The protagonist unquestioningly experiences as real the fantasy world around him, down to and including some rules, mores and mechanics that to us, the readers, are huge clues that this must be some persistent on-line world or virtual reality with many of the trappings of your typical MMORPG (raids, instances, loot, guilds, tanking / healing, casual resurrection and long-distance travels, etc...).

We don't really have a clue in this first book if he is supposed to be some sort of ascended NPC, or a player who has taken immersion so far he lives day and night in it, believing the NPCs around him are just as real as the player characters who're gone for in-game days or weeks at a time during their off-line hours.

For the result...
(1) either the protagonist is incredibly deluded and maps his own fully-fleshed reality over a much more bare-bones experience,
(2) either this game world is incredibly more advanced than currently running examples despite the apparent staleness of its game-play,
(3) either something happens, maybe because he believes it is real and he interacts with it with both the passion and logic that most would not dedicate to a game and a virtual experience... the world actually reacts to him when he tries some things that make sense but would usually run headlong into a brick wall of gameplay limits.

That's quite interesting actually. So why the lowish rating ?
Much of what I've been describing is, at least in this first book, between the lines and much of the actual tale is taken up by the characters living, or playing, by rather stale MMORPG mechanics and habits with the unusual, out-of-bonds elements creeping in only very discreetly. And well, stale game-play is stale and doesn't make for a fully immersive fantasy world. ( )

This book actually had a game-y quality to it to me. It reminded me of a fantasy video game, which, you know, is pretty cool. If done right at least. And this story was certainly not done wrong, although I was a bit confused in the beginning, which actually takes place quite some time after the main events of the book. Now this same thing was repeated at the very end, after the main events of the book have finished, but by that time I understood more of the character telling or reminiscing on what happened.

Now let's talk about the main events themselves. I love that the elf that initially leads the characters on an obviously not smart endeavour was...well...not smart. I thought it was funny, because she wore such beautiful armor, but when it came down to it she was in no real shape to lead. She knew well enough to run, but that's about it.

Our main MAIN character, I say main MAIN because he is the main focus of the story, was actually quite likeable. I mean, yeah there was some moments when I thought he was going to let his emotions and wants take over and corrupt him a little, but all in all he is a good guy. And in the end, he was willing to save the people he cared about with no regard to his own safety.

I have to admit that by the end, when someone is revealed as a traitor, I kind of saw it coming. So to me there was no amount of surprise, merely a nod of knowing. But I know that the traitor can change. I KNOW IT!!! So I am definitely going to have to read the rest of the books to find out what happened.

All in all, I really did enjoy reading this story. There were certain characters that I enjoyed seeing different sides of...ehem...Vara...and the love interest aspect of the story intrigued me. It was hit upon enough that it brought a sense of 'Will they or won't they?', and it made me want to read the other books just to see how things would develop.