Awaken Online: Apathy (AO 3.5), by Travis Bagwell

Awaken Online: Apathy is the fifth instalment (based on publication order) in the epic LitRPG saga written by Travis Bagwell that revolves around a fictional Virtual Reality MMORPG named Awaken Online. It is the second Side Quest in this saga, which deviates from Jason’s main story, and focuses on other characters and their stories. Therefore, it is the instalment number 3.5 when setting it within the book order. I’d recommend to read it either after Evolution, since that is where Eliza gets first introduced, or before Evolution based on the timeline (Apathy takes place just before Evolution in the timeline).

Awaken online: Apathy takes another break from Jason, and focuses on one of his newer friends and companions, Eliza. In this Side Quest, we get to know who she is in real life and what her motivations are for playing Awaken Online.

Following Eliza, we slowly get to know more about the water affinity, it’s powers and magic, different applications these can have and different methods they can be used and combined. It does allow us to see that all affinities have some restrictions, and specific benefits over the others.

In this entry we do also get the first glance at herbalism and potions within Awaken Online. We learn that potions don’t just appear and exist like in our real life MMORPGs or other games, but require precise ingredients that have to be collected or grown, a long training, and concrete knowledge about the plants and herbs used to create them. We also learn that potions might cause side effects on the players and characters if not taken with caution.

And then there’s the Hippie (the water affinity God), and Fluffly, his sheep companion. They spent most of the time trying to annoy Eliza, and providing her with quests which she has to overcome and which force her to evolve much further than she was planning an expecting.

What’s it about? – Synopsis

Eliza’s parents are relentless – forcing her to constantly take extra courses to prepare for college and medical school. Sometimes, it feels like her entire life has already been planned out.

Which is why she leaps at the chance to escape into a new virtual reality game, Awaken Online. What she wasn’t expecting was to encounter a capricious god and his loyal “pet.” Or to be chosen as this god’s “avatar” within the game and forced to tackle a series of asinine quests.

Yet, she just can’t shake the feeling that there is more to the irritating god than first meets the eye.

What did I think? – Opinion

I’m pretty sure the books isn’t called “Apathy” for no reason.

I didn’t like it. I mean, there’s clearly some aspects I do like, for example learning more about how alchemy and herbalism work within Awaken Online, and about the water affinity. But in general terms I didn’t like it.

I found it do be slow and quite boring when compared to the previous entries, and it did not cause the same amount of excitement.

I don’t like the character of Eliza. To me she simply appears as a dull, boring, whiny, weak willed, bland teenager with almost no personality. And I don’t like the Hippie. In the review of the previous entry I already mention it, and I can only repeat myself. The Hippie is just as insufferable as Eliza is boring, although I can empathize with how Eliza feels towards the Hippie, because every time he appears it’s just like “do we really need to do this now?”.

Apart from that I do also find Elizas backstory, and real life character just boring.
It’s nice to have these Side Quest novels to get to know the characters better and understand where they come from, but if I had known how this novel was going to unfold, I’d probably have skipped it.

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