The supporting cast in LitRPG usually exists as a cheering squad. Oh Great! decided to buck this trend by making Arnold’s relationships with his neighbors an important part of his growth, and by allowing those friends to call the narrator on his mistakes. The typical LitRPG is a power fantasy (which is great, because who doesn’t want a popcorn read about a hero who keeps accumulating more and better everything?), so it is long on lone wolves and short on believable friendships. I was willing to set aside my expectations of leveling via growing the perfect beet or using alchemy to concoct a novel pesticide, however, because Oh Great! had an unusually likable cast of characters, and a shocking amount of introspection in its narrator. What it wasn’t, however, was a story about how a protagonist became a power by farming, which was (I admit) what I was hoping for. So when I heard there was a book about a gamer who got reincarnated, not as a powerful wizard or warrior with an obvious path to demigodhood, but as a farmer, I thought ‘okay, that idea has legs if it’s done well.’ The title convinced me, because it was unafraid of its own corniness, and the fact that the art was riffing on Grant Wood’s American Gothic amused my inner artist.

I’ve read enough in the subgenre that I am no longer as easily delighted as I used to be. The pioneers of the niche paved the way but like urban fantasy with its cookie-cutter snark and college-aged narrators, it’s getting harder and harder for authors be clever and funny in a way that sticks with the reader.

Like at all.įollow Arnold on his hilarious journey as he stubbornly comes to grips with his new reality and tries to change his destiny from that of your typical farmer.LitRPG is a subgenre that revolves around the cleverness of its protagonists and its embrace of tongue-in-cheek humor. There is just one small problem: farmers don't gain experience from killing monsters. Now stuck on a new earth, in a new universe, with no way home, Arnold must use his gaming skills to figure out how to level his farmer class to 100 and gain a second class which doesn't make him want to beat his head against the wall. That standard procedure doesn't apply to Arnold. It could be a bad joke, but apparently, it happens so often that they have a standard procedure for returning you.

He’s certainly not the chosen one who is there to save the world. What do you have when you blend a pinch of litrpg, a touch of farming simulator, a sprinkle of epic fantasy, a whole cup of Isekai, and a dash of Home Alone?Īccidentally murdered by a cleric in another universe during a botched resurrection, Arnold, a semi-pro gamer, wakes upon an altar to find himself incarnated into the overweight body of a farmer who could have been his fatter twin.

Benjamin kerei books