Synopsis

How do you win a game that’s trying to kill you?

A twenty-nine year-old clerk at a games store in the Appalachian hamlet of Jett Creek, Tennessee, Callie Myles lives for the weekly RPG sessions run by her beloved brother and gamesmaster, LB. Under his watchful eye, she and her friends wage war, harness magic, and battle evil. When the dice are rolling, they are heroes, and all of Callie’s anxieties slip away. The fun stops the night LB burns to death in a bizarre fire.

Asked by her friends to keep the weekly game alive, Callie does her best to set her grief aside. She puts on the monocle LB wore during sessions and finds herself sucked into a life-sized recreation of her brother’s game. Inhabiting the body of her beloved character, the legendary Arabeth, she thinks she has found the ultimate escape. Her paradise is spoiled when she discovers that something inside the game killed LB—and one of her fellow players was in on it.

To save herself, to avenge her brother, Callie Myles must pull on her armor and beat LB’s game from the inside out. If she gets killed along the way, well, at least she’s having a great time.

A fast-paced hybrid of mystery and adventure, CRITICAL HIT captures the breakneck joy of tabletop gaming, where life and death depend on the whims of a plastic die.

Amazon

Read for free via Kindle Unlimited – Releases August 2nd, 2021

Review

I always enjoy a book that teaches me something new or opens me up to a world that I might have heard of but know very little about. In this case, it is the world of RPG – Role Playing Games. You might be familiar with the term Dungeons and Dragons. My only experience with this game is on an episode of The IT Crowd. It is a short clip but gives you some basics.

Callie is a young woman that is very involved with this world thanks to her brother. He has drawn her into this game since she was young and it is only fitting that she works at a game store where they use the back room to hold their game sessions. Her brother, LB, is the game master and runs the game for this diverse group of characters. The story starts out as they are playing a game and things aren’t going well and then all of a sudden, Callie pulls out some tricks with her character, and perhaps not all is lost. It is just a game after all….or is it? After the session that evening, LB ends up dead from an explosion and Callie goes down a rabbit hole to figure out what happened to him. What she doesn’t expect is to be pulled in and tries to solve LB’s murder. This is where the story takes a crazy twist and everything you might have believed is now flipped upside down.

The author really knows how to engage the reader. I was invested from the first page trying to figure out who killed LB, and then when Callie goes deep into the RPG world. I don’t want to give anything away but I found it very informative and fascinating how the RGP world might look or be played. There is a cast of supporting characters that help to mold Callie and her adventures. When the killer is revealed at the end it was a surprise but at the same time, it wasn’t. There aren’t any obvious clues that pointed to this character, there was just something in the back of mind that wondered if this character was more involved than they portrayed.

The book is filled with action, adventure, mystery, and humor. It is a well written novel and one that anyone could enjoy whether they are familiar with this world or not.

We give this book 4 paws up.

About the Author

W.M. Akers is a novelist, playwright, and game designer. He is the author of the mystery novels WESTSIDE and WESTSIDE SAINTS; the creator of the bestselling games DEADBALL: BASEBALL WITH DICE and COMRADES: A REVOLUTIONARY RPG; and the curator of the history newsletter STRANGE TIMES. He lives in Philadelphia but hasn’t traded in his Mets cap yet.

Akers believes tabletop gaming is the greatest hobby in the universe. CRITICAL HIT is a tribute to every brave soul who has ever played a game.

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