Awaken Online: Timeless is the fourteenth 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.

After the catastrophic world-altering event at the end of Armageddon, we’re back. We need to know what happens and how this story is going to unfold. And I can already tell you there’s some major jaw-dropping reveals in Timeless.

After waiting for so long, we finally meet the Avatar of Earth! And she has some really interesting abilities (and more) to show us. We also get to explore a new and quite hostile area of Awaken Online: Pax, the Earth City, where players are not exactly welcome.

And holy molly, a lot happens in this book. We learn more about the origins of Awaken Online, the Gods and the world itself, as well as some very unexpected things about the real world. There’s time travel, multiple timelines, a rebellion and, obviously, a massive battle.

And like always, our favourite villain and protagonist sits in the middle of everything, gets some special treatment over every other player of Awaken Online and performs some batshit crazy stunts you wouldn’t even think of.

Awaken Online: Timeless – My Opinion

Overall I liked it! So much happens and so many new things are revealed that you’re finally able to put things together and find out more about the history of Awaken Online and the Gods.

Cady and Jason are the two characters we follow throughout this book. Cady, the Avatar of Earth, became a Time Mage during the game’s beta, uses Time as a substitute of mana and has some awesome abilities that let her travel in time. Her story, explaining how she amassed so much time and became capable of doing all the things she does, is pretty cool, albeit slightly confusing at first.

Thanks to Cady we learn some unexpected truths about Awaken Online, like for example that the in-game Gods are ACTUAL humans, who are part of the Lazarus Program and who have lived in-game for over a thousand years, and with time have lost their mind and become the deities they are now.

The Lazarus Project and how it relates to the Gods and Avatars is probably one of the most interesting parts. It starts to make sense of a lot of things we’ve been seeing throughout the series and connects the dots between Awaken Online, Finn, Cady, Eliza, the Gods, etc.

I also found the multiverse style timelines and the fact that the different timelines were quite different to each other interesting, and that if you messed with the timelines, massive ‘Hall Monitors’ would spawn to kill you and rectify your changes. This really reminded me of Marvel’s Time Variance Authority (TVA) which we saw in the TV Show Loki, where instead of these ‘Hall Monitors’ you have Minutemen and Hunters.

Another thing I really liked was learning how humans initially didn’t have mana or the ability to use magic, but gained these thanks to the different old races and old Avatars treating them like slaves and food by giving them a potion that made them behave like zombies.

But not everything is amazing! For example, I like the idea of The Hive, Cady’s secret base and her clone strategy, but it feels too convenient, too good. I know it’s something she setup over “a long time” but it feels weird that no one from Cerillion Entertainment, no one in-game and not even Alfred (as far as we know) ever noticed that pocket dimension.

And then there’s also the way all of Cady’s clones are bound by a contract with the Goddess of Earth, and Jason just casually figures out a loophole to free them from this contract and, on top of that, to use them to harvest a ton of zombie clones of himself to serve as a command network for controlling thousands of zombies without draining his own mana pool. Again, it just feels too convenient, good and easy. But this seems to be a recurring theme when it comes to Jason.

And then the big battle, the assault. It’s quite refreshing since we’re so used to Jason never failing. But this time, it takes Jason and Cady six attempts to succeed, and they only get them because The Fates (Goddess of Earth) performs a global timeline reset due to the catastrophic changes their failures cause. This also shows the power The Fates (Goddess of Earth) has, and why the other Gods show her some respect.

During these attacks, Jason discovers who the Caretaker of the Vault actually is (or was). And holy shit, I did not see that coming. This definitely changes things.

At the end of all of this, we’re left with a new safe zone in the form of the city of Pax, brought forward to the present timeline and greatly improved and fortified by Cady’s clones. Players and residents can escape there through a network of escape portals, and a “Mark of Malice” system is implemented to avoid enemy players and factions from fighting each other.

All of this to unite for the upcoming war against the Old Avatars and Races, and even Cerillion itself.

I mean it sounds like we’re up for some action in the next entry of the Awaken Online books!

Oh and I’m not going to say much, but the epilogue just goes ahead and drops TWO massive plot twists. Yes, you read that right, not one but TWO!

So overall I liked it! It’s a worthy entry and if you’ve read the previous novels I’d definitely recommend it. And I’m looking forward to Crucible.

Rating

Awaken Online: Timeless, by Travis Bagwell

Book Title: Awaken Online: Timeless

Book Description: Awaken Online: Timeless is the fourteenth 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.

Book Author: Travis Bagwell

Book Format: EBook

Publisher Logo:

Date published: 1 September, 2023

ISBN: B0CCFCSJPR

Number Of Pages: 781

• Story
• Characters
• Narration
• Entertainment
• Recommendability

Overall

3.4

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