Morningwood: Everybody Loves Large Chests by Neven Iliev

I am vaguely embarrassed to have read this book and seriously debated whether to blog about it. I had been curious about a genre called ‘LitRPG’ and was doing some research. For those not in the know, these are books that are like RPG games and actually acknowledge the fact by including the stats and attributes and so on, within the text. So when a character kills something, their experience points go up. They won’t just be described as strong they may be described as having Strength attribute of 18. It seemed weird and then I saw a book called Morningwood: Everybody Loves Large Chests by a guy called Neven Iliev and then things got weirder.

I was looking on Amazon and there was the option to ‘Look inside’, so I thought I would see what kind of insane puerile nonsense this was. I then found myself reading the whole free sample, and it was quite a long sample, then finding myself a bit curious about what was going to happen next. Much to my own dismay and denting my own smug sense of intellectualism, I bought it. Then read it. And I enjoyed the whole thing. Perhaps not enough to rush out and recommend to friends and family but it was a lot of fun.

I really can’t describe the sheer weirdness of Morningwood: Everybody Loves Large Chests without giving lots away. The protagonist is unique. I guarantee you will never have read a book with a similar lead character. The genre will be familiar to anyone who is cool enough to have played either pen and paper RPG games or more modern computer ones. I was especially reminded of D&D when, for example, a strange message pops up and informs the protagonist of something like [You have suffered minor blunt trauma. HP-5]. It was kind of what I was expecting from the genre.

As you can probably guess from the title, there is a certain amount of sex in the book. Not a lot but at times it gets quite graphic. There is also lots of violence and general mayhem. You can tell it was written by a guy and I suspect the readership will be mostly childish, cheap-thrill-seeking men. And the odd science fiction blogger, sacrificing his valuable time to try something out for his readers. Aspects like mentioning the breast size of every single female would, and should, put most people off.

So having said all that, I actually enjoyed Morningwood. It was surprisingly easy to read and I genuinely wanted to know what happened next and where the fuck all this madness was heading. If you like RPG games, have the mind of a 15 year old boy, sniggered a bit at the title, then you might surprise yourself by enjoying this. I did. Just don’t tell anyone.