**The Wandering Inn** by Pirateaba
A book so long it felt insurmountable to me. Over 1200 pages? Crazy. Plus this was a series so long I was sure I'd never finish it, but FOMO got me starting this as an audiobook so I could listen on my commutes. Plus I had already gotten a taste of the LitRPG genre through Dungeon Crawler Carl.
The start of this book is very rough, and tbh if anyone put this down after the first 10 chapters I wouldn't blame them. The main character, Erin, is fucking stupid at the start, has zero curiosity for anything, and all she does is wander around the Inn or around the outside of the Inn foraging or lamenting that she's in another world, or being confused at something when she forgets she's not on Earth. She acts like a child and it's so so annoying, and even though the writing improves from there and she does improve as a character as well (and the author improves as a writer), you still see scenes of her ignorance which just irritates me.
So I only really got invested in this story about a third of the way through, but once I got there it fully hooked me in!! The worldbuilding is excellent, every character except Erin Solstice is a delight to read (honestly I think Ryoka Griffin is much more interesting), and I think maybe my interest in this just comes from how much Dungeons and Dragons I've played, but I loved it. The worldbuilding especially, the world feels so vast and full that I actually get why this story would last another 25 books or something. I got so invested I even abandoned the audiobook so I could read it on my phone instead.
(Also while I only listened to the audiobook for half of this, I have to say the narrator is amazing.)
Overall, I think the biggest letdowns of this book are the main character and the start of the story, but once it gets going (and critically once the story relies less on Erin's POV) it really shines.
4/5
#BookReview #LitRPG #TheWanderingInn





