Tokens and Towers

What makes it funny?

To pass among the upright hamsters of Hamsterdam, Randy puts on a hamster beanie. The hamsters’ poor eyesight helps the disguise work. Readers in LitRPG groups keep returning to the city and to the ridiculousness threaded through the drama and suspense. The opening prologue supplies another kind of joke: Randy worries aloud that he has already ruined the all-important first sentence.

The comedy at work

Randy talks to the reader as a fantasy writer struggling to organize his own adventure. His attempts to introduce the story keep delaying it. That self-conscious voice suits a book that readers describe as poking fun at LitRPG and tower-climbing conventions.

Try this if…

Familiarity with game statistics and fantasy clichés gives you more to recognize in the jokes. Readers in LitRPG groups compare the funny climb with Dungeon Crawler Carl and praise the audiobook’s two narrators. Expect the genre itself to be part of the joke.

Good to know

The free prologue promises profanity and violence while saying there will be no sex. An early-serial reviewer nevertheless found the sexual jokes excessive and sometimes condescending toward women, while enjoying Randy and Clovis’s relationship. Readers in book groups also flag a fictional drug made from crystallized hamster juice and say there is no harem.