While I have been a tabletop role playing game guy for about a decade, I was unaware of the literary role playing game (LitRPG) subgenre until earlier this year, when I found out friend’s son was publishing LitRPG books under a pen name (Exciting!) LitRPG is, I guess, kind of a narrative fiction in which characters level up like they would in an RPG. At first blush I was a little confused by this, because it seems like RPGs are often based on fantasy or sci-fi, anyway, so why not write a fantasy or sci-fi book instead of a novelization of a game based on a book? But maybe LitRPG is like how instead of playing a video game, you watch a streamer play a game. Does that make sense? Well, either way, I enjoy certain streamers and I enjoy this book!
In How to Defeat a Demon King, our protagonist is the plucky Yui Shaw. While she’s pretty much a low-level nobody, she has high hopes. Why? Because somebody has to do something! In Yui’s world, a Demon King comes forth every century or so, and a Hero rises to fight the Demon King. (Think Link/Gannon, or Wheel of Time, etc.) But the Demon King rose up decades earlier than expected, and no Hero is in sight. So Yui decides she better do what she can when she can to try and slow things down to give the Hero time.
She makes her way through the typical RPG steps – grinding killing slimes, meeting new friends of different classes, tinkering with abilities, and maybe getting in over her head a little bit. But hey, as Yui says, “If it works, it works!”
The audiobook is about 5.5 hours long, and is expertly narrated by Suzy Jackson. It was the perfect, relaxing story for my commute.
I recommend this one to any fellow RPG dorks who don’t mind some affectionate poking at one of our favorite hobbies.
