King's League

Your enjoyment of King's League is going to depend heavily on how you feel about pop culture references in books. Like accidentally opening the pour side of the pepper container instead of sift, this book has too much for my taste and I found it hard to enjoy the otherwise fine book.

This is a VR MMO LitRPG but the real world still has some relevance. Dirk sells in-game items for real-world money and often has to choose between keeping gear to survive in-game or selling it to pay rent and buy groceries.

The King's League game sounds miserable. PKill encouraged, extremely harsh penalties for dying, and painfully slow progression. Dirk soon finds an overpowered god-helmet that increases his experience gains, so at least we don't have to suffer for long. He discovers corruption among the highest level players and most popular streamer and sets out to overthrow their tyrany. Hopefully not get evicted from his apartment.

The fight scenes are well written and varied. Dirk fights lots of different monster and player types, solo and occasionally in a group. Locations are varied and described well. There are only a few characters but they each have different voices.

Content warnings: Player killing and bullying, objectification of women, fat phobia, giant spiders, the R slur once. The closest the book gets to having a female character is one conversation 97% of the way through.