Every Frog Has His Day
Deep in the bayou of Louisiana, Henry’s life has been shattered. He never expected a second chance, a way to redeem himself. He’s been given an opportunity to return to his family, if he can fight off the evil threatening to take over Anura.
All Henry has to do is understand his new abilities, build a kingdom, and form an army to stand against the impending doom in this new fantasy world.
Just one problem.
He has to do it as a frog.
Leap of Faith is Book 1 of Anura Rising, a kingdom building LitRPG series that combines fantasy elements along with game mechanics.
This series contains elements of games like enchanted gear, skill trees, experience points, material gathering, building creation, character leveling, two-headed plague hounds, anthropomorphic fantasy races, magic, and intense battle sequences. Does not include harems, but does include some profanity.
My Opinion: 370 pages, $3.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
End has town building, rest is kinda meh
The story has good action that is well described and has a good visceral feel. There are plenty of notifications, item descriptions, character sheets after a certain point in the story. If you like town building it’s well done and when it does appear in the story is well thought out and planned. You can tell its planned though.
However, that’s about all I liked about the story. It has similar issues to the author’s other work Quest Accepted. The first 23% of the novel reads more like a fantasy story than LitRPG with only three notifications and little other game stuff. The rest of the novel has more and the RPG game mechanics come into play after that point, with the majority of the town building mechanics showing up after the 50% mark. But even with larger parts of the story where the main character (MC) chooses skills, stat increases as he levels, sometimes the game mechanics don’t feel like they impact the story. Stats in particular, while they increase, don’t feel like they have an impact. That’s mostly because there is no frame of reference for their impact. There’s no HP, levels, or other game information for enemies and no damage notifications so even though items are given damage numbers there’s no reference point for how that actually plays out in combat. Instead, the fights feel more like fantasy description.
Storywise, things feel forced for most of the story. I actively disliked the first 5%, where the MC commits suicide and is brought back by an immortal diety on an RPG world. It came off a little bit preachy with the deity claiming dangling the hope of the MC seeing his dead family in exchange for him doing tasks that will improve his terrible, negative, selfish outlook on life. However, once the story actually gets to the RPG world, that aspect is minimized and the story gets a bit better. There’s lots of good action about every 5% of the story, but most of the first half of the novel seems setup to justify the town building in the last half. Then a bit of town building in the 2nd half of the novel mixed with more action, and a big showdown with the big bad guy.
The main character is a bit of a jerk for most of the story and I found it hard to root for him. He also very loudly and repeatedly does not want to be on the world he’s sent to. It also feels like he has little agency. He is forced into a leadership role and early on gains as skill called Noble Obligation, which forces him to take followers and if he loses them all or they die, he dies. It's not a skill he chose from his character sheet or one he gained from a skill book, the only two ways to gain skills according to the game mechanics. So, it really does feel forced upon the MC and shows up to justify his ability to lead and build a town later.
One of the big differentiating points of the story, that he’s not a human but a frog person, isn’t as good as I’d hoped. I’m a big fan when an author chooses a race other than human. It’s a good opportunity to create unique cultures, skills, and relationships. Unfortunately, besides a different physical description and a few skills, all the races in the story come off as human. There are no unique cultural differences, behaviors, or moral stances to make them stand out.
Overall, the story didn’t work for me. However, if you liked Quest Accepted, the author’s other LitRPG work, you’ll probably like this one. It has similar story telling, good action, and a few interesting twists. You may also like it if you’re hard up for some decent RPG town building. For me though, the forced storyline, few game mechanic issue, and issues with the character just made it a miss.
Score: 6 out of 10
Leap of Faith (Anura Rising: Book One): A Kingdom Building Fantasy LitRPG Series