Zooloo's Book Tours presents Ascension & Deception
Hello
Today I join the fabulous Zooloo's Book Tours for a double bill this week that spolights RM Mulder's first two books in the GamesLit world of Conquest.
Today,I am taking a look at the first book in the series, Ascension.
About the Book
Attorney by day, gamer by night. After a heart-crushing rejection, Allan Young blows off his responsibilities and escapes reality into the virtual world Conquest until his HUD starts glitching out. He wakes up the next morning to find that his neurological implant has fried yet again, and he begrudgingly decides to go to the office before he gets fired.
Allan has banked his entire career on one particular securities contract, but when he unexpectedly meets up with his client one fateful morning his entire world comes crashing down around him. He survives an assassination attempt due to unnatural means when a halo of protection surrounds him, and his attacker evolves into a nightmarish creature that could only be described as something out of Conquest.
When he wakes up from what he has justified to himself as a crazy dream, he meets a vagrant who claims to have seen visions and prophecies about him. But before he can get a grasp on what's truly happening, he transports through a portal into a world patterned after the game but has no access to his HUD nor his inventory.
Can he survive on his wits alone?
So this is a first for me - game lit or LitRPG or whatever damn thing you call yourself! I just don't know (please don't send in answers. I disabled my comments and I am just too old).
Anyways. The story takes place in a game called Conquest and is about a lawyer, Allan Young who is invited to play by his buddy James. Conquest is massive multi player online game and after a faltering start, Allan begins to become accustomed to the mechanics of the game and soon finds that he actually enjoys the hack and slash of the game.
However, in real life, a number of things are happening that are having an effect. For one, Allan is on the verge of proposing to his long time girlfriend, Lily. As well as that, Allan is currently working on a case that is important to his law firm.
Through a series of inexplicable events, things change drastically for Allan and he finds himself involved with unimaginable forces.
Now, like I said earlier this is my first foray into this type of fantasy and initially I was wondering what on earth was going on. I mean, basically it's a book about a bloke playing video games every night. Yeah, there's some other stuff going on in real life, but I have got to admit I wasn't entirely on board here.
There was some interesting stuff with the setting, and from a general trickle of information, you soon realise that you are in this near future world where there is some kind of integrated technology, and you realise that you are at some point in the future.
However, it was the second half of the book that the story really kicks off, and when the other aspects of the story come to the fore it adds that extra dimension to the story and brings a level of cohesion to the story. Not only that we get the expansion of the characters that gives them depth.
I ended up enjoying the book as a whole, and felt that it particularly came together in the second half of the story. The characters became more focussed and the story more engaging.
Author Bio
Most of his friends from High School still don't even know his first name. Known only as either "Mulder" or "Agent", there was an unforgettable moment when a girl he was dating expressed her confusion when a friend approached him and called him "Richard". The ongoing joke was "Hey Mulder, where's Scully?" Ironically he later married a redhead...
R.M. Mulder began querying agents for his Conquest Saga back in January 2016. He then received some inspirational feedback from one of the editors involved in a query contest that had stated in part, "Honestly? Everything about this screams 'Blockbuster self-pub!!' Writing is sharp and commercial. Author has a plan. Go be Hugh Howey. I don't think querying is gonna go your way, and you've got big vision." Mulder ran with this inspiration, and has since become an Amazon Bestselling Author.
He also has a Kickstarter campaign for Book 3 – Revelation - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rmmulder/revelation-gamelit
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