Book Review: Dark Town

Part cozy, part bloody, all fun.

Hidden underneath the small town of Haverly Arms lies an entrance to the Dragon’s Game, an extensive world where adventurers compete to collect power objects and progress to the next level.

Temerity’s father and brothers have been down in the game for years, leaving Temerity and her mother, plus their house goblin, Half-pint, to manage their tavern. Bored with small-town life, Temerity decides to enter the tunnel labyrinth, launching an adventure to survive Level One of the Dragon’s Crawl: Dark Town.

-Goodreads

Book Information

• Title: Dark Town
• Series: Level One of the Dragon’s Crawl
• Author: Palmer Pickering
• Page Count: 412
• Genre: Fantasy / LitRPG
• Rating: 4.75/5.0
• Date Read: July 31st, 2024

Opening Thoughts

Dark Town by Palmer Pickering has been on my radar for a few months now. I knew she was working on this one and had kept my eye out for it’s release. I’ll be upfront and honest about a couple of things here. The first is that I’m a bit of a fanboy when it comes to Palmer’s works that I’ve read so far. Whether that is her true Science Fiction Fantasy series, Star Children Saga which I’m still bugging her about book three whenever I get a chance. There is also her full epic fantasy Heliotrope which was one of my fast reads for such a thick book. She did warn me a couple of times this was something very different being LitRPG. I’ll talk about that a bit more as we dive into things here shortly. Palmer was also kind enough to send me a beautiful signed copy of Dark Town which I’ve added to my home collection.

Pacing

The pacing of Dark Town was smooth for me. I’ve only read a handful of other LitRPG titles previously and I can say I’ve ran into both the more hardcore LitRPG as well as the more subtle. I think this is somewhere in between with a slight lean to the softer side. There is certainly a feel of this story being told from a gaming perspective but I thought several times that with just a few words or terms, this could have easily been released as a straight up fantasy novel. Even though there is mention of things like upgrading gear and getting to the next level, we aren’t confronted with hard interruptions to the story with things like system messages. This provided a much smoother reading experience for me.

World Building

The World Building in book one here was also nicely done. We get to learn about the worlds both outside and inside of the game. As the story progresses we get a lot of details of the environment around our characters. This might be in dark foreboding labyrinths, taverns or dark and dangerous alleys. We also learn more and more about the history of this world as the story progresses as well. Some great character past reveals along the way! Even though this genre is different than other books I’ve read by Palmer, I can still see her touch to both the world and it’s characters.

Character Development

Speaking of characters, the character development was also nicely done in Dark Town. Temerity was a great character as we see her come into her own by the end of the first book. We can see she still has plenty of growth yet to come though. I’m not afraid to say that Half-Pint completely stole the show though. He is such an amazing character. I even feel that strictly talking about growth of a character, what we learn of him has been the most. Temerity grows from her experiences in book one, where I guess Half-Pint’s legend grows more as we learn more and more about him.

Roundup & Recommendation

All in all, this was another pleasant experience in the LitRPG realm. I might not have been so quick to pick this one up without already knowing Palmer Pickering’s other works but if I did get my hands on it not knowing who the author is, I feel I still would have enjoyed this one just as much.

If you like all things LitRPG or on the softer side of this sub genre, I think you own yourself a service and give this one a try. I had written down a few notes while reading that gave me MMO flashbacks such as the Tank thinking he was invincible but learning to turn the mobs away from the rest of the party. I loved my online gaming days so these flashbacks were a great chance to reminisce a bit. I’ll be keeping an eye out for Level 2 in the future.

Scoring

World Building 4.75/5
Pacing 4.5/5
Character Development 4.75/5