Infinite Reality
Year: 2017
Author: Peter Meredith
Length: 410 pages
I picked up this book because I saw the awesome cover that its sequel had and I didn’t want to just jump into the middle of a series. Having never read any LitRPG before, this was my first exposure to the genre. Unfortunately, there were a lot of issues with this book—and not just the standard formatting issues and plentiful typos. Having talked with the author about this series many years ago, he made it clear that he was chasing the LitRPG trend at the time, and it shows.
Conceptually, Infinite Reality is that same “straight white guy power fantasy” but with actual fantasy. The main character is some tough guy working for the FBI and the only way to solve his case is to enter a virtual reality world and continue investigating there. This was the first implausible fault, but not the last. Like, if a Christian woman says she doesn’t feel comfortable playing as a certain character race because she’d be praying to a different god, then her morals would definitely not have her sleep with the main character while out of wedlock.
While the fantasy bits were actually pretty good, the real world parts had me rolling my eyes more often than not. The main character was this Adonis of justice, but still couldn’t see a way to save the day without killing a ton of people (surely a carryover from the author’s previous horror works). The hatred the main character (and likely the author) had for nerds, the obese, and others who would enjoy reading a LitRPG story made me wonder who this book was really for? It was frustrating and annoying. I’m still willing to read some more LitRPG because it seems interesting, but if you like the genre, don’t bother here.
A LitRPG book that hates people who like reading LitRPG books, I give Infinite Reality 2.0 stars out of 5.
