Sword of the Moon King by Jason J. Nugent [SPFBO]

The Blurb:

Eighteen-year-old gamer Caleb Whitson is out of options. 

With his mother’s health growing worse and money running out, he signs up for a once-in-a-lifetime mission to space where he’ll play an immersive video game called Sword of the Moon King while traveling across the stars, headed for a mining mission on the dwarf planet Ceres.

Once inside the fantasy game, he soon discovers the Ceres Horizon Mining Company is not what it appears to be.

Messages indicating his mother’s worsening health compel Caleb to find his way out of the game for one last desperate attempt to contact home. The only problem: how do you leave the game?

Fighting other players and forging ahead with the quest of his life, Caleb must fight horrific dangers in a daring struggle to free himself.

But if he succeeds, a new problem awaits…and it may not be one he can overcome.

Jared’s Review

Caleb’s turned 18, and his prospects are grim. His mother has a mysterious lung disease, he’s stuck working fast food, and the bills are piling up. His only escape is in video games. When a life-changing opportunity presents itself, in a TV advertisement, no less, Caleb is intrigued. By signing up for a two year commitment to the Ceres Horizon Mining Company, he’ll receive a whopping $500,000 paycheck. Best of all? They’re looking for gamers. Caleb, unqualified for much else in life, is exactly who they’re looking for. When Caleb learns that his gaming buddy Mateo is already going for it, he jumps in. 

Caleb soon learns that Sword of the Moon King isn’t your ordinary game. Playing is a fully immersive experience: players are submerged into a chemical bath, so every aspect of the game feels as real as possible. Not only does this promise the ultimate gaming experience, there’s one more hook: if Caleb can get to, and defeat, the titular Moon King in time, he’ll double his bonus – bringing home a cool million to help save his mom.

Play games. Save mom. Sounds perfect, right?

Of course, to those familiar with the tropes of LitRPG (and fiction in general), you just know the twists are coming. The game isn’t a game, the job isn’t a job, and absolutely nothing is quite as it seems. Before long, Caleb and Mateo find themselves trapped in the game, playing for their lives – and the fate of a world that feels more real than fantasy.

Caleb (now ‘Bladehawk’) is a nice guy. That’s pretty much his entire character. He makes naive, often outright foolish, decisions, but they’re always from a good place. He’s loyal to Mateo (now the unfortunately, if amusingly, ‘Tugger’) and does his best to be fair and decent to everyone. Plus, the book is always there to remind you of his dying mom. Never forget: Caleb’s a good guy.

Caleb also has a slightly unhealthy relationship with women. Aside from his dying mother, the other two female characters of note are both, in their way, presented in romantic terms. They’re pretty, of course, and they’re mysteriously keen on Caleb (despite him being, even within the game-world, rather unremarkable). Caleb’s way with women is alternately unintentionally hilarious (‘He’d seen enough movies to understand she really did like him’) or intrinsically problematic (he sees a ‘bouncy’ blonde girl and ‘knows [she’s] certainly not a gamer’). It is a microcosm of a greater issue with Caleb’s character: he’s a 10 year old in an 18 year old’s body. Perhaps as a Middle Grade book his youthful demeanour and social ignorance would make more sense. But given both his backstory and the narrative around him, Caleb is simply an awkward, although not unlikeable, character.

This set-up, of course, is hilariously unbelievable, but it works well for getting Caleb out of reality and into the game with a minimum of fuss and equipped with a perfectly plausible character objective. The premise is slightly more troublesome at the end, when the completely implausible set-up is – gasp – revealed to be, in fact, complete bollocks. This is not unexpected, but also begs the question, why has no one else ever spotted this? 

There are a few other head-scratchers. The game itself is populated by a weirdly finite number of people. Even Caleb is baffled by the lack of interaction with other PCs. The same other players appear over and over again. As with the rapid set-up, the limited cast provides an aid to quick storytelling. But it has a similar problem: when there are major ‘reveals’ to be had, they come off as relatively unimportant. In a game with seemingly only a half dozen players, there aren’t many surprises to be had.

The fun of Sword of the Moon King really comes from Caleb’s early adventures, as he gets a grip on the game world and its mechanics. In between the entertainly-familiar video game ‘quests’ around pies and lost children, there are ferocious battles with low-level minions and some genuinely imaginative monstrous beasties. Caleb and Mateo fight, win, examine loot, have set-backs, get bullied, and generally have a good time taking the reader through low-stakes, low-level gaming. The basics are solid and fun.

Unfortunately, the Moon King isn’t going to slay himself, and the book soon starts sprinting towards the inevitable conclusion. Caleb is railroaded through a series of increasingly rapid encounters, and quickly – too quickly – finds himself preparing for the end-game. There’s no sense of organic growth: Caleb’s still naive about the basics of the game and its world, even while he is, somehow, bizarrely, on track to ‘win’ it. Nor does this come through any form of earned merit. Caleb is either shepherded through adventures by his high-level guardian angel, or taps into a deus ex machina device that falls into his lap. There’s no sense of character growth and, worse yet (at least in LitRPG terms), he never truly grinds. Real gamers (bouncy, blonde or otherwise) will be rightfully triggered: he’s cheesing his way to glory. 

The explosive propulsion towards the end-game means readers have very little emotional investment in Caleb’s success. Similarly, the hop-skip-jump plot structure undermines one of the critical foundations of the LitRPG genre. There’s very little detail to ponder; no mechanics to savour. We’re cheated of crunch. The final chapters are a crash of cascading reveals, including prophecies and chosen one(s) (potentially an unfortunate typo, but the Chosen One is referred to by two different names), literal gods, and, in a moment of (intentional?) comedy, even a nod to Soylent Green.

Sword of the Moon King tries to tackle a lot of material. There’s a vast set-up, and a conclusion that clearly, if not gracefully, launches into the rest of the series. Perhaps ironically, where it succeeds best is in its least epic scenes. Caleb doing side-quests. Mateo grinding a level or two in a late night card game. The two of them simply chatting like mates while they divvy up loot. These moments not only give us the best insight into the characters, but also the (potentially) fascinating experience of living in, and progressing through, a game world. Unfortunately, they are few and far between. To its credit, Sword is never boring, and a quick read. But it rushes to set up a cosmic conflict, without making sure the stakes – or even the mechanics – are in place.

To check out our other SPFBO 7 reviews and keep up to date on which books are still in the running, check out our SPFBO 7 Hub page here.