"...blunt, fast-moving, entertaining..." - Kirkus Reviews
To tear down the system . . .
. . . He's got to level up
Condemned by the media circus of a People's Republic of California court, Donny is plugged into a deadly game as entertainment for the brutalized masses.
Tormented over failing his father, Donny realizes honor hangs in the balance. His family's fate lies in his hands.
Donny must battle through a cutthroat digital world to free thousands of political prisoners and bring down the corrupt system. But the future's most ruthless killers stand in his way.
Can Donny's wits and unbreakable spirit get him out alive?
Fans of Ready Player One and Sword Art Online will love Level Up or Die, the new first-person steampunk LitRPG adventure from #1 bestselling authors Joshua Lisec and Adam Lane Smith. Read it today!
About the Author :
Joshua Lisec is the world's only award-winning, celebrity-recommended, #1 international bestselling Certified Professional Ghostwriter. Joshua has ghostwritten 60 full-length books and has copywritten thousands of articles, emails, proposals, and sales pages for clients in over 100 industries. Joshua is the creator of the bestselling The Best Way courses, including The Best Way To Say It, used by thousands worldwide to improve their persuasive writing skills. He is also a TEDx Speaker and co-creator of The 80/20 Fiction System with Adam Lane Smith. Use Joshua's free tools for nonfiction authors, including a book launch revenue calculator, at www.EntrepreneursWordsmith.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaLisec. Adam Lane Smith is a two-time #1 Amazon bestselling novelist and a licensed psychotherapist specializing in trauma and attachment with experience in both clinical and correctional mental health settings. That includes his work in the California justice system where he treated inmates facing the death penalty. Adam has written 20 books and coached over 500 aspiring novelists through his program Write Like a Beast. He is also the co-creator of The 80/20 Fiction System with Joshua Lisec. Adam's attachment treatment method detailed in his book Slaying Your Fear is used by mental health professionals across the US, and he has delivered seminars instructing healthcare professionals in treating patients with attachment concerns. Download Adam's book Brothers to the End for free at www.AdamLaneSmith.com. Follow him on Twitter @TheBrometheus.
Review :
A young convict gets dropped into a deadly video game in this YA SF novel.
In the dystopian People's Republic of California, convicts aren't sent to prison but rather forced to compete in the Games-virtual reality video games-for the entertainment of the masses. Sounds fun, right? The only problem is, if you die in the Games, you die in real life. And Donovan Riley has just been sentenced to 15 years of play. Adopting the handle BrokenChains, Donovan is plunked into a mountainous steampunk world called God's Staircase and told that if he can make it to the top, he will be set free. Of course, he'll have to fight his way there, past computer-generated enemies and the other convicts he shares the world with. "They really threw hardened murderers in here with the low-level offenders?"
Donovan asks a fellow prisoner shortly after he arrives. "Sure did," the old hand tells him. "And no consequences for killing anyone in the game. Constitutional rights of every inmate are suspended. We're not people again until our sentence is served."
Donovan soon hooks up with a crew of like-minded prisoners looking to escape the game-though they have no notion of what the game will do to keep them right where they are. In this series opener, Smith and Lisec's prose is descriptive, if a bit sophomoric. For every clever line ("You want to murder a noob, you must go through me"), there are a couple of clunkers ("I don't take orders from anyone who looks like the server messed up and swapped his butt with his face"). Still, as the book is primarily about people beating one another with swords in order to level up, such writing suffices. The authors manage to make the world of the Games feel real even as they constantly remind readers that it is all a simulation. The fact that Donovan and the others can die at any moment helps up the stakes yet there is a lightness to the tone that keeps things feeling more or less like a video game. It's a novel for a niche audience, but fans of the genre will likely enjoy this unsubtle offering.
A blunt, fast-moving, entertaining tale set in a steampunk virtual reality world.
- Kirkus Reviews
