Review: Dark Town, A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure: Level One of the Dragon's Crawl by Palmer Pickering

Blurb:

Part cozy, part bloody, all fun.

Hidden underneath the small town of Haverly Arms lies an entrance to the Dragon’s Game, an extensive world where adventurers compete to collect power objects and progress to the next level.

Temerity’s father and brothers have been down in the game for years, leaving Temerity and her mother, plus their house goblin, Half-pint, to manage their tavern. Bored with small-town life, Temerity decides to enter the tunnel labyrinth, launching an adventure to survive Level One of the Dragon’s Game: Dark Town.

Review:

Everyone who plays RPGs knows the grind. Leveling up, gathering resources, and improving your weapons and armor in order to take on deadlier foes. RPGs are my favorite type of video game, but I’d never read a LitRPG novel before. However, I enjoyed Palmer Pickering’s previous novel, Heliotrope, so I decided to try this one out.

 I wasn’t disappointed. I stayed on the edge of my seat throughout, invested in what would happen to Temerity and Half Pint. Temerity is a young woman who’s bored with her life. Serving ales in her family’s tavern, thinking of her brothers and father who abandoned her and her mother long before to go play the Dragon’s Game, an adventure-filled realm where humans can’t physically die–they just spawn back to where they entered the game–and the thrill of the quest is addicting.  Her father and brothers left, and like so many others, stayed in the Dragon’s Game. And so Temerity, along with her house goblin, Half Pint, who can turn into a cat at will, enters the Dragon’s game, unsure what to expect.  Half Pint, however, is an experienced gamer who plays the role of the mentor.  

The early chapters have the feel of the prologue of a game, those first few levels where you learn the mechanics, get a feel for the tone of the story, and start to get to know the characters. There’s grinding, fetch quests, and world-building galore, all of which Pickering does well. 

It’s all about the characters. Sure, there’s heart-thumping action and deft world-building, but you’ll stay for the relationship between Temerity and Half-Pint. They’re just so dang lovable. I wanted to enter the world, have an ale with them, and then go fight some Trolls.   Temerity is young and earnest, wanting to show her worth in the Game while also caring deeply for Half Pint, my favorite character, who shines throughout the novel. He has the perfect mix of wisdom and  grumpy snark, and his interactions with Temerity are always fun. 

The world of the Dragon’s game has specific rules: No maps, seven different levels, and specific areas within each level that are reserved for the stronger, more well-equipped adventurers. There’s a fun magic system based on different colors of gems, all of which give the person holding the gem different abilities. As adventurers battle and move forward in the game, they gather more gems, but if they die, none of their gems go with them back to the spawning point.  There were LitRPG elements, sure, but Pickering does a fantastic job making the world real. There are reasons for the game existing within the world, and it’s not just characters waking up inside a video game or the like.  Several sections reminded me of a dnd campaign, which I also enjoyed, and I found myself chanting “Loot that body! Loot that body!” Sometimes, you just have to loot, you know? 

I enjoyed the tone of the novel, with sections that had a very cozy feel: mining for coal to pay for rent, interacting with shopkeepers, trying to outsmart a devious inn-keeper. At the same time, other sections had bloody action, sword and sorcery intrigue, and ominous threats looming over all. The book had a fantastic mixture of coziness and darkness. I’d classify it as a cozy dark sword and sorcery fantasy, with some LitRPG elements.  That being said, some parts did drag slightly, especially during the grinding sections. I realize that’s part of the LitRPG genre, but there were moments in the early sections of the novel where I was waiting for something to happen.  

As a whole, though, this was a super fun read! Recommended for anyone who enjoys fun characters, cozy scenes intermingled with action, LitRPG fans, DND fans, and fantasy readers in general.