A LitRPG series by Cale Plamann.
Aliens visited humanity forty years ago, evaluating them for induction into the Galactic Consensus, the universe's government. Earth's megacorps proved themselves wholly unfit, and the aliens left in disgust. But not before leaving something behind: Access to a galaxy-wide game, the Tower of Somnus, which could be played during sleep. In the Tower, humanity can meet and interact with other races, eventually evolving to become worthy of joining.
Also, powers you earn in the game can be used in real life outside of it. The aliens didn't see a need to inform the megacorps of that ahead of time.
Katherine Debbs is a hereditary employee of Ike Holdings, a wholly-owned subsidiary of GroCorp, destined to never pay off the debt she was born with despite her impeccable grades and drive to succeed. To supplement her family's income, she acts as a runner for the Chrome Dogs, an "extralegal" organization that smuggles information between various wealthy clients.
Shortly after graduation from high school, Arnold, Kat's only friend and the son of a low-level manager, offers her a subscription to the Tower of Somnus so that she can help him in the game. This is an impossible opportunity that she would never have been able to afford. Players earn power and prestige that they would never be able to gain on their own, and even better this subscription comes without any of the normal responsibilities to a corporation. She just has to help her short-sighted friend make something of himself before his dad discovers he burned his college fund. Simple.
Meanwhile, one of Kat's standard runs turns into an ambush, and she barely escapes with her life. She soon discovers that she and the Chrome Dogs are being targeted for information they smuggled, and they are going to need to use every trick they can—including Kat's new powers—to survive.
There are currently three books in the series:
- Foundations (released July 2022)
- Chiwaukee Nights (released August 2022)
- Starfall (to be released November 2022)
This series provides examples of:
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: The default. The Earth is ruled by megacorporations, and while it's supposed to be a meritocracy, it's blatantly obvious that everything is heavily weighted in favor of the powerful. Even ignoring that, the highest levels only get where they are by breaking the already unbalanced laws, stealing from and assassinating each other.
- Evil Gloating: Anna constantly crows about how she's outmaneuvered Kat, how she's breaking the law so competently, and how Kat will never win. Kat keeps killing all her mercenaries and becoming more famous in the process.Kat: I tried to get her to stop explaining her plans. She didn't.
- One-Man Army: Kat starts as an excellent runner, capable of outmaneuvering powerful mercenaries and samurai. Then she gets magic powers, and every mission turns into "try to sneak around, get caught, kill everything."
- Pragmatic Villainy: The higher-level executives are universally terrible people, but they also tend to be smart people—if they weren't, they'd be dead. Belle Donnst considers revenge a waste of resources, and refuses to entertain the possibility of selling off the planet to the highest bidder.
- Red Baron: Once a street samurai gains enough renown, they are awarded a "name," a simple title. Traditionally, a samurai earns a name either by pulling off an extremely impressive mission or by killing another named samurai. After her first mission, Xander nominates Kat for the name "Erinyes." Everyone else scoffs at this... until they see the video of her killing her way through seven extremely famous named samurai.
- Slut-Shaming:
- Anna claims Kat gets everything she wants by Sleeping Their Way to the Top. Accusing her of sleeping with Arnold, while incorrect, at least makes sense, since Arnold clearly has a crush on Kat. Accusing her of sleeping with Dorrik and Kaleek, on the other hand, makes so little sense that Kat can't even be offended. Their reproductive systems are completely incompatible, and Kaleek often jokes about how ugly Kat is to him.
- Iris very specifically does not shame her friend Alicia for sleeping with famous musicians. Alicia doesn't help by insisting that she didn't sleep with all of them.
- Smug Snake: Anna Donnst thinks she is much, much more competent than she actually is, and lashes out whenever anyone proves better than her, even by accident. According to her mother, it took massive bribes to keep her grades at a reasonable level; despite all her advantages, Anna would have been headed for factory work otherwise.
- Square Race, Round Class: Classes in the Tower are based on random drops, though it is weighted towards an avatar's demonstrated skills. Dorrik recommends the footpad class for Kat, but when a relatively rare caster class drops, Arnold insists she take it. Kat does well with the gravity elementalist class, but Dorrik implies she would be doing much better with footpad.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: None of the heroes like Belle Donnst, but since she's the highest level person they can find who isn't trying to sell the entire species into slavery, they know they have to work with her.
- Unwitting Pawn: Anna Donnst didn't realize until the literal last minute that she was just her mother's patsy. The whole time, when she thought her mother was "trusting her to get the job done," was just Belle distancing herself from a scapegoat.
