Darkness Named

dARkness: Online #1

by Riley S. Keene

In the False Lands, it's either git gud or die.

Tanisha Richards, known as Koest in dARkness: Online, isn't your typical augmented reality mobile gamer. She's a deer-hunting engineer from Oregon who lives in a self-sustainable house but drives a really inefficient truck.

She also happens to be in a wheelchair.

When the loot of a lifetime shows up during a potentially bugged event, Tanisha rushes out into the wilderness to capitalize on some intern's mistake. She was expecting some amazing drops. What she got was dropped into the False Lands.

Will Tanisha be able to survive in a reality ruled by the systems in dARkness: Online, or is it GG?

Darkness Named is the first in a the dARkness: Online Trilogy. It features a diverse cast of characters, LitRPG crafting and building elements, augmented reality gaming, and a ton of references to the games we've enjoyed over the years!

340 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 31, 2019

About the author

Riley S. Keene is the pseudonym for a husband-and-wife writing duo, also known as Robert and Kristen. They live in the Pacific Northwest and enjoy the rainstorms, lack of sunlight, and excess oxygen that come with living in that part of the US.
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Robert is a Pacific Northwest native who has a degree in Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences. He has a love for video games and a dislike for pretty much everything else. Robert is in charge of writing the first draft for all of our books.
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Kristen was born and raised in a town outside of Philadelphia. She has a degree in Multimedia Design and works full-time as a marketer for a Seattle engineering firm. She loves gloomy weather, good books, food made from animals, and spending time with Robert. Kristen is in charge of outlining and editing for all of our books.

Reviews

[GaiusPrimus · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really cool take on the genre. Portal story, focused more on survival and crafting but with some great mechanics and an awesome main character, struggling through her own set of problems.

Will keep an eye out for others in the series.

[Forrest · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not for me. 1.5 stars.

Way too much whining from the MC who has a major chip on her shoulder. Would not have been so bad if she wasn’t the only character for 95% of the book. Plus way too much talking about what she was doing and why she was doing it rather than just doing it. Even worse, all the complaining and explaining why she wasn’t going to do the thing she obviously needed to do. I found myself skimming/speed reading through the last third of the book just to get it over with faster.

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although there are several LitRPG books with disabled individuals in them, this is the first one I've seen where the disability is integral to the story. Our main character is in a wheelchair, and that makes her approach to hunting, leveling, crafting, and even traveling a bit different from your average LitRPG character. I'm really impressed at how well the author stuck to the limitations of the main character, and made them a part of the story. This is a great tale, and not just because the main character is disabled, but because the main character is resourceful, and that always makes for an interesting story. This one is interesting as well, and although it's only partly in the LitRPG world itself, it's still a book I'd highly recommend to any LitRPG fan.

Merged review:

This was a very good story. I tend to enjoy stories where the main character overcomes challenges and comes out on top, but when you're already challenged, then you're dumped into an environment where those challenges make things twice as hard as usual, it's always nice to see the characters cope. This story is a very good one, and I strongly urge any LitRPG fans to take a peek at this one, I assure you, that you won't be disappointed.

[A. Q.]

It's not a bad story, it's quite good, I read it till 40ish% but it's just not for me.
The wheelchair that Otekah gave to Tanisha is the one that really baffle me.
It doesn't make sense for me, how will she fight, and if the wheelchair is like the one in the book cover, she will bend a lot if she use that when fighting with melee weapon.
And that really make my back hurt just to read it.