After reading through most of Dungeon Crawler Carl, my daughter bought me the first book in the series “He Who Fights With Monsters” and I really enjoyed it. I am now on Book four after asking for more for Christmas (these are hard to find at libraries, at least near me). I’m really enjoying it so far (and avoiding spoilers).
I just finished book three of HWFM and I enjoy them. I do like the plot and characters.
BUT
the author of HWFM needs to hire several editors.
A copyeditor. There are no typos that I have seen but there are plenty of wrong words, extra words, and omitted words. I read on a kindle and I find at least one a chapter, if not more often.
A development editor. Books two and three have their denouement and then the books continue for as much as thirty percent of the book. It’s not needed. I don’t know what he’s trying to do with it, which is why he needs a development editor to cut back when needed. Maybe write short stories or novellas with the extra information that aren’t needed for the main story.
A line editor. He repeats too much, especially the stat blocks of abilities. In DCC, the AI is in charge of the stat blocks and they started out snarky and get even snarkier, somehow. In contrast, HWFM has the stat blocks of a powers repeated with no new information. He also tells us what the characters did in the same book. These are the most egregious to me.
Thanks for the discussion!
Agreed on all points about the editing. From what I understand the series is almost complete already so…yay, but it means no chance of the editing improving, probably.
The end of book three (or the post-ending) got really weird in a way I am not sure I’m going to like. We shall see.
Okay, I just finished books six of HWFM. He had another 15% of the book devoted to epilogue, although this wasn’t as bad. He also confirmed that this came out in serial format first before being made into a book.
I do think the series is good for litRPG. I do think several things break down in terms of realism for me in the genre as a whole. I still enjoy it as fiction, though. The author has a plan and is sticking to it and has been good. If anything, I want more of the theory and philosophy on several things.
He still needs an editor. I think book six was shorter than previous ones because he had a topic and he stuck to that idea for the book. If anything, it was jarring because previous books seemed to do two of those things.
I’m also not sure I liked how it ended with his family. I’m not sure it completely makes sense. I do think the other world would be safer for them because what’s happening there is the same as it has been, just bigger. They are setup to deal with that. Earth wasn’t.
Thanks for the discussion!