This is the first entry into Casey White’s CoreVerse series of books. As its tagline says this book is essentially a monster-hunting LitRPG. There’s magic, there are monsters, there are people called hunters who, well, hunt said monsters, and there’s a progression system that one usually sees in RPG games.

The story follows Trellin, a part human and part treant (a tree species), who is at one of the lowest levels for hunters, and is stuck there because of familial duties and being from a remote outpost. Things quickly start looking up for him though when a chance encounter with a silver-tag huntress (second strongest) results in her deciding to take him on as her shadow. Finally being able to travel away from home, encounter new monsters, learn, and maybe get stronger to level up is a chance too good for him to pass up. What Trellin soon finds out is that his mentor has a few problems of her own which have now become his problems as her shadow.

There’s plenty of action, character growth, a steady flow to the story to keep one engaged, machiavellian plots among the hunters, and of course plenty of monster fights. The story is broken up into several small chapters which made reading this very easy, and at times I found myself saying ‘Just one more chapter for today’ only to read 3-4 more before realising. The story is engrossing, the concept of magic interesting, and while the book does follow a typical fantasy trope of the underdog against the rest, it was different enough that I quite liked it.

While there are a few questions that are left unanswered, the fact that there will be more books in this series gives me hope that they will eventually be addressed. Overall, this was quite an addictive read and I throughly enjoyed it. Looking forward to the next entry in this series. Definitely recommended.

Rating: 4/5

Links:

• Amazon: Roots and Steel – Casey White
• LitRPG
• Treant

P.S. While I did receive an advance review copy for free, this review is completely voluntarily.