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!
Okay, I’m now on book 11 of HWFM and it’s become a slog. What was once interesting is retreading things they did already and is boring. I find it tough to read. Even the philosophical side, and not a ten percent of the book fight, is not as interesting. I don’t know if I will finish the book or continue the series.
What’s annoying me about this is that it has some of the best ideas I have seen for a fantasy game world. Reasons for adventurers, their place in the world in terms of status and social class, and how they interact with different groups. It explains high level adventuring and why it gets to be difficult for them to relate to people. It has great ideas on the formation of deities and other “higher level” entities. I still appreciate it for all of that but it’s not as good as it was.
Thanks for the discussion!
Ive just started book 8…..I thought it was moving at a pretty good clip.
The recaps do get a bit annoying if you’re reading them one after the other, but I assume they were nice for people reading them as they came out. It is getting to be less entertaining for me as well, and a bit repetitive, but I’ll probably stick it out. If nothing else it’s easy reading.
I noticed that DCC book 8 is scheduled for release in May so I placed my Kindle pre-order.
I also picked up HWFM and just started book 8. I really enjoyed the last two books but can start see some of the slog. Any long book series suffers from opposite pulls - how long can you fight the same enemies before it gets boring/frustrating with no resolution and the opposite is if you beat the original enemies, how can you make new ones interesting to keep readers engaged?
DCC solves this by keeping each floor its own enemy/puzzle with the larger threat moving slowly to the forefront. HWFM keeps shuffling the same few enemies with less success. It works better when it steers into issues of trust, personal growth, and how power warps our perspective of things.
HWFWM is a series where it just gets bigger over time, like it gets ridiculously huge, as far as stakes and power level.
And it does drag at times.
I think it’s remarkable how good it has been for so long, but yeah, it does somewhat feel like the author struggles to keep things going at times. I’m still looking forward to the next book.
I don’t think I emphasized enough how much I do like HWFM. Through book ten, it’s amazing and I read them all pretty fast. A few areas do slog but not as bad as book eleven. It’s to the point I don’t want to read it. I haven’t dropped it yet but I’m closer.
Exactly. Book eleven feels like a retread of three different things from previous books. It’s the same formula. it’s not even changing the plot that much, which is why I’m finding it so hard to read.
What might help is pictures, lol. DCC has that picture of the subway level to get an idea of how complex it was. In this case, a picture of what Jason and Co is doing in book eleven might help. Perhaps update progress at new chapters.
It doesn’t help that the game mechanics of HWFM don’t change but the author keeps putting them in there with the full stat block. Okay, to be clear, yes, it changes when a new rank ability is added. I don’t think it adds much and I long ago started glazing over even new information. It’s not needed to understand the scene or anything other than game mechanics. In contrast, the author of DCC keeps things fresh because the descriptions we get are by snarky AI and it might change. It’s a reason to read them. I don’t see that in HWFM.
Thanks for the discussion!
Yeah, some of the visuals are difficult to grasp, especially the weird cosmic stuff Jason does now. He’s come a long way from killing cultists with a trowel.
I’ve gotten into the habit of skipping the stat blocks in the books. I do that with a lot of LitRPG books actually.
I tried listening to the first HWFWM and bounced off it, mainly because of the narration. I see the first nine are available in eyeball format through my library so I’ll give them another try.
I just finished Book 7 of DCC this morning and I loved the whole series. Probably going to do a reread immediately or very soon. It really got my imagination going and maybe I’m a lowbrow moron, but I thought it was hilarious and thought-provoking. While also being incredibly stupid in a fun way. The violence is so over the top it doesn’t generally bother me. I even cried in book 6.
I only read the first book, but that seems pretty accurate to me.