Review: Town Guard

Town Guard by Jake Brannigan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I haven't tried to read a full-on LitRPG before, so this was interesting. It makes no real attempt to make the presumable game-world plausible in its own internal terms, and the game aspects (stats, character sheets, punctuation that calls out the skills and inventory items as special) were obtrusive, but I'm guessing that comes with the territory. From poking around, I've gained the impression that LitRPG is normally terribly edited, and although this definitely needed more editing, mainly for typos and internal inconsistencies, it was better than plenty of other books I've read lately; the author at least has a basic grasp of commas and can (mostly) narrate competently in the past tense. He also knows the difference between a hoard and a horde, and uses the correct spelling for "discreet," which plenty of people who make few other mistakes get wrong. On the other hand, he is given to stating the blindingly obvious, such as that no mortal is immortal, or that a small park is not large, and sometimes displays a bit of ignorance about the world and how it works, like referring to a tailor "knitting" a shirt made of fine fabric. He puts an apostrophe in "heads up" that doesn't belong there, and occasionally uses the wrong preposition, such as "with 50 yards" instead of "within 50 yards". And he writes "wailing" where he means "whaling".

He's clearly young, not only because of the slang he uses but because he says at one point "the old man was nearly 50," so he gets a bit of a n00b pass for not knowing things.

The other sign of youth is an adolescent obsession with sex at times, though it mostly takes the form of innuendo or reference to people having or wanting to have sex; there's nothing outright explicit on screen, so it's PG rather than R.

The protagonist is also young; he turns 16 early in the book, which is the age at which people can choose a class (or have one chosen for them by the gods) in his world. (It's also the age of consent, taken very literally; the gods prevent people under 14 from any sexual expression at all, those 14-15 from anything more than kissing and cuddling, and those over 16 from anything that isn't consented to by both parties, and one can only be with people of one's own age range.) Despite his youth, he's serious-minded and absolutely determined to do the right thing, which is usually putting himself at risk in order to protect others. I liked that aspect of his character.

As the blurb gives away, this leads to him being classed as a Town Guard, a deliberately OP class that makes sure towns are safe places - but they can't leave the town they're assigned to until they reach level 20, which torpedoes his life plans. The actual moment at which he becomes a Town Guard doesn't come until almost halfway through, so the first half of the book is spent establishing the characters and their relationships, and setting up some mysteries and conflicts. I didn't feel it went too slowly; there were some action scenes that were both varied and well described scattered throughout, the characters were interesting to spend time with, and the various mysteries piqued my curiosity.

I found the resolution of the various mysteries and conflicts satisfying, and appreciated that Glenn wasn't just good-hearted and brave and loyal, but also smart. He worked with others effectively, too; he wasn't just a solo hero.

I definitely look forward to reading the sequel, and this easily makes it onto my Best of the Year list. I've put it at the Bronze tier, the lowest, but it's high Bronze; I just can't quite justify Silver given the need for more polish, especially when it comes to internal consistency and continuity. Still, a promising debut.

View all my reviews