Books like Catharsis — picked by fans

This book is probably my favorite cultivation novel out there, and for good reason. If you’re not aware what cultivation is, it’s a system of fantasy and magic inspired by eastern Taoist philosophies and chinese stories about reaching immortality and feature a lot of those themes.

It’s an entire genre and one I enjoy quite a bit, and Cradle, to me, is the very pinnacle of this genre. The book manages to bring a very fresh and exciting tale of cultivation that’s also still quite friendly to new readers just getting into the genre. It’s well beloved by the fans of the genre and held in extremely high regard, and I personally marvel at just how well it executed the story and just how rich and exciting the setting was for the story.

Life Reset follows a once-dominant player of the game NEO named Oren who is betrayed by his guildmates and ends up trapped as a goblin NPC within the game. This setup allows the story to focus on unique, goblin-specific abilities.

However, what I found most interesting about this book was its emphasis on an almost real-time strategy system of constructing and upgrading various buildings to manage his goblin tribe. While that wasn’t something I drew upon too heavily for my own story, I did love Oren’s frequent creative problem-solving, as well as the ways he tried to bend or even break the game’s systems to his advantage.

I personally feel that stories like this work best when the protagonist has limited options but the freedom to apply those options in a variety of surprising ways.

Queen in the Mud is a fun take on an Isekai story that features its protagonist, Naomi, reborn in a game-like world as a salamander.

I appreciated how unique Naomi’s magical abilities felt since they focused around her creature type. She often had to struggle to figure out how to apply her strange powers to best aid her against different threats.

I also liked how her choice of new abilities when she leveled up actually felt like a significant choice, rather than having an obvious option that most people in her situation (as well as readers) would pick. That aspect of choice was something I tried to capture in my own book’s magic system.

Gamified puts its own unique twist on Isekai stories—unlike some of the other stories on this list, rather than the main character getting drawn into the game world, the game world is drawn to the main character.

When his life starts to become more like a video game, Felix has to team up with his friends to figure out what is going on and try to stop it. This setup provides for a number of fun interactions, such as random household items transforming into game powerups and gear.

However, I also appreciated some of the clever ways the characters find to use their powers (and in particular, how they thwart their final boss).

This book combines time travel, computer games, and some very thorny puzzles as a group of friends are trapped in a virtual reality game from the future. This isn’t just a simple ‘solve the puzzles to get home’ story, though: there’s something darker going on behind the scenes and as more and more was revealed, I found myself dying to know what was happening. The story is fast-paced, great fun, and different from anything I’d read before.

I first read this book back in 2004 when I was spending way too much time with MMO games. This YA novel is certainly a product of a time where the tech of today was within sight but social media and smartphones didn't exist as we know them now. But the story more than makes up for this unfortunate timing with its witty characters, a structure reminiscent of the old Choose Your Own Adventure books and a fantasy game setting that leads this book to cross genres. I’m a big fan of sci-fi stories that follow the “Groundhog Day” structure like Returnal and Edge of Tomorrow. Do-overs are a crucial part of gaming and this novel builds that idea into its core premise while adding a unique twist.

The Land by Aleron Kong is the third litRPG on this list, and probably the most famous. Every litRPG uses a few ways to denote progression, but this book has an almost unending series of charts, numbers, rules, and powers for everything. And I do mean everything.

Character growth. Weapon quality. Town building. To career building. Even dungeon building.

Everything progresses. Everything has level-ups. The world is huge, and the events feel extremely epic. This is also the longest series on the list, with books so massive, you could knock a fool out with one.

Definitely worth the time, though. Don’t miss out.

An excellent Litrpg sci-fi series. The protagonist goes out beyond earth to discover new races and worlds, slowly gain power, and unearth the secret of the ancient race that started it all. He’s just a human, but he’ll change the galaxy in his quest for knowledge.

The best scfi-fi litrpg in my opinion, the character growth is very visible and keeps you glued to the pages as the protagonist struggle to raise himself. Through his eyes, I got to experience unearthing ancient, hidden cultures, find ancient relics, and uncover galactic-wide schemes that blew my mind away.

This story is set in an Arabic cyberpunk future in which the rest of the world has splintered into warring factions. Where you traditionally find the cityscapes of Gibson, here you have the Budayeen, with its narrow streets and souks, its bars and strip clubs abutting mosques, and the daily calls to prayer cutting through the cries of hawkers, gangsters, and unfortunate tourists.

Audran is the classic flawed detective: drug-addled and morally grey but with a cynicism that I can’t help but love. He is cowardly at times, brave at others, self-serving, and selfless—a character to get your teeth into! However, like many books written forty years ago, many female characters are unalived, and it’s gory in places, so be warned if that isn’t your taste.

Cyberpunk Noir isn’t everyone’s cup of tea (sorry), and this story is dark and downbeat, with two female protagonists who aren’t especially sympathetic, so readers tend to love this book or hate it. For me, the kinetic writing style, crackling dialogue, and richly-detailed descriptions of cyberspace—as well as the fresh take on the “locked-room murder” (a virtual reality parlor in this case)—makes it a highly-recommended read.