REVIEW: The Mayor of Noobtown

 The Mayor of Noobtown
Author: Ryan Rimmel

This series was recommended to me by a LitRPG group I joined on Facebook. And I joined that group after a friend recommended the genre to me in the first place. I'm so glad I got clued in to LitRPG. The stories are so fun to read or listen to -- adventure, a bit of gaming thrown in the mix....just entertaining!

The basics: Jim is dead. But dead doesn't mean done. After he breathes his last, Jim finds himself in another world, pulled in by a demon. The world is like the afterlife equivalent of an RPG game. With a demon as a sidekick, Jim does his best to navigate this world as a noob. 

I'm not going to say much about the story arc itself because....spoilers. Best to go into this book with no plot knowledge and just enjoy it! 

I listened to the audio book version of this story because I just like having adventure/RPG stories read to me. Narrated by Johnathan McClain, the audio is just a bit over 9 hours long. This is the first time I've listened to a book narrated by McClain. His performance is spot on - he reads at a nice pace and is a talented voice actor. I'm picky about narrators -- and I enjoyed his performance from start to finish. The book itself drags in spots. It is the first book in the series so there is a lot of explanation, stats given and just general set-up. That's to be expected in a series like this, and I didn't mind the game stats. A person who doesn't play RPG might be annoyed by it, but I thought it really brought the RPG feel to the story. I'm glad I chose the audio format for this series. I would have been tempted to skip over the stats portion of the book if I had been reading. 

I'm definitely going to keep listening to this series. Very entertaining. Good mix of humor, RPG and adventure. Nice action scenes. I like the characters. A bit immature in spots -- like naming his sidekick Shart -- but if you've ever been at a table playing games with fellow role players, there are often little snickering moments like that. I just smiled and moved on. :) 

Can't wait to find out what happens next!!