Excellent writing, flawed characterisation

M Damon Baker is a GREAT writer, but I almost put this book down too many times to speak of that I can't, in all honesty, justify giving it more than four stars and really should probably be giving it three. Before I get into the 'why' though, I think it's important to clarify a couple of things if you're reading this and wondering, like I was, if this book is for you (of necessity, there are minor spoilers ahead):

Gender Swap:
This book features a gender swap main character. I'm not spoiling anything by saying this - an older guy gets turned into a young woman pretty much the first (or second?) chapter. While I'm not normally into books like this, I'll say it was really well done and as long as you're expecting it, don't let it deter you from reading the book. The gender swap is handled sensitively and with great thought and consideration. This isn't just a 'hey, now I have boobs let's have some fanservice' concept but rather an integral component to the story.

Sex:
This book features sex scenes. I was a bit less comfortable with this, but nothing was particularly graphic and all but the first scene was along the lines of 'I pleasured myself and it was fun.' So yeah, don't let this turn you off either, as long as you're aware that they're there.

Trigger Warning: R@pe
There is a r@pe attempt on the main character which may make some people uncomfortable. The heroine gets away before anything really bad happens, but is left pretty messed up in the head from the experience. Honestly, I could have done without this being the book... so yeah... viewer discretion advised.

Torture:
Because of the above mentioned experience, the heroine goes a little cray-cray whenever she comes up against someone who threatens to treat her like that again. When she inevitably beats them, she doesn't kill them slow. There weren't many of these scenes, but well, let's just say I didn't enjoy reading the ones that were there.

Characterisation:
Ok, so with all the above caveats out of the way, let's get to why I almost put this book down too many times to tell, and also why it was great. Baker is a pro writer, capable of making you really feel what a character is feeling. The worldbuilding was spot on, the gamelit / litrpg aspects were exceptional, I really felt when I read this like I was in the world *right there* beside this character. It's a grim world, with bad stuff that happens to good people, and that's fine.

But when the author goes to so much effort to make the world so realistic, drawing you so deep into the narrative, the consequence is that you genuinely feel what the character is feeling, and this is where I had a problem. The heroine is, for want of a better word, a psychopath.

90% of the time she's wonderful - the type of hero I really, really dig reading about. But then she'll stumble upon a random, intelligent non-human, and just... slaughter them. No conversation, no 'I wonder if this is a bad person,' no justification for killing them except they're different. Just a quick thought about getting XP and then there's an arrow through their eye and the heroine is moving on to slaughter the next innocent group of travellers totally minding their own business.

It's the sort of thing you do all the time in a game. But... this world isn't a game, and the book goes to great pains to tell us that the world is real. And in a real world, you don't just murderkill the first person that looks different to you. Like I said, the author is really good at placing you in the story - making you feel like you're the main character, or at least right beside them. So when the heroine did things like this without justification, it just left me feeling dirty, and a little sick inside.

I don't know - I finished the book, so that's a testament to Baker's writing.
But will I ever read something else they've written? Not a chance.

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