The Sleepless Ones.An author who helped create the cult LitRPG genre.An author who never ceases to amaze!

Planet Bound


R.A. Mejia - 2018
    Unfortunately, the transport ship he chose is attacked by pirates and he ends up stranded on an unknown planet where the very air is toxic to him. Now John has to team up with the ship’s AI and the two have to survive on this hostile alien world and figure out some way to get off the planet or get a message out for help. Can they overcome their dwindling resources, alien life forms, and hostile space forces? Or will they die together, planet bound? This is a sci-fi survival story with augmented reality, a snarky AI, upgrade mechanics, resource gathering, crafting, alien creatures, and space pirates.

Activation


D.I. Freed - 2021
    Unfortunately, something was waiting on the other side.Nearly 150 year later, humanity is in a never-ending war to hold what is left of its world. Vic is a military asset for the United Forces of Humanity (UFH) and his job is to kill the Invader orcs and their kin. While on a mission, he is exposed to an advanced technology which grants him powers beyond anything he has known. How can he grow and use those powers serve humanity and its hope to take back the world?Travel with Vic as he uncovers strange happenings throughout human cities, strengthens himself and his allies, and breaks rules set in place a century and a half ago. Watch as he allies himself with elves, dwarves, gnomes and beastkin to battle the Invaders using a mix of ancient magic and futuristic technology.

Scout Ship


D.L. Harrison - 2017
    Due to heroism and long distinguished service, he’s elevated to the rank of Lt. Commander when most of his peers have just attained senior lieutenant. His career appears to be going very well.The year is 2263, and the UEDF is in several star systems in a twenty-light year radius from earth, but are expanding even further. He’s assigned to a one year exploratory mission to become accustomed to his new rank, one that will finally culminate in reaching a new star system, 61-Virginis, which is just short of twenty-eight light years away from the Sol system, and he’s excited to be one of the first humans in a new solar system as they finish the race across the void between stars in the scout ship Columbus.There will be challenges he never imagined though, especially not on a simple survey mission. The death of his best friend to a senseless accident is the least of his troubles. Because mankind always thought they were alone in the stars. They’re about to find out they’re wrong, very wrong…Author’s Note: This series will be told in the first person, the reader will discover things as Michael does, there will be no other points of view excepting the prologue. This is also the start of a series, I will avoid cliffhangers as best I can, and believe it can stand as a series of mostly complete stories with overarching plots.

S.T.Y.X. Humanhive


Arthur Stone - 2017
    A place where entry is easy – and escape impossible. Where mere survival is so daunting that nine out of ten new immunes perish before the end of their first week. Where reaching even the one year mark earns you the title of veteran. How long can you survive?

The Idle System (A LitRPG series) 1-4 Box Set


Pegaz - 2019
    Inspired by classical LitRPG and Xianxia, it's a new take on the genres. Containing romance without harem elements, The Idle System isn't a novel for the weak of heart, but one for those enamored with planetary-levels of destruction. If the aforementioned tropes are to your taste, don't hesitate to buy this bundle.This volume contains the first four novels in The Idle System series: The New Journey, The Rogues, The Birth and The Sins, all of which are available separately.

Wolfpack 1


Cassius Lange - 2021
    It wasn't just my arm and shoulder that was broken, but also my mind. I couldn't remember anything—my name, who or where I was, or what had happened to me.Could that get worse? Of course. The battle wasn’t over, and it appeared that our enemy wasn't just content with victory. No. They sought to wipe us out. But why? If I lived long enough, perhaps I would find out.Not everything was bleak, however. I had friends at my side—ones who challenged our cowardly leaders and fought to give me a chance. We could fight together and escape. But in an ether-ravaged, post-apocalyptic world cast back into the dark ages, where feudal lords once again fight for control over land and resources, that may be easier said than done.Join Takemi in this wuxia style progression fantasy, as he journeys through a post-apocalyptic landscape. Ether ruined the old world, but it is building a new one, where mental constructs called mind palaces grant cultivators game-like perks and unlock almost superhuman abilities.<>

Asgard's Fall


Robert Hinshaw - 2020
    Even the danger of the experimental full immersion technology didn’t put him off. It beat living in a nursing home and was supposed to let him feel young again, at least until modern medicine and his body gave out.But there was something wrong with Asgard’s Fall. The “gods” running the game didn’t act like AIs were supposed to most of the time. And some of the players took things too seriously, like they knew something about the game that Noah didn’t. Forced to rely on skills he abandoned a lifetime ago and new digital abilities that resemble ancient magics more than modern code, Noah has to unravel the mysteries behind Asgard’s Fall. And in doing so, discover an ancient threat that has forced a world long hidden from mankind into the light.

The Deep Dark Well


Doug Dandridge - 2011
    The last thing Pandi expected was to run into a ship from the future on the outskirts of Sol system. Even less expected was that the ship would fall apart while she was inside it, the Universe correcting the paradox. The wormhole in the center of the ship beckoned, and Pandi jumped through, forty thousand years into the future. She arrived on a massive station built around a black hole. Once the center of a Galactic Civilization, the station was used to generate wormhole gates linking the Cosmos. The empty station is a memorial to the civilization that once was.One survivor, an immortal being called Watcher, remains, guarding the secrets of the station from those who covet its advanced technology. Watcher, lonely from his self-enforced exile, befriends Pandi. Soon the woman from Alabama discovers that there is more to Watcher than is apparent on the surface. What was Watcher's part in the fall of civilization? The answer to this question will determine whether Pandora Latham survives in this world, or becomes just one more death added to the trillions who went before her.Grand adventure in the tradition of Larry Niven and Poul Anderson, set in a far future in which many struggle for supremacy, and one woman from the past will decide the winner.

Blood of Patriots


Richard Tongue - 2017
    They failed. And millions died as a result. After decades of oppression, the rebels are getting ready to move again, to succeed where their predecessors could not. Their last hopes lie with the Federation's greatest space commander, now a drunken derelict, and a ship that was lost in deep space at the end of the war. The Starcruiser Polaris. Once the flagship of the Federation Fleet. And if the rebellion can find her before the dreaded Political Directorate, the key to a new rebellion, one that might accomplish the near-impossible. But they are not the only ones to seek her, and the future of all humanity depends on the winner of a desperate race, to find the lost starship, and bring her back into the fight...

Initialization (Paths of Power #1)


Sean Barber - 2022
    700 miles, no truck and just his loyal dog to accompany him, can he survive in this new world? A world where The System spawns monsters and mutates plants and animals to absorb and refine essence? Let us find out.

Cat's Game


Roman Prokofiev - 2019
    This discovery sets off a special event and starts a deadly intercontinental war, all arranged by long-gone developers. Now, Oleg, the man behind Cat, has to collect all the unique weapons left in the game by its creators before the tragic accident claimed their lives and to complete the new challenge that nobody on the new developer team has any idea about, all the while being accused of cheating and hunted by the most dangerous guild in the game world, led by a dark goddess and one of the top PvP players. Once, he was a professional player earning real money in another game. He fell from his pedestal into a debt pit: his account got blocked, his savings got burnt, his friends left him behind, and dangerous people appeared at his doorstep, wanting their money back. To get back on his feet, he decided to enter a new game and find a new source of income. *** Cat’s Game is a highly-rated LitRPG series by Roman Prokofiev. The protagonist is one of a kind: more of a trickster than a classic adventuring hero—even if he has to become the one to finish what the original developers of the game started. The setting is the future, around 2070. The Earth has changed: climate, coastlines, even countries. The Sphere is a game ruled by supercomputers…but not everything inside it is controlled by AI, and Cat, whose only interest is earning money to survive in real life, becomes embroiled in the long-gestating plan that will change the face of the entire in-game world.

Pox Americana


Zack Archer - 2018
    If that wasn’t bad enough, he’s trapped inside a military base, surrounded by thousands of hungry zombies. Armed only with a battle suit and a smart-ass A.I. named Slade, Nick sets off across a post-apocalyptic America where he discovers a group of hot warrior women who are only too eager to “assist” him in battling the dead, and reaching a hidden government vault that may hold the secret to reversing the plague that ended the world. WARNING: I’m not a huge fan of fades to black, so would it surprise you to learn that this book’s intended for those over the age of 18 who like over-the-top action, zombie craziness, hot warrior women, cool snarky characters, and lots of haremy (yes, that’s a real word) adult situations? Probably not, so if you like those things, and I’m guessing you do, suck it up, strap in, and get ready for Pox Americana, Book 1.