Book Review: He Who Fights With Monsters by Shirtaloon
HE WHO FIGHTS WITH MONSTERS by Shirtaloon is one of the most famous of all LitRPG books that is presently flooding the market. LitRPG, for those unfamiliar with it, is a genre about an individual being transported to a magical (or video game) world where tabletop rules cover everything.
There's some truly fantastic examples of the genre out there and there's some really terrible examples too.
The premise for this series is an Australian young man named Jason Asano is killed in a summoning from another world and recreated in a new body. Almost immediately, he's confronted by a bunch of monsters and cultists who want to kill him (again). After escaping, Jason finds himself with a strange set of friends among a seasoned set of adventures as well as a cannibalistic shoggoth-like monster as a familiar.
I like Jason as a main protagonist because he's not just a vanilla character and generic nice guy. He's a loudmouth who loves tweaking the nose of the rich, powerful, and religious. He's not always likeable and can be quite annoying in his politics (especially if you disagree with any of his views) but his troll tendencies are also hilarious.
The fact that his powers are all dark and edgy to an almost 90s comic book degree while he remains a dork is great.
The world is well-done as well with Jason dealing with a setting that has normalized typical World of Warcraft-esque in-game behaviors. There's selling of essences, social strata based on your power level, and noble families that force their children into the adventuring career path in order to maintain their positions. We also get an explanation for why there's so many monsters inhabiting these worlds as they're a byproduct of magical surges.
The book is a humorous and entertaining story with lots of low stakes combat spread throughout the story. Much of the book is about Jason coming to master his affliction-based powers. Jason can do a lot of damage to a large number of people that adds up over time but doesn't do much individually. As such, most other adventurers avoid affliction magic and focus on doing as much damage as possible to a small number of targets. If you like seeing stats go up then this is definitely the book for you.
The book suffers from a problem a lot of LitRPG does in the fact that it is becomes meandering in places with more focus on quantity of content versus quality. This isn't to say that the slower parts of the book are bad but there's a good deal of filler that readers should take note of. If it wasn't a LitRPG book then it probably would have been a lot tighter story.
In conclusion, I recommend He Who Fights With Monsters as an enjoyable bit of popcorn fiction for those who are looking for something to tide away an afternoon (or a couple of weeks’ worth of afternoon). I recommend the audiobook version over the Kindle, but the Kindle Unlimited version is also good value for your money.
