Otherworldly: A Shadowed Awakening – Allora Lee

It’s hard to tell where to place this review. The ebook with the same cover art is titled “Otherworldly: A Shadowed Awakening”, and Goodreads has an entry under that title, with no reviews. So placing this review here seems less correct but more useful. Targeting the review has another problem: ‘Otherworldly’ started as a webnovel, and the split between ASA and the second book (“A Dark Journey”) unfortunately leaves us with a short, gloomy first book and a much-more-upbeat and -interesting second book. It is more useful to review them as a set.

On the surface, Otherworldly has a lot in common with many LitRPG novels: The protagonist is taken from our world (or, in this case, a world that has a lot in common with ours) to a world where magic works under RPG-like mechanics. People have character classes, levels, numeric attributes which are controlled by a System that apparently serves this world’s gods. It differs - in a good way - in that the focus is not on the growth of the protagonist’s power but on the growth of the protagonist’s character.

In “Otherworldly: A Shadowed Awakening” we meet the protagonist’s appalling family, which can pretty-much be divided into the neglectful and the abusive. In “Otherworldly: A Dark Journey” the protagonist travels away from her family, and has an opportunity - takes the opportunity - to redefine herself. That makes for a much-better story.

The protagonist is eight years old. She is in many ways mature beyond her years, and she has been gifted with exceptional powers, so it is easy for the reader to overlook the fact that she spends almost all of the trip carrying or clutching a stuffed doll.