Foundations: Tower of Somnus Book 1 by Cale Plamann

Released July 6th, 2022

Originally released on Royal Road, Foundations follows Kat Debs a young woman sick of being controlled by the corporation (a state-like entity that controls the lives of their “employees”) she was born into. Kat is a young woman who graduates high school and gets placed in her legit job as a lab assistant while still working her runner job at night. Every night she escapes the control of the corporation by entering the Tower of Somnus. She starts off naive to the manipulation of one of her “friends”, but in the Tower, she learns his true character and finds real friends.

Plamann depicts Kat realistically to me. She is an overachiever who works to get herself and her family out of the crap situation they are stuck in. The slow storytelling let me get into Kat’s mind and really kept me hooked, don’t worry though the book reads pretty fast. The world-building strategy is very similar. We start off getting introduced to aspects of the world as background features, meaning there aren’t really “info dumps”, but they become important to the story as all good worldbuilding does.

The language of the books is clear, which I’ve said before is so important for sci-fi and fantasy books. This makes the story feel accessible to all readers and just very enjoyable.

I think this is my new favorite LitRPG.

Where to buy/read:

Kindle

Audiobook

Royal Road