Blurb:

Tragedy had reduced James to a nobody. Washed up and homeless in NYC, he thought his life was over.

Then a message appeared in his vision:

60,000 year countdown has ended
Nemesis 1 released
Please acknowledge

As the world falls apart, as billions die, as society collapses and all hope seems lost, James discovers a powerful truth: he was wrong to think himself a nobody. Summoning every ounce of grit and determination, he'll help forge a resistance that will defy humanity's near omnipotent enemy by taking the fight from the streets of NYC to the stars themselves.

And with the dawn of the Void, he'll become the most important person to have ever lived.

Review:

Well, this review was written on a phone since I want to keep it in line with the main tech within the book. How’d I get this book? Saw that it (and the next two in the series) were free for a limited time and decided to get them. And, considering what I thought this book would be, I was completely caught off guard roughly 2 pages in. The title, as you can see for the book, is “Dawn of the Void, Book 1”. The book? Definitely is going towards the void, but there’s so much more the title is leaving out.

First off, it’s marketed as a LitRPG Apocalypse book, and yes, it is exactly that. But, wait, there’s more! The blurb doesn’t mention this, but social media campaigns play a huge role in this book as well, and I think it did a wonderful job keeping this novel as modern as possible.

The apocalypse could happen today and I could picture James (with the help of Serenity) taking over the social media landscape rather quickly.

Second of all, the absurdity of a LitRPG plot playing out in NYC and having the world react to it made me laugh more than once, even if it’s an apocalypse book. Not sure if that’s intentional or not, but still, I was not expecting this book to be that surreal. 

Now, what did I like about this book?

The characters. Wow. Did not expect this book to throw a homeless person, a crackhead and a order freak together as central characters and have them work together almost flawlessly, but this book did that and kept it up throughout the book, even as each character grew out of their old identities into new ones with a more grounded reality and role. Except the order freak. That person stayed mostly the same throughout the entire book. 

James (the main character) particularly had a whale of a time moving from being a homeless man who felt tired of existence to who he was at the end of the book. That was done quite well, and I can’t wait to see how that plays into the next two books.

Plus, the fact that Tucker decided to add in the most popular social media app into the book and use that app to help further the plot and characters was definitely an interesting idea.

Then, the plot. It takes the whole “waves of enemies till death claims you” idea, and tosses it into NYC. That by itself doesn’t sound that special. But take that and add in the ramifications that the new count down timer plus the fact that the US is basically Gun Central, and you get absolute mayhem by the end of the first part of the book. The amount of times I chuckled at the absurdity of imagining fantasy creatures getting blasted by absolutely everyone, be it the retired army veteran with a pistol to a pissed off old dude with a shotgun, was definitely a bit more than I expected to laugh.

Lastly, the magic system. It’s a mixture of Dungeons of Dragons stats, magical auras and abilities that act as human enhancements, and holy acts of vengeance (Smite for example), with the progression being set in how many monster kills they can pull off. 

Now, to what took a bit to get used to.

The writing style. It took a bit to get used to and felt a bit clunky at times, but it served its purpose to help bring the plot along. Although it did feel clunky, I did enjoy how it seemed almost as if the narrator was there and was speaking/thinking the entirety through the book. 

And going off the writing style, it felt Tucker placed a lot of weight on the dialog to help further characters. That by itself didn’t do much besides making it feel like exposition came from dialog, but add that into a slightly clunky writing style (see the start of this paragraph) and it was a bit tiring to read.  

Aside from those two things, I enjoyed the book overall and can’t wait to see how James continues with his journey into monster slayer, murderhobo epicness later in the series. 

If you are on this part of the review, thank you for reading the entire thing! Hope this review has helped you find your next read and if it hasn’t, don’t leave the site just yet. Feel free to peruse the vast variety of reviews from a multitude of talented people, and who knows, their reviews might help guide you towards your next read as well. 

As always, have a good morning, good afternoon or good night, wherever you, the reader, are!