Choosing Evil Over Good (and Having a Blast!) -- My Review of Travis Bagwell's Awaken Online: Catharsis
What happens when anger, rage, and a desire for power all mix together? According to Travis Bagwell, you become an evil necromancer who unleashes a torrent of death and destruction in a digital world. That’s the premise of Awaken Online: Catharsis , one of the most absorbing and thought-provoking science fiction and fantasy novels I’ve read in a long time. Awaken Online: Catharsis is another entree in the fast-growing, highly popular genre known as “LitRPG.” LitRPG stands for Literature Role-Playing Game, and it’s all about immersing the reader in a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game. In other words, it’s a virtual reality adventure with the protagonist having to progress through skill development, resource acquisition, quest achievement, the building of alliances, and so forth -- as is the case with any typical role-playing game (RPG). The science fiction and fantasy genre has long been known as an effective platform through which to explore moral and philosophical questio...