Book Review: Foundations, by Cale Plamann
May. 5th, 2025 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inverarityBook one in the Tower of Somnus LitRPG series.
Mountaindale Press, 2022, 463 pages
Foundations is the first book in the Tower of Somnus series (which seems to be up to five books now). It was good enough to keep me reading to the end, but not good enough for me to continue the series. It's solidly written but not polished, above average for indie publishing but not quite ready for the big leagues.
I've tried a lot of LitRPGs lately, mostly on Kindle Unlimited. I applaud all the authors putting their work out there, even if it is mostly repetitive and derivative. So far the only LitRPG I've read that really held my attention and has decent writing has been everyone's favorite, Dungeon Crawler Carl. Most of the others were DNFs. So the fact that I read this one all the way through means it had a little something that most of my other KU reads have lacked, even if I ultimately rate it as rather mediocre. A large part of this is that I think some of the potential and interest garnered in the beginning was exhausted by the end as a spunky underdog heroine fighting impossible odds turned into a Mary Sue killing machine after a few months of experience.
Foundations has some superficial similarities to Dungeon Crawler Carl. The virtual world the characters enter to grind away in fantasy dungeons was created by aliens, as in DCC, but in this series, the aliens didn't destroy Earth. They interdicted it, deciding humanity was still too primitive, violent, and selfish to join the Galactic community. But they gave humans access to the Tower of Somnus, their great big interstellar MMPORG that somehow just resembles an Earth dungeon crawl.
Only a select few humans can enter the Tower of Somnus, most of them controlled by the corporations. We are in the near future, and it's basically a cyberpunk dystopia. Corps own you if you work in the nice safe arcologies, and outside are the Shell (violent cyberpunk ghetto) or the Wastelands (violent post-apocalyptic Mad Max land).
The main character is a teenage girl named Kat, who by day is a high school student and by night is a "runner" for one of the street samurai crew. She just delivers packages and does pickups; no wetwork, no infiltration, nothing particularly dangerous. She's just a kid, after all. Until her rich kid boyfriend gets himself and her a subscription to Tower of Somnus, and she has a shot at the big time.
There was some interesting worldbuilding, a lot of detail, and Kat was a spunky likeable protagonist who frequently makes very dumb teenage decisions. At least at first.
This is a typical self-published litrpg by an author whose creative development was all in roleplaying games. The setting has Shadowrun stamped all over it. The story does something kind of interesting in that there are really two stories: the real-world one where Kat has to level up socially and professionally in this cyberpunk corporate hellscape where she's trying to get her mother and her little sister out of eternal wage-slavery, and the virtual one where Kat is grinding away to become a formidable player. But eventually she just leveled up too much and too easily and the split between her real-world adventures and her virtual adventures didn't really work. Either one by itself would have made for interesting character progression, but both stories at once seemed like the author was trying to cram two novel ideas into one book.
There are a lot of holes in the setting. Aliens contacted Earth and mankind now literally has access to a virtual world where they can interact with interstellar civilizations, and this is not the biggest thing in the world? It also turns out that leveling up in the Tower of Somnus actually gives you abilities in the real world! Like, when Kat becomes an elemental mage in virtual reality, she is still able to cast her spells when she leaves it! Is this supposed to be psi powers, nanotechnology, or is magic real? It also doesn't affect society nearly enough that you have people who can become literal superheroes from adventuring online.
None of this is explained very well, and while the grinding and skill progression in Tower of Somnus is rather slow and realistic, Kat quickly turns into a badass murderhobo, respected and feared on the streets, in the real world. Suddenly this girl who just graduated high school is soloing veteran street samurai and then coming home to help her little sister with her homework. Other than some perfunctory angst about it which is always solved by knowing that the people she killed deserved it, there seems to be little impact on her personality that she's now got a bodycount that puts most serial killers to shame.
In Tower of Somnus, the dungeon crawls are, well, grind-quests and not particularly interesting. Kat happens to conveniently befriend two aliens, so she gets some exposure to the meta-politics of the place, but so far that's not very interesting (or believable) either. Supposedly the aliens gave Earth access to the Tower of Somnus so humans could learn how to behave, and yet they do nothing about the fact that Earth practically limited access only to corp goons, who now act like such assholes that humans have a terrible reputation throughout the game and no one wants to associate with them. There are, of course, hints that the aliens themselves are not so benevolent either.
Most annoying to me, the plot affecting Kat in the real world is basically driven by a mean girl who's just Regina George cranked up to cartoon levels of villainy.
Kat's use of powers is clever; the battle scenes are nothing if not detailed. Sometimes much too lengthy. But I ultimately found a lot of things seemed too easy for her, and her quests in both the real world and the virtual one weren't all that interesting. It's possible I might pick up the next book in the series at some point, but the story, characters, and dialog were only adequate, not enough to make it really compelling.
My complete list of book reviews.
Mountaindale Press, 2022, 463 pages
First contact gone wrong. Humanity judged and found wanting. Unlimited power up for grab.
The Galactic Consensus arrived on ships as large as skyscrapers, crafted from glittering alloys that no human scientist could even begin to understand. They followed the trail of century old television transmissions to welcome us into the galactic community… only to recoil in horror at what they found.
They concluded that humans were unfit to be trusted with the advanced technologies that member-states of the Consensus freely traded with each other, installing a relay to warn other ships that we were under embargo, but more importantly, allowing humans entrance into the Tower of Somnus, a multiplayer game of sorts that could be played in one’s sleep. The hope was that humanity would learn proper behavior from playing the game with our more civilized neighbors.
Katherine ‘Kat’ Debs, a hereditary employee of one of the megacorporations that ruled the world, eked out a meager existence in a massive arcology of glittering glass and chrome. She dreamt of one day earning enough money to buy her freedom, and was more than willing to break a law here or there in the process. When she is offered an opportunity to enter the Tower of Somnus free of corporate control, she jumps at the chance. After all, the 'game' was more than just a status symbol, players retained the fantastic powers they earned in the game in the waking world as well.
A perfect opportunity to take control of her destiny, or die trying.
Foundations is the first book in the Tower of Somnus series (which seems to be up to five books now). It was good enough to keep me reading to the end, but not good enough for me to continue the series. It's solidly written but not polished, above average for indie publishing but not quite ready for the big leagues.
I've tried a lot of LitRPGs lately, mostly on Kindle Unlimited. I applaud all the authors putting their work out there, even if it is mostly repetitive and derivative. So far the only LitRPG I've read that really held my attention and has decent writing has been everyone's favorite, Dungeon Crawler Carl. Most of the others were DNFs. So the fact that I read this one all the way through means it had a little something that most of my other KU reads have lacked, even if I ultimately rate it as rather mediocre. A large part of this is that I think some of the potential and interest garnered in the beginning was exhausted by the end as a spunky underdog heroine fighting impossible odds turned into a Mary Sue killing machine after a few months of experience.
Foundations has some superficial similarities to Dungeon Crawler Carl. The virtual world the characters enter to grind away in fantasy dungeons was created by aliens, as in DCC, but in this series, the aliens didn't destroy Earth. They interdicted it, deciding humanity was still too primitive, violent, and selfish to join the Galactic community. But they gave humans access to the Tower of Somnus, their great big interstellar MMPORG that somehow just resembles an Earth dungeon crawl.
Only a select few humans can enter the Tower of Somnus, most of them controlled by the corporations. We are in the near future, and it's basically a cyberpunk dystopia. Corps own you if you work in the nice safe arcologies, and outside are the Shell (violent cyberpunk ghetto) or the Wastelands (violent post-apocalyptic Mad Max land).
The main character is a teenage girl named Kat, who by day is a high school student and by night is a "runner" for one of the street samurai crew. She just delivers packages and does pickups; no wetwork, no infiltration, nothing particularly dangerous. She's just a kid, after all. Until her rich kid boyfriend gets himself and her a subscription to Tower of Somnus, and she has a shot at the big time.
There was some interesting worldbuilding, a lot of detail, and Kat was a spunky likeable protagonist who frequently makes very dumb teenage decisions. At least at first.
This is a typical self-published litrpg by an author whose creative development was all in roleplaying games. The setting has Shadowrun stamped all over it. The story does something kind of interesting in that there are really two stories: the real-world one where Kat has to level up socially and professionally in this cyberpunk corporate hellscape where she's trying to get her mother and her little sister out of eternal wage-slavery, and the virtual one where Kat is grinding away to become a formidable player. But eventually she just leveled up too much and too easily and the split between her real-world adventures and her virtual adventures didn't really work. Either one by itself would have made for interesting character progression, but both stories at once seemed like the author was trying to cram two novel ideas into one book.
There are a lot of holes in the setting. Aliens contacted Earth and mankind now literally has access to a virtual world where they can interact with interstellar civilizations, and this is not the biggest thing in the world? It also turns out that leveling up in the Tower of Somnus actually gives you abilities in the real world! Like, when Kat becomes an elemental mage in virtual reality, she is still able to cast her spells when she leaves it! Is this supposed to be psi powers, nanotechnology, or is magic real? It also doesn't affect society nearly enough that you have people who can become literal superheroes from adventuring online.
None of this is explained very well, and while the grinding and skill progression in Tower of Somnus is rather slow and realistic, Kat quickly turns into a badass murderhobo, respected and feared on the streets, in the real world. Suddenly this girl who just graduated high school is soloing veteran street samurai and then coming home to help her little sister with her homework. Other than some perfunctory angst about it which is always solved by knowing that the people she killed deserved it, there seems to be little impact on her personality that she's now got a bodycount that puts most serial killers to shame.
In Tower of Somnus, the dungeon crawls are, well, grind-quests and not particularly interesting. Kat happens to conveniently befriend two aliens, so she gets some exposure to the meta-politics of the place, but so far that's not very interesting (or believable) either. Supposedly the aliens gave Earth access to the Tower of Somnus so humans could learn how to behave, and yet they do nothing about the fact that Earth practically limited access only to corp goons, who now act like such assholes that humans have a terrible reputation throughout the game and no one wants to associate with them. There are, of course, hints that the aliens themselves are not so benevolent either.
Most annoying to me, the plot affecting Kat in the real world is basically driven by a mean girl who's just Regina George cranked up to cartoon levels of villainy.
Kat's use of powers is clever; the battle scenes are nothing if not detailed. Sometimes much too lengthy. But I ultimately found a lot of things seemed too easy for her, and her quests in both the real world and the virtual one weren't all that interesting. It's possible I might pick up the next book in the series at some point, but the story, characters, and dialog were only adequate, not enough to make it really compelling.
My complete list of book reviews.
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RPG
Date: 2025-05-06 01:08 am (UTC)Re: RPG
Date: 2025-05-06 01:12 am (UTC)