He Who Fights With Monsters

Great start so far, im liking this story, certainly a different kind of litrpg that i can recommend others to come read.

The MC, well hahaha. Jason is just such a enjoyable and fun character to read about. Its sort of to be expected from a Australian character. And the other characters arent that far behind in how well written they are. Overall their interactions are fun to read.

Jason is quite confrontial at times and honest about being a atheist, this does really show when he interacts with religious organizations or even the gods themselves, barely treating them with any respect, a thing which is considered suicidial by the denizen of the world he is in, this is inline with his belief of being a atheist, but i feel like its going a bit far. Issues are showing already with this story due to his behavior, i hope its set to change soon, or it could make this story less enjoyable.

While this story started off very strong, while it is still going on strong after forty or so chapters, i feel like it is less than what it was at the start.

So far the world this story takes place in, has been shown to be interesting and well developed, with so much more left to be unveiled over the course of the story. The author sort of went for his own kind of unique world, that uses common elements from Fantasy, but also goes in a original direction. Theres the litrpg aspect of this story, which i find to be quite interesting, the author has made his own kind of litrpg system, borrowing ideas from many different sources, and combined that into the system used in this story while avoiding adding stats to the story. Especially the way the abilities and skills are done, is quite different and unlike most stories, i wonder how the author will go with that, without making the MC go absurdely powerful from that system.

Ill be fair that grammar is sort of a problem, overall it is fine, with there being few spelling errors, but there are quite some mistakes overall, with missing words and thus odd sentences because of that, this story could use a good editing round to edit those out, and make it even better in quality. The recent chapters are better in terms of grammar, even if there are still the occasional mistakes that appear, normally they get spotted and corrected quite fast.

Nice style here, no obvious flaws to be found with it. Overall good pacing, even if fast at times, but i dont mind personally. Its pretty easy to keep reading this story without getting bored at all.

A great story, with much potentional yet left to be uncovered, This can be something actually good and fun, if the author can keep writing and not burn out, especially with the current release speed of chapters. There is the risk of the story stopping being fresh and fun, and turning out to be boring and stale while being full of common tropes, i personally hope the author can avoid going on that route.

Recommended for fans of litrpg, you will most likely really like this fun story thats of a good quality.

Reviewed at Chapter 116

I'm going to be brief here and cover some of the things that I really enjoyed going into this story. Be warned minor spoilers throughout.

The first main thing was how the mc reacted when he was first summoned. For me at least I saw it as very realistic. He was pissed off, scared, and quite snarky. The whole lit RPG elements started to come in effect and I liked those as well. You also get to see some very humorous dialogue here; one of my favorites is how the Bloodcult family is introduced.

All of these things were really good in the beginning, but as time went on in the novel it started to go downhill. There was an overextension on the whole lit RPG elements. What I mean by that is that the author went too far into it. It started to turn into a number cruncher for me.

There are some stories that do this aspect well, but unfortunately, this one just went exposition-heavy with it.

Going into the world-building there are large info dumps that would be expected, but they are just not entertaining to read. I ended up skimming a lot of them because it just felt so boring to read. 

Going on the characters themselves it ends up going downhill as well. The mc starts to become a mary sue. He's not op power-wise, but for some reason, every single god, influential person, or just random bystander feels the need to stroke the mc's ego. 

You see these large halfbaked plans to take advantage of loopholes in the law or of people with political influence and for some reason, every single one of them succeeds perfectly. This coupled with the mc's incessant need to mouth off to everything and everybody around him just makes him less and less likable.

At this point, I was thinking of dropping it, but in the next few chapters one of his plans actually fell through as you would expect. However, it ends up later turning into his favor after he gets lucky. Earlier there was a romantic subplot that I won't get into, but it was completely unnecessary and brought the quality down.

After that, I completely decided to drop this story due to how much the world around the mc was bowing to his whims. It just became too unrealistic for me.

The last thing I'm going to cover is grammar. Overall this story had few mistakes at all and the ones that were present did not take away from my understanding of the story itself.

I still throughout enjoyed the beginning few chapters though I feel like the later ones need to be thought over again or even rewritten.

Generally a very well executed story.  If I'd written this 25 chapters ago I would have scored it much higher.  However, since then I've really soured on certain parts of the story, especially the MC.  Did you know that he's a brilliant social manipulator?  Well if you didn't, don't fret!  The other characters will tell you how smart he is, over and over and over!  Everybody loves him, you see, except the people who don't, and that's how you know they're the bad guys.  If I could find somebody to love me even a quarter as much as these people love Jason, I'd have the best wife in the world.

Update: Couldn't take it anymore and dropped it a few weeks ago.  Updated with my final ratings.

 The story started out very strong for me. It fun, enjoyable and exciting. The MC had some hilarious reactions and interactions with other characters, the blood cult villains were great, and every thing was wonderful. 

Then we get to Greenstone city and it all starts going downhill. The MC changes from a normal but pretty funny Australian dude trying to find his way around, to some kind of discount sherlock Holmes who is always second guessing people and some kind of social mastermind despite being a normal guy from modern society earlier. He deftly navigates the local high life and leaves anyone who matters impressed with him, not to mention become a cold blooded killer. But only sometimes, otherwise he's a great warm guy who doesn't believe in violence or immoral acts.

Yeah, it all gets a bit confused and contradictory. The funny stuff gets more and more rate, while somehow info dumps and boring drawn out sequences become more common. 

And it is very drawn out, the first 40 chapters feel fast paced, but it all slows down in the city and with how the MC changes for the worst into some kinda Gary stu it's a bit unpalatable. 

Side characters are ignored and forgotten, rotated through like a fresh outfit for the MC to wear for his daily witticisms, and other than acting as a canvas to showcase the MCs skills they never really seem to get better or improve. 

And then one of the oldest side characters dies and the story temporarily goes dark and it feels SO out of style. 

For gods sake in the first few chapters you have him almost served up to a cannabilstic blood cult and you made that light hearted and funny. It's not a dark story. People didn't read this for a dark story. People will stop reading this you make it that. 

This is my first review...I normally am the type of guy who does not write reviews, but this book forced me to...

In the beginning it was great, top-notch high quality stuff. MC was likable and the side characters were coming along.

Then out of nowhere, MC becomes a top-notch social manipulator...which I could accept in some situations. However, the MC just shows a complete lack of respect for anything and everything to the point where it just pissed me off.

You would think that a person who is at the bottom of the ladder would think twice before insulting beings who could wipe him from the plane of existence with one finger...but nope...he just ignores all manners and common sense. The worst part though is that he never suffers for it. At this point...I'm dropping it, but for the last 20 chapters I was hoping that he would end up tortured or suffering...but nope.

This is the first time, that I hated an MC enough to drop the book...I really wanted to see how this develops, if the MC shows change...

If the author ends up seeing this though, I know I gave a lot of criticism, and not much of it was constructive, I have nothing but the highest level of respect for you, since you put out so many chapters. Keep it up...just please CHANGE the MC.

P.s.: if you're too attached to him to change him...sigh...

When I was a teenager, I was a bit of a smug, self-righteous atheist, over impressed with my own intelligence. The protagonist of this story is something I could shamefully picture myself writing back then.

His every half baked, awful plan at "social manipulation" of the local nobility and other elite is a success, and what should result in him getting punched or socially ostrasized instead results of some more politically savvy character cooing over how smart he is.

He's openly insulting and heretical towards members of the clergy and actual gods, despite having pretty good evidence they could smear him across the pavement. Besides intentionally getting himself beat up by two priests, he suffers no consequences for this, and in fact the gods like him for some unfathomable reason.

This is a world with cultivation tiers, where each level is vastly above the one before, and might makes right--none of the above makes sense, even with his connection earned by saving the lives of a few powerful people in the beginning. He should be dead or crippled, and I found myself rooting for his opponents.

The initial monster hunting, progression, and joking interactions were good, and it's a shame the character turns into a black hole, as everything revolves further and further around him.

There are many reviews talking about the MC, and they're right, he's pretty insufferable, but I haven't seen any reviews talking about the rpg system. The characters gain skills through a lottery system and the best word I can think of to describe it is 'arbitrary'. Everyone in the story gets random powers with arbitrary effectiveness. Of course the MC gets a powerful set of skills and masters them almost instantly, but since all skills are worded vaguely there is no way to really compare them and no sense of balance.

The first few chapters were just strong enough to draw me in until the story started hitting its stride, and then I loved it. The characters were fun, the setting a whole new exciting world to explore and the magic system really tickled my fancy of endless combinations; then at roughly chapter forty, it starts to go downhill.

Style: There's not much to say here, the prose gets you from A-B well enough without being too bland but there's little flair to be found and a fair amount of cliche. Not awful, but nothing special.

Story: I'd say the pacing is awfully slow, as of this it's at over a thousand pages in and not a whole lot of importance has seemed to happen. I'm guessing this is the type of story that intends to keep going for as long as possible and just focus on the characters, but even then the end goal of the story itself seems vague. Is it about Jason's development? The world the author has created? Is it about a message? The world and magic system are certainly the strongest point of this work but aren't enough to carry a story by themselves.

Grammar: Competent enough, some mistakes that get ironed out.

Characters: The weak point of the story with a lot of telling instead of showing, and the apparent main focus. The side characters range from ok to downright awful. On the upper end of the scale, you have Rufus and Humphrey who, even after all this time, are lacking a lot of depth where there should have easily been some, preferring to trade bants with the main character over talking about anything with character substance most of the time. Not always a bad thing, the dialogue can be quite funny, though it does tend to drag on with everyone being so quippy all the time. The other end of the scale is the one-dimensional characters who seem to exist solely to make other characters look better by being worthless shitcunts, a good sign that the author is too lazy to do it properly.

The main character, Jason, starts out likable and fun, a fish out of water in a world of violence and magic; standard but good. The biggest problem with him is that none of his many personality flaws or skill deficiencies cause him any kind of problem that matters. His outspoken atheism in a place where the people obediently venerate their gods never has anyone shun him. His deliberate provocations of people in power never give him a problem the story doesn't worm him out of quick smart. His utter lack of knowledge of the culture never has him make a faux pas that gives him trouble. His never having worked as anything resembling an adventurer or having been in a fight don't stop him from being so good at his job his boss has to tell him to slow down and stop making everyone look bad. etc. Very long list here.

Many of his actions caused by these flaws will instead have the other characters praise him for his intelligence, wit and charisma which is eye-rollingly cringey; but think about if you'd be willing to ever use his tactics in your life and decide for yourself if it's an informed attribute. Not all bad about him though, despite his transformation from normal Aussie dude into someone who will kill multiple people in the street with no emotion or second thoughts in a few months despite believing in his past life that such a thing was Very Wrong; he's an enjoyable read and can be a nice, friendly character who goes out of his way to help others. Still a fucking Mary Sue though.

I'm pretty sure that given Shirtaloon's incredible chapter output that this is all first draft, and for a quickly hammered out, ongoing first draft it's not that bad. I'd definitely be looking forward to a completed version that has been finely combed through by an editor to tighten up the plot and spruce up the characters.

Scores are somewhat based on RoyalRoadl's average level of quality.

Story-wise, world-building, and side-characters are good. It feels like the world is operating on an alien, but coherent logic. The story makes sense for the most part, and the side characters are interesting. I didn't notice any difficulties reading, so grammar is fine as well.

The main character is by far the weakest part of the story. Compared to other stories on this site, the characterization is about average. Most of the dumb mistakes at the beginning of the story are perfectly understandable, and he makes smart tactical decisions throughout. Unfortunately, his main characteristic is that he is a compulsive talker. Worse, it is true to form of a real compulsive talker.

People do not like compulsive talkers, and it makes it very difficult to empathize with the main character. Personally, there was an almost instinctual distrust of the main character once the conversations started going. His inability to shut up showed a lack of respect for everyone else, which implied a lack of trustworthiness and integrity. It's why I think a lot of people seem to be especially annoyed with moral quandaries he faces. He provides his opinion on everything, so it's basically worthless. He's so flippant about everything, why can't he be flippant about this shit too? 

He's told to shut up only a few times (too few to be believable, in my opinion), and it seems to garner zero reaction from him. He makes basically no attempt to improve or even acknowledge the comment and continues to interject every sentence with stuff he should know people won't understand.

He's a snarky character with little to show (mostly luck, even with the salt thing).

He's a talkative character with nothing to say.

I hope he goes through a character redemption arc because Overgeared had a similar issue at the beginning, where people HATED the main character. But for Overgeared, it was intentional. The main character showed growth and got incrementally better.

I hope the same would be for this novel, too. We already know he's going to grow in power/skill. He's got a system set up for that.

(Chapter 45)

I felt it was interesting initally. The magic system is good. The main character Jason seemed likeable. It's overall a nice read. The style, and fights are engaging.

There were a couple of characters introduced in the initial chapters who I thought would be more fleshed out eventually. But they have nothing going for them. No personal ambitions, no interesting character traits. The entire time they're discussing and worrying about Jason, as if their entire world revolved around him. They're merely acting as automated tools for Jason's progress in this story and nothing else. Can't think of any unique quality each of these characters have that makes them integral to the story or to the MC's character development in any meaningful way. 

As the story goes on, Jason becomes less and less likeable for me.

The magical abilities he gains are indeed interesting and used in creative ways. Character wise, He's an abrasive talker and all dialogues he's involved in seems a bit forced. The dialogues try too hard to be clever; so in the end comes off as either boggling or annoying. Thus, the politics and socializing stuff gets very boring.

Jason's views are sort of the embodiment of the immature liberal atheist who rejects authority, and he goes about expressing his view of ethics&morality in most annoying ways.

He also gets rewarded for being annoying. The story is trying to push the MC into the top ranks of social standing through his abrasive actions, which apparently are supposed to be well thought out. 

I would suggest readers to pick this up only if they are interested in the magic system, style and the fights. I will be sticking with this story for a while because of the consistent update schedule and the fairly interesting magic usage and fights.

--Will be updating this review as I read on.