★★★★★ 5/5
LitRPGs! I've read a couple by this point and so far they've all been really solid. Lucky me!
Now, Eric Nylund is the name I look for when I'm reading Halo novels. From the ones I've read, he writes my favorite. I just love this man's writing. He gets stories. He gets characters. It's good stuff. When I learned Eric Nylund had a LitRPG novel, I had to read it of course. I'm happy to report, Hero of Thera was another solid novel. I enjoyed it.
I gotta say, from the very beginning, Hector made me laugh. I loved his character voice. I've never read first person by Eric Nylund before, but man, did I enjoy it. Hector was funny. There was a healthy helping of humor, but there was plenty of seriousness as well. The book had a good balance that kept me hooked the whole way through. Solid characters? Check.
The world, the whole preface to this story, was quite interesting. To sum it up quickly, various gods from fiction, mythology, all that goodness, all exist in this story world and they are fighting over all of Creation. At certain points in time, different gods had more or less say over our earth, the parallel earth to that, and all other numerous worlds and dimensions. Fun right? And how these gods go about claiming Creation is by playing a game. They get people from these different worlds to be their players and represent them in, basically, an RPG. The ultimate RPG.
Come on, that's cool. Yay fantasy worlds!
So the game is played in Thera, the heart of everything. It's not much of a game though since everyone there is alive and breathing. There are no NPCs. They're all real people (or elves, dwarves, whatever the case may be) so the stakes are high. I mean, if gods looking to control all of Creation wasn't a high enough stake. A lot rests on Hector's shoulders. What role will he play and what god will he represent? You'll have to read to find out. So do yourself a favor and check out Hero of Thera. If you like fantasy novels and video games, I see no reason why you wouldn't fall in love with this book.
