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| Same as with the other books, the covers are terrible. The more I look at the CGI, the worse it gets. This is probably the funniest one, but they're all pretty bad. |
If you were to ask me, "William, why on earth would you read the following five books of one that you've explicitly said was bad?" then I'd be forced to put a bunch of excuses, such as "I needed to make sure my first review was reliable," "I was in the mood for ironic consuption" or other things of the sort.
Truth was, I just finished reading study stuff and needed some LitRPG to clear my mind and remember that, with all the bad things it had, Unexpected Healer had delivered on loot and skills. I had to skip the first parts of book 2 because I had this annoying feeling that I'd read it, but I wasn't sure, so I kept skimming until that feeling faded.
PR: After the not very notable events of book 1, Thaden continues on his frantic endeavor to do things the weird and annoying way. He finds a magma dungeon for which he's poorly equipped, as it shows when he's practically melted by the heat of the combined creatures. Of course, he survives, and even faces the boss without much trouble, but he's forced to circle back to town since said boss has regenerative abilities. I hate it when they do that in video games too, like, you have a huge health pool of millions, why would you heal? Though invulnerability frames are worse.
Speaking of which, Thaden continues to be invulnerable to all threats, environment excluded, but fails to make proper use of such an advantage, as proven by the fact that he picks the one dungeon where he's not unbeatable. Really, it's literally the only dungeon in the entire series where temperature is an issue.
Fortunaly for Thaden, he happens to find that one shiny item that only he can use, which freezes everything in a twenty-foot radius, there, lying in the store with a huge "Please take this off my hands" sign. Very convinent.
After beating the boss and getting nothing to show for it, other than some ridiculous red cap (as described by the author) Thaden finds up that he's fucked up royally, and ten giga lava worms sprout out the ground, destroying the nearby city and killing hundreds of people. It should've been more, but apparently they were prepared for such type of accident which leads to the hastly patched plot hole of "how much do the locals actually know" which is just as much as the plot needs them to.
Predictably, Thaden kills the worms and reaps massive rewards that no one else has access to and vents off about almost dying to the level 100 vice-leader of the adventurer coalision, who gets mad and attacks Thaden only for all her spells to be innefective and then she explodes, courtesy of "the system's retaliation," even if Thaden suffered no damage at all. Even if it made sense to kill the already trained officers for some fresh recluits, by the time the system reacts, Thaden would be long dead if it wasn't for his cheat-like powers.
After a small intermission of a few days not like the others which lasts for months, Thaden bands with a couple of randoes and manages to complete his evolution assignment, poor and annoying mechanic if you ask me, and evolves to "solitary shaman" which in my opinion is a terrible idea. Now, at the moment of the evolution, the reader can totally visualize that is the option he's gonna pick because it says "legendary" on golden glittery letters, but on the small print it puts that all channeled spells will be lost, also known as the spells that make Thaden immune to all forms of damage in exchange for an edgy title.
From a writer perspective, it makes sense to try and deprive MC from his god tool to have him face some hardship, but from Thaden's perspective it's just moronic. Why would you do that? Not to mention that spells on others are only half as effective and if he has any party members he gets no XP, all for some unseen rewards that may not even exist. So much for the strategy of extending his immortality spells onto a DPS class! Granted, one would assume that if the class is called "solitary shaman" then it probably counts with some sort of method to not get popped in the wild, however, would you bet your life on that?
The bet pays off, sort of, when Thaden's shiny new spell called "wild life leech" is now appliable to himself, effectively nullifying his one difficulty of "what happens if there's only one monster to kill?" but realistically speaking he still has the same issues he had before plus now he has to juggle five different protections spells at all times with an all times high possibility of him dying.
Thaden then finds that the ragtag bunch has been killed for some hardly reasonable matter by the guilds, which proves that it's not only Thaden who's an idiot, but all of humanity according to Johnny Brooks.
I'm not a sociologist, but IMO if humanity suddenly found themselves in a hostile environment surrounded by literal monsters they wouldn't just turn into murderous sociopaths because some text of dubious credibility affirms that the people on the top of the rankings will have their families safety assured. Anyways, the system realizes it has fucked up, thing that happens a lot in this series, and patches the problem by giving the murderers a black aura which gives carte blanche to the other sociopaths to murder them in exchange. Literally the wild west out there.
Now that he no longer has a party to worry about because the author killed them off as soon as they've fulfilled their purpose, Thaden goes into a dungeon called "the devil's nest" which is non-descript white and filled with meme canon bible angels, you know, the type that has tons of eyes and scream in quivering red letters "be not afraid." There are also some generic, muscly, white winged angels that aren't given a good description but I'm going to choose to imagine them as mortification's album cover "the evil addiction destroying machine"
From now on, probably before this too but I just noticed the pattern here, whenever Thaden enters a dungeon there's a vague description of the place which is the only one we're going to get, e.g. white walls with white lighting all over and twisting hallways, or rocky canyon with some dirt mounds on the sides, a dark forest, an upscaled backyard, etc, then two or three monsters which may be things like "evil vampire tinkerbell" (author's words) or giant skeleton, or giant skeleton with four arms. Then, there's the boss which is generally a mixture of the mobs and some difficulty that Thaden steamrolls by just spamming healing abilities, most often than not his latest acquired one.
Remember the long ellipsis I've mentioned? Well we get the first one shortly after Thaden gets his shiny new legendary healer set, which literally glows and I imagined it a bit like a full-white Hollow Knight character. He decides to check every single dungeon for more of these "anchor dungeons" since he's timed to do so or more magma worm catastrophes will be unleashed to the world. There are like a hundred dungeons which we never get to see because bam four months have passed and Thaden only has a bunch of xp to show for it. A hundred dungeons, no notable equipment, no notable achievements or effects, creatures, resources, only a few succintly written passages of a blurry Thaden flying around mountains and a "it wasn't any of them" statement.
Instead, he accidentally stumbles onto the next anchor dungeon which happens to be in the forest adjacent to one of the three major cities of the region, you know, like the other anchor dungeon, and maybe, just maybe, like the third anchoring dungeon. Because three cities, three dungeons, right? Thaden himself said that the wording of the mission implied that the anchoring dungeons hadn't been previously discovered... Ok, lets just roll with it and say hindsight is always twenty-twenty. To make matters worse, its just so convenient that the people that actually trigger the dungeon happen to be on Thaden's path, but like I said, don't look too hard.
The dungeon, if it's even worth to be called that, is just a forest with overgrown spiders in it. Yes really. Yes, very generic, but according to Thaden these are very scary spiders so I'm guessing that makes up for it. There appears to be a minuscule moment when the spiders appear to overwhelm Thaden but he just pulls his new spell out his ass and throws in some line like "Bro, did you lowkey forget I'm the prota, no cap? You bussin fr?" And every monster dies of cringe. The final boss of the dungeon, which is, yes, another spider but larger, dies unceremoniously and the system wipes the whole event out the minds of those involved except Thaden. It wants him to live with the shame of having cheated with his giga plot armor. Or maybe it was embarrassed at the lack of originality of the so-called "main plotline"
At some point, I don't recall exactly when, the system had done something similar when the father of the deceased (exploded) level 100 vice-leader of the coalition summons a super-demon level five trillion but Thaden explodes them both with his protagonist magic, so it's not something new. Thaden gets to keep all the eye-bulging rewards, just in case he needed to get any more overpowered. At some point I recall trying to make some calculation of what level equivalent his stats are in regular progression, but the author has given him so many that I literally lost count, so, no idea. Higher than the "world ending threat" of the super-demon, evidently.
After completing the third dungeon on the bottom of the sea next to the third city, which predictably enough was populated by squids and sharks, spare me the Legendary Pokemon reference please, the system gets sick of Thaden BS and decides to lock him in the bottom of the dungeon until further notice, which in this case means about six months. Lucky for Thaden, this is exactly the amount of time the other people needs to catch up with his level- which he needed to complete his next class quest, and even more luckily he has enough food and water to last exactly as much time as the system decides to leave him there. All very convenient if ask me.
After doing absolutely nothing to get out despite literally saying it would be better to try his chances at emerging to the surface (or maybe get back into the dungeon? The door should be right there...) than to die slowly waiting to starve, the system randomly decides to let him out and propells him to the surface, where as a sign of apologies it showers Thaden with even more overpowered rewards for being "the best of the best" which on itself is an achievement that gives him +10% all source damage and XP gains. The most notable reward though its the "mimic plates" which duplicate the base stats and effects of the equipment currently equipped, and he gets fifty two of them. Then comes a rather prolonged LitRPG, dungeon math moment where Thaden practically masturbates at the possibities that such plates would enable him and then applies them to his already overpowered equipment. In fact, the onanistic compulse is so strong all skill names get swiched to something suggestive, such as "bigger is better," "delayed gratification," "indecent proposal," etc, etc. I think it would be crass even if the effects of the skill were actually related to the sex name, but I suppose some people get off it or find it funny.
Speaking if which, there's a very uncomfortable character named Muriel which is sex jokes incarnated. I'm not even going to start talking about how poorly constructed Muriel was because I'd have a book of my own by then, just take my word that it's very bad and very unnecessary.
After getting his super rewards, Thaden searches for a party to team and complete his evolution assignment and gets rejected because of his class which reduces everyone's XP rewards by 90%, but fortunately for him, he's so massively overpowered that once again he steamrolls the problem by showing that he can do dungeons not only solo but five times faster than anyone else, and that because of the other million rewards the system has given him, the practical reduction in XP is just 60. We get a couple chaps of him showing off, imagine superman in fantasy setting and you'll be pretty close to what happened.
After we get introduced to a questionable sidekick character named Sadia (a squirrel who duplicates Thaden's magic output, another gift from the system) the plot starts to circle around "the adversary" and it's relationship with the system in a way that I'd describe as a downgraded Matrix mixed with Neverland, the anime. The adversarial entities claim that Tart (the place they're in) is a simulation and that only death can set them free, and later its revealed that the assimilators, entities in charge of the system, brainwash and nurture the contenders to sell them in lots like slaves or cattle. If you're asking youself why, you're out of luck because everything is a glancing mention as the book is too busy having Thaden kill the adversarial entities, then killing the Wardens who were supposed to kill the adversarial entities, then reviving them and repeating the process while upscaling things. First, the adversary thing, which is basically a blob of shadows, is level 500 like the wardens, then level 700, then level infinite and the wardens are three at first, then five, then like twenty. After Thaden kills adversary level infinite, the dungeon blows up and the last book begins.
I'm going to make a small pause here to mention that the entire narrative at this point is basically a cheese grater judging by the sheer amount of plot holes. Who is the adversary, why is it absorbing planets, why is it uses monsters, why if it uses monsters it also uses these shadowy things, how did it breach Tart, why did no one do anything, why is the system killing billions of people when it has an endless supply of monsters to drain the energy from, where did it come from, why does it brainwashes people, why did we not hear about this before, why does it sells people in auctions like slaves, why does it has factions instead of an united front, why isn't there a third position that opposes both the system and the adversary, it is suggested that the adversary and the system are working together, as if the adversary was one of the system factions... But this makes no sense. Why does Thaden has infinite mana, how did no one had infinite mana before him, if Thaden has infinite mana, how can the system's assimilators simply block his access to said mana, what's the point of the whole training thing if when it's over all progress is reverted back to zero... anyway you get the idea.
The last book is probably the worst one, even if the whole "warden" thing was supremely underwhelming and the level infinite boss just got killed the same exact way than the very first high level boss monster back in the first book, mostly because it's where the author attempts to broaden the overarch and most the plot holes come to action. Well, that and the "wiping the slate clean" thing. You see, for a good chunk of the book, about a third or maybe even half, it's just Thaden going in and out of proto-dungeons called NESTs that are barely described to be basically just a cave system and not a very large one at that. The monsters in this release are also the less imaginative ones, and we have "evil vampire tinkerbell" as a contender, so imagine. I'm just going to say that "fire seals" as in mammals was one of them, not that any get much description other than three or four words. Then, he stops grinding NESTs and goes back to grind dungeons, to powerlevel the other contendants so they become able to defend the NESTs he takes over. There's a tiny bit of tower defense because he gets "subjugation points" he uses as currency to build defenses around the subjugated NESTs but other than the one chapter where the mechanics are described this barely has any impact in the narrative. In fact, half way through the book, Brooks just throws everything of the board and has Thaden perform some stunt that makes him slip into a hidden fold where the "annihilators" are being held, and after some unanswered questions and more plot holes a stray "wild leech" triggers the egg where the "annihilator" is being held.
I hope you didn't had much expectations for the "annihilator" because its literally a raccoon shaped vacuum cleaner. I can almost visualize the moment where the author was like "hmm maybe just supersizing a raccon and having it suck things into its mouth isn't interesting enough... Oh, I know what to add! Let's have it throw lasers out his mouth too!"
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| maybe the author saw this book and said "hey I want one too!" |
Anyway... Thaden has another evolution choice, and same as before it's obvious which of the two options he's going to take, even if it's not really clear if it's the best option. The bet pays off, like it always does for him, when a deus ex "green fog" of materialized luck manifests as a consecuense. Predictably, he kills all raccoons and completes the last development phase by having them laser remove the remaining NESTs thus circling the "having to defend them" requirement. If you're imagining some kind of epic battle, it wasn't that. It was just Thaden getting tossed around like a volleyball while saved from the lasers by the green fog, all while waiting for the wild leech to tickle the raccoons HP down to zero. There are no notable rewards, no achievements either, nor would it had matter as the next thing that happens is that everyone gets teleported into the assimilation (real?) world where all the things they've achieved or attained are wiped clean. Thaden himself explodes when the pending raccoon XP catches up as his giga stats no longer help him accept the prompts fast enough, but guess what? He survives the explosion. How did he survived the explosion if according to the author himself, "he was just like a regular human, without powers, spells nor stats?" No idea. Why does the XP makes him explode, if it can't perform any physical change on Thaden as that aspect of the system is forbidden to him? Good question. All we know is that the story ends with a level 1 Thaden on Pangea or however the assimilation world is called ready for part II that hopefully will never arrive.
If I'm being like really generous with the story... I'd say that it's pretty decent until volume three or so. Considering the genre, mostly. LitRPG is filled to the brim with unreadable thrash, and unexpected healer is... Readable, for the most part. In book four and onwards the whole "adversary" thing starts kicking in and it's just very generic and rather bland. I'd give it a 3.5/10 for the first few volumes and a straight 1 for the rest.
If you're wondering, "but William, if it's so bad howcome you read so much?" Honestly I don't know, but it wasn't that much time really. I read the whole thing in a bit over a week, since most the content is just stat blocks and numbers that I skimmed over
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