SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

A couple of categories came really close to winning the nominations for January, Lit RPG and Space Pirates. I'm not familiar with either but would like to read some. Please help! Much appreciated. Thanks!

LitRPG

Welcome to Ludus (Delvers LLC #1) by Blaise Corvin is about two friends who are zapped into a different world by an arrogant god called Dolos. They're left to survive in a world that's completely different from present day Earth and figure out a way to get back home.

Corvin is one of the better LitRPG authors and I plan to read all of his books.

Survival Quest (Way of the Shaman #1) by Vasily Mahnenko. A Russian LitRPG and one of the better series that have a decent balance between game play, plot & character progression. In a future world, criminals are put into the VR game Barliona to serve their time and have a chance of gaining enough money to buy their way out of jail.

Ascend Online (Ascend Online #1) by Luke Chmilenko. A Canadian author. This one has a group of friends entering a new VR game together. Most of the story takes place in the game but you get to see how the game changes all of their lives in & out of the game.

SpeedRunner (Tower of Babel #1) by Adam Elliott. This one takes place on Earth. A weird phenomenon caused earthquakes along the east coast, all the people on Manhattan disappeared and a huge tower appeared in the middle of the empty city. Even with minor mistakes, this is one of the best Indie LitRPG books I read. Vikas Adam did a fantastic job narrating this one.

Space Pirates

Leviathan Wakes (Expanse #1) by authors James S.A. Corey. It took me a while to get into this story but it's worth it. Characters that grow on you and a nice take of life in space.

Space Team (Space Team #1) by Barry J. Hutchison is great! A friend of mine recommended it to me. If you enjoy dorky humor and lively characters, you will enjoy this book. It's about the last surviving human of planet Earth & the group of mismatched aliens that get stuck with him.

Two I enjoyed:

LitRPG - Sufficiently Advanced Magic

Space Pirates - Poor Man's Fight

Both are 1st books in on-going series

Besides the ones mentioned already, I just have one LitRPG series. It's the Spells, Swords & Stealth series by Drew Hayes. The first book is NPCs.

It's a little different than some of the others mentioned here, in that it follows NPCs (non player characters) in a Dungeons and Dragons type of gaming world. Basically we get to see how the regular people in that world deal with the player controlled characters. It's a lot of fun and the characters are great. There are currently 3 books in the series, with another on the way.

Barbary Station and Mutiny at Vesta are about space pirates. I haven't read the second one yet (it's a sequel to Barbary Station) but I liked the former, it's not the best scifi Ive ever read but some light and tasty pirate-y entertainment

Thanks Soo, Conal, Bobby, Ine, these look like fun. I looked at all of them in Amazon. I wouldn't have found them on my own. I'll read one or more over the holidays, good time super escapism. :) If you think of anymore, please add them.