So excited to hand sell this ! I have actually had this recommended to me in my store. So fun and campy and weird!

This was certainly...unique? The premise kind of fell apart around the middle, as I'd expected more about the frame narrative and the meta-story of the VR game. Also, the humor was a bit odd, and I still don't understand why a toothbrush was involved (or in the title).

I was excited to read this book because it sounded so interesting but unfortunately it wasn't the book for me and I didn't end up finishing it.

This book has an interesting concept, but fell short. I couldn't get past the actual style of the text - it was not written or formatted correctly. These issues made it difficult to read. For some reason, almost every piece of dialogue is accompanied by the characters' names as well, which was...not fun to read. For example, a single page had "Curly said", "Curly stammered", and "Curly asked" on it (as well as similar things for other characters).
Beyond the issues with the actual writing, the story was confusing to me and jumped into the meat of the plot too quickly. I tried rereading to see if I could take more in, but eventually just gave up. Perhaps there are others out there who would enjoy this one, but it was not for me.

Not what I was expecting! Unfortunately this book dives right into the action, so much so that I didn’t really understand fully what was happening as there was no context of the game they were playing, and no time to connect with any of the characters beforehand. Not a bad book but not a favourite either.

This story is about 4 people working together to make it through a role playing game. The book description is very apt, take heed. This book is an enjoyable addition to this role playing based genre. I had many questions as I read the book, but with no spoilers most were answered in the epilogue. Don’t read it first though I think that would spoil the story. Thank you to Buzzbooks.net, Radiated Skulls Publications LLC and NetGalley for the ARC. The views expressed are all mine, freely given.

This book was a little difficult to read at first with the game play distracting from the flow of the story. I had to almost ignore it in order to stop being stopped and started by it. For those accustomed to dice games it may be less distracting. The story itself was ok if lacking a little in depth. I enjoyed the book and enjoyed the ending but feel it could have been a more rounded story.

Over the last several years I have read a lot of LitRPG novels, so I thought I knew what to expect. While the general idea of people being trapped within a game is a classic trope, Theodore Thomas’s Toothless still managed to surprise me a bit. I’d have liked a bit more explanation at the start on how things worked beyond that the program would adapt by being able to read their minds, but I think that’s the gaming nerd in me who always wants to know how games work before I play them. And I do think calling this a horror novel isn’t completely accurate because honestly I found myself laughing rather than being scared. The characters are insane and seriously over the top, and I mean that in a good way. Seriously, the quest starts with the group out in search for a missing haunted toothbrush! I have to say I actually like that kind of silliness. No, what surprised me was how the tale was told. It felt unlike any other LitRPG I’ve read. I don’t have any better way to describe it than to say it actually felt like I was observing my nephew and his friends playing a game of D&D, were the program, I suppose, is the dungeon master describing what is happening and the characters are making various roles to see if their actions are successful. Hope that doesn’t sound bad, I just can’t think of a better way to describe it. I have to say it was quite a novel way of writing a novel (pun intended) and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It was a unique spin on the genre and I always like seeing writers trying to bring something fresh to the table. 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4. Thanks to Radiated Skull Publications and NetGalley for the chance to review an eARC of Toothless.

I received an arc of Toothless from netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a book with an interesting concept, filled with interesting ideas and what I feel like could have been fascinating characters that I just didn’t connect with. The story itself is a LitRPG Horror that from the dedications at the beginning might have been based on an actual game played with real players and adjusted to fit the narrative of the book.

I’m the sort of loner who has never played but has listened to and watched games like these be played but never read a book, so I was drawn to reading a story about a group of people stuck in a virtual reality game that played that way. Since we sort of got thrown into the world after the players choose what they were looking for: setting, and characters, I spent a lot of time thinking about how the “roll of the dice” worked when they were “physically” there for things like noticing what was around them or fighting, and I finally figured out it was partly that the system did appear to be reading their mind, and partly that chance played a huge role in what they could do and sense as their characters.

After all, in the real world, they don’t carry around guns or have the ability to see ghosts, so things like this being decided by a roll of the dice made sense.

That said, while I was invested at first, I honestly became less and less invested as the story went along, and unfortunately that had a lot to do with the characters. The characters themselves had a lot of potentials, and some even had some great moments connecting and fighting. I liked how Curly, the fake cowboy, couldn’t seem to hit the gremlins with his guns so he just kept kicking them. I loved how Franklin was basically forced, like all healers, to spend his time running away from all dangers during a fight, and Bezaria had some great horror moments, and her greatest fight moment is when she catches two gremlins in her hat (the poor bunny).

That said, the dice rolling soon became a shorthand for how I was reading the fight, and I had to go back to read the text, and I realized at some point I’d disconnected from the characters. The glitches in the world just weren’t that frightening, and the mental horror was just not that engaging to be honest. Plus, around the time the characters started talking about how they were losing their own memories to the ones of their characters, I realized I knew very little about either, just touches here and there, and I had nothing but a little bit of personality to cling to.

The comedy in the horror also just didn’t land for me. I like how the toothbrush was used in the narrative, but I felt like in the end it was underutilized and a bit boring honestly.

I’ll talk about it a little more in my blog, but by the time the epilogue came about with the big twist, I was rather ambivalent.

I think that the structure and overall setting were great, and there’s real potential here, and maybe someone who grew up playing these games will love it, but honestly, by the end, I was disengaged and a little bored. Not a bad book, just not one that I’m chomping at the bit to read again.

SPOILERS!!!!!!!!! SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!

So, through some flowery language during the epilogue, we learn that the players weren’t in a game of the sort that we assumed at first. The game is actually used as a form of new, untested therapy, which means that the glitches were meant to be, and I believe this was meant for Albrecht to face himself as his different parts and certain traumatic parts of his past. So, one player who was split into four people with one name Albrecht as sort of the “main personality”.

I really can’t speak to what I think of this twist, as I said, by the time I read this, I wasn’t invested in anything happening in this story. All I can say is that it sort of justified me not caring about any of these characters because apparently only one of them was “real” and even that one I still couldn’t dredge up much feeling toward.

Once again, this could have just not been the book for me. Something about the characters, despite their quirky descriptions and gathering horror at their situation, didn’t grab me, and while the situation they found themselves in was interesting, I didn’t find it very horrifying.

If you’re interested in LiRPG then I’d totally give it a try if you have an ebook, I found it easily enough on kindle and it’s a short, fast read!

Toothless by Theodore Thomas.
Toothless is a LitRPG Horror novel about four individuals who must navigate through a glitched game system that reads their minds and knows their fears. It is a gripping tale that explores the bounds of friendship and exploits the secret fears we keep trapped deep within.
A really good read. Different. Great story and characters. I loved the cover. It's what drew me to read it. 4*.

DNF

Disclosure: I was provided an advance copy via Netgalley.

Toothless is an interesting concept. It takes the bones of a table top rpg (IE: dungeons and dragons) and provides a full narrative. I love TTRPG's and I love Horror, so I thought this would be a winning combo for me. I think without a breakdown of the rules system, the integration of the tabletop rules in to the story doesn't quite work. I made it to about the 30% mark and called it quits. The story didn't hook me, and the TTRPG didn't work in this setting. Probably 2* based on where I got overall.