Tower of Jack
by actionverb
- Graphic Violence
- Profanity
To some, he’s an idiot savant, to others, he’s a high-functioning alcoholic. To almost everyone, he’s an arrogant asshole. Jack Atlas - self proclaimed “Worlds Best Assassin” has a problem. Earth’s integration into The Tower has ruined his life.
Jack was ready to retire… Well, he wasn’t actually ready to retire, but love makes you do crazy things.
Regardless of his feelings, he was hanging up his guns… and knives… and explosives… All for a chance at love with the most recent girl of his dreams. Enter 'The Tower' stage left. A cruel device designed by the gods to determine just who is the strongest race within the multiverse. Make it to the top and you get to join the gods in paradise. Everyone else gets to experience… not paradise.
Instead of sipping Mai Tai’s on some beach he can’t pronounce; it’s sipping health pots because he just got stabbed in the ass by a goblin. Instead of trips to Vegas with blackjack and hookers; it’s trips to creepy dungeons filled with skeletons and zombies.
Join Jack as he learns to adapt to his new life of “DnD nerd crap” while in search of the perfect multiverse-cocktail. Also, he might climb The Tower and kill a bunch of people while he’s at it…
***Chapters Monday, Wednesday, Friday***
What to Expect from this story:
An over the top action comedy, set to the backdrop of epic fantasy.
Lots of cursing and wildly inappropriate humor.
A main character who will pass up the opportunity for OP legendary items because he doesn't want to miss happy hour at the bar.
Shenanigans.
An anti-hero lead.
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I really like the worldbuilding coupled with a good sense of humor. A bit of a slow pace, but nothing too drastical. Really excited how Jack will evolve and what the story has in store for us. This sentence is only for the word count - bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla
Honestly if you are a fan of the cartoon Archer in any way then this is the mix between litrpg and tower fantasy that you have been waiting for. An Archer esque character gets transported into a world in which his skills of being unnecessarily lucky do not correlate as well as he hopes. One of the better RR books I have read recently.
If you like Tower Climbs, irreverent MC's and dark humour you need to give this story a go.
Read the overview (snipped from the fiction page):
What to Expect from this story:
An over the top action comedy, set to the backdrop of epic fantasy.
Lots of cursing and wildly inappropriate humour.
A main character who will pass up the opportunity for OP legendary items because he doesn't want to miss happy hour at the bar.
Shenanigans.
An anti-hero lead.
This story delivers on all of these items. Where it seems to have been criticised in other reviews, the negative comments seem to come from people that don't like some of these tropes / factors. The MC is an ANTI-HERO. He is over the top (brilliantly in my opinion). He is often an a***hole. He makes ridiculous decisions. He constantly and unapologetically annoys and subverts expectations in a non-meaningful way for little pay off. But he is a HERO and the Author has warned you about him.
I genuinely cannot understand why this story isn’t more highly rated. The Author has crafted a detailed and rich Tower World, with over-arching plots, that takes the best of Tower Climbing and LitRPG tropes and uses them in a familiar but exciting way to deliver a story that scratches an itch properly. The action scenes are great, the stakes are believable and not over done, the world itself is detailed and engaging.
There are lots of real laugh out loud moments, there are moments when as a reader you become furious with the MC, then 2 chapters later you are rooting for him to succeed. I genuinely enjoy the fact that the MC can subvert expectations by being consistent in his aggravating traits, surely it is the mark of a well written MC that as a reader you go through similar emotions to those that are elicited by the characters when dealing with the MC?
The magic system, class system, power system and climbing system are done very well. Yes there are tropes, but tropes are tropes for a reason... I feel that some of the other reviews here have missed this point as well as the ‘warning’ in the overview about the MC. If you don’t enjoy MC’s with dark humour, who are prone to self sabotage and are clearly flawed human beings, then don’t downvote a story that clearly states the protagonist is all of these things – just don’t read it!
I highly recommend this story, it has bags of action, an MC that is engaging and enough plot to provide longevity.
Edited: Decided to start with the good first. I felt like I might be turning away some readers who are skimming reviews.
Edit2: The author has really fleshed out the characters futher with their own ideals and motives, one character has broken away from the group to find their own path for the moment. The mental issues of Jack are adressed and made manifest. It would be good to probably go into this expecting a broken character, with trauma resulting from a troubled child and teenagehood...
Overall its going from a 4 star to 5 star from me.
This story was a breath of fresh air. Characters are generally well written and have distinctive personality . Dialogue is snarky and generally great. Grammar is great and overarching story is also amazing.The litrpg elements seem to be very balanced and I like the way combat is written. Very action packed all around. Most of all it's hilarious.
It has the potential to be one of the greats :)
Just some issues regarding Jack.
I love asshole characters in movies and books like Bojack , Archer and all of the Bond movies .
Epic levels of assholery.
But heres the thing , we are getting sold on this idea of a good-meaning asshole. The good ol "Mostly only kills bad dudes"-but only if he gets paid...
I am okay with deluded assholes as well.However, it felt so out of character when Jack and his old crew decide to unalive another asshole because he was condescending towards them, while just doing his job.He was stopping them from taking a quest.
It was like reading a renactment of some worrying grade seven drama class plays. They were acting as children and also being a hypocrite.
The thing is even assholes don't kill for no reasons.
Also so far the only thing his character has besides being an alcoholic asshole, was his interesting morals.When you just casually kill a man off for the sake of midly-funny comedy you are also killing the character that we had seen upto that point.
I don't expect character development here but this was character suicide.
When this case of character suicide is repeated a couple of times just for the sake of comedy. There is no character anymore.
Also the characters around Jack don't seem to even try helping Jack, every asshole needs something to ground themselves in my opinion.They are just enabling his behaviour, and friends who go through life and death will generally look out for each other to some degree.
Nevertheless I will continue reading this story because I can ignore the little hiccups and appreciate the overall great ride. I am sure the author will work on these problems .
Started reading this a week before my vacation and haven't been able to catch up on any of my ofther RR follows since then:)
lots of fun. Lots of funny banter. Definitely deserving of a larger followship. This will be one of the stories I look forward to having be updated for the foreseeable future.
So I started reading this due to a review that said it was "Archer meets Royal Road." Figured I'd give it a few chapters and see if I liked it, was sold by like chapter 3 or 4. Whichever chapter had the skeletons. Read the next 65ish chapters over maybe a week or so, and every night had to deal with "just one more chapter then I'll go to bed."
Putting my read on pause to let the chapters build up some more(I tend to binge most things), which is rough on RR as a lot of stories I've gotten into here seem to update maybe once or twice a week if I'm lucky.
But this guy may be a robot as it looks like new chapters get added almost daily. So that's another huge plus for this story.
Is this the best story you'll read? Probably not. But it's a good one, maybe even great? Definitely one of the better ones I've read in a while. Most of all though, it's damn fun. Which is really all I want at the end of the day. So give it a few chapters, you'll probably enjoy it.
I don't know how people like mc. He acts like a wannabe badass but actually cringe, mentally disabled person. Ignoring every advice, common sense, brain and thinking he continues to his adventure thanks to very convenient story.
I can't even count unreasonable things he did or flawed logic in the story, basically the story itself consists of those things. I totally wasted my time hoping the story would get better.
This story is great. I highly recommend that you try it out, and while the prologue may be slightly offputting, know that it is NOT how the story will continue and is just there to provide some context for the story to come.
The main character is easily the best part. One of my favorite main characters in fantasy stories. So far no child of fate/chosen one, but more of someone that sparks chaos, moving forward on his own merit and unlikely talent.
The supporting characters are also great, you are always trying to figure out what they are thinking and what they will do next, which is further amplified when we occasionally get well-written point-of-view shifts.
Edit to my review:
The author has messed the story up. I thought that "dragon guy" was going to be a target and main plotpoint for assassination, as per mc's prerogative. Turns out that the whole thing is thrown out. I really dislike the way that his father figure/sensei was treated as an antagonist. His powerset is dull and barely feels like a threat. All we really get about him is traumatic shit that the mc complains about him doing to him, but we never get to see rodeo's side of things other then standard evil doer esc things. He is said to be some brilliant guy, doing whatever necessary, god given talent for fighting and such, but he is written to be more insane then jack when he is built up to be smart and able to hold his ground. Basically. I very much dislike the way that the first main story arc is playing out, even though the beginning was great. I will check back in when some of the next arc is written but beware, most of the things that are set up in the beginning of the story are thrown out. mc makes a 180 from crazy evil assassin with some morals, to white knight(slightly less crazy).
Honestly story doesn't really deserve the anti-hero tag, I mean there isn't really any action he takes that cant interpreted as anti-heroic. Although people around him in the story keep saying that he isn't heroic, his actions are and thus the anti-hero tag should be removed. Anti-heros kill innocents(for x/y reason) and the mc doesn't(not that we have seen in the story). Its like saying oh yea he killed some people in the past that were innocent for unrelated things, now I put anti-hero tag on story. Please removed as it is misleading
This story needs more recognition, and has some serious potential. I'm saying this being completely caught up on Azarinth Healer, Salvos, DotF, Primal Hunter, Mark of the fool, as well as many others.
Most of characters are all thought out (*cough cough Sarah), with each having their own motivations and thought process, and it being ones you can understand. The main cast so far is Jack, the mc, Sam, and Hannah, his original assassination team from before the tower, and they bounce off each other super well.
Jack provides the comedy of the story, with Sam being the "gamer nerd" and Hannah being the main planer, not that Jack ever follows them. In the first chapter, Jack gets the "fastest kill" achievement trope, but the author actually makes it make sense and not just be some bullshit luck. Standard no killing in tutorial village so he gets punished and sent to a cursed dungeon, where he either has to clear it or die.
Clearing it gives him a cursed item, which is revealed earlier that it normally fucks people over, but some can use it to their advantage. It adds a unique added challange for Jack to over come for the rest of the story.
Unlike other story's however, you don't have to wait 20 chapter for person to get out of thier "unfortunate starter dungeon" completely op, as the author gets him out in just over a chapter, NOT op. This is not a power trip story.
The few chapters the aren't Jack's pov actually add to the story, instead of the stereotypical showing people being shocked by the mcs "amazingness".
This story is fast paced, and it suits the Authors style very well. No sitting around for 5 chapters waiting for the mc to stop aimlessly wandering around doing nothing.
Another thing is there is no Deux ex machinas. Everything in the story has a cause and effect, and no unrealistically lucky loot drops or hidden achievements that makes the mc suddenly shoot in power and makes them "untouchable" until the author realizes that they have to add in a new random threat out of no where to keep the story going. (I hate power fantasies if you couldn't tell).
I could find very few if any grammatical errors in the entire story so far. It is obvious that the author checks what they are posting before they proceed to do so, and I hope they keep it up.
A solid 5/5 story with an amazing start that I belive can go places if it gets the support it deserves.
Only recommendation is add some depth to Sarah, like give her a reason why she wants to constantly help everyone, instead of just saying she does.
Keep up the good work Actionverb!
Really enjoying this book. The main character feels like what you would get if Archer was sent to a Litrpg world and the author makes it work. The action scenes are well written and the characters are all well fleshed out. Looking forward to reading this well into the future.