BRANDED: (Book 1 of the Advocate Saga)

Kat Stone just wants to leave her magical past behind and live the simple life of a professional smuggler. But when a monster from the world she abandoned begins killing her friends, she realizes the past she buried is beginning to dig itself up. Kat is the only one who knows the monster is just the beginning with an unknown enemy controlling it from the shadows.

Caught between her new life and the one she worked so hard to forget, Kat will be forced to decide facing the killer and its monster or handing the problem off to a higher authority breathing down her neck. With the monster on the hunt in her city, she is running out of time and choices.

Will Kat be able to find the key from her past to take down the monster? Or will the mysterious enemy kill the last of her friends?

 

My Opinion: 161 pages, $2.99, Not Available on Kindle Unlimited

From the author of Slime, this is an interesting mix of Urban fantasy mystery and real life RPG powers.

You get a tiny glimpse at the RPG powers with a quest notification in the first few pages of the story, but honestly the RPG stuff comes out mostly during the stories few combat scenes. Heck, after those first quest notifications, you don’t even see the RPG powers till the 17% mark. After that they pop in and out and you see a lot more of them in the last act of the story.

The story itself is an urban fantasy mystery. The main character (MC), Kat Stone, has RPG powers and is trying to figure out who or what is killing off her former crew. She has the FBI hounding her, but what’s out there just isn’t in their jurisdiction. Instead, it’s part of a secret magical/portal community. Hence, the urban fantasy aspect. It’s honestly a good attempt to mesh the genre’s together.

Overall, I liked the story. I had to push my way through the overly mysterious normal beginning but once I started seeing more of the RPG powers stuff, I was on board to finish the story. I think this is a good mesh of urban fantasy and LitRPG. The ending of the story holds promise for more interesting stories.

Score: 7 out of 10

BRANDED: (Book 1 of the Advocate Saga)

https://amzn.to/2JtQz7l