The Primal Hunter #3 – By Zogarth

This is the third book of the hit LITRPG book series by Zogarth, originally published on Royal Road to become an Aethon Books title. The audiobook edition is narrated by Travis Baldree, and you can find the series on Amazon.com in eBook, print, and audio formats.

The Audio edition of this article is now available! Click below to tune in:

The Rating: 8/10

Book three of The Primal Hunter is a blessed reprieve from the isolated narrative we’ve seen thus far. Jake is back in the real world, meets new people, makes interesting new friends, and we start to see more character behind the name.

Add on some wonderfully creative world-building and we get a book that, while still lingering a bit too long on its action scenes, overall was a drastic improvement over books one and two.

I can safely say that I’m now hooked. Is this the best LITRPG series I’ve ever read? No, it’s not. Others have captured me more deeply and kept me chomping at the bit far more voraciously.

That doesn’t mean I’m not happy with book three of The Primal Hunter. I’m solidly along for the ride, and I’m happy to bump this book’s rating a full point up from the second entry.

Rating: A Refreshing 8/10

Recap

This is the third book of the series I’ve read and reviewed. I won’t lie, the first book was difficult to get through. While interesting and having all the elements in place to be a hit LITRPG title, something was missing.

That something was human connection and purpose. Our protagonist, Jake, a mild-mannered officer worker turned Hunter and fighter of monsters and man alike, was an isolated figure. This led to a book divided between what I would typically refer to as plot and character development, and Jake having long action scenes, the two narratives mostly disconnected.

This left me feeling uneasy with the future of the series, and to be honest, I very nearly called it quits. Had another book caught my eye or a new game come out we’d, not be having this review now.

I’m glad I stuck it out.

*Spoilers ahead. Please do not read further if you wish to avoid any potential spoilers. You have been warned!*

The Minotaur Mind Chief

Summary

*This one got a bit long, so feel free to scroll down if you want only the Good/Meh/Bad ratings segments.*

Book three starts strong with light LITRPG world-building as Jake learns new spells and plays around with magic, and his new wings. Thankfully, we quickly rushed ahead to Jake officially founding a city, with Miranda in charge. Miranda came to us at the end of book two. She and a few follow tutorial survivors found Jake’s city zone and were somewhat ambivalently allowed to stay.

Well, Jake didn’t want to deal with the hassle of being a city leader. As such, he pushed the job onto Miranda and went exploring.

It was at this point I was worried the book was going to make the same mistakes as previous entries—having Jake go off on a long drawn-out action adventure whilst all the interesting events happen without him.

While we still see a split narrative, one with Jake on his adventures and the other with Miranda at the city, and additional side characters settling in across the new world, thankfully, the plotlines are more complimentary than exclusionary.

Early into the book Jake makes a new friend—Hawkie, the Hawk.

Hawkie is an E-Grade Hawk that’s gained sentience and takes pity on Jake’s poor flying habits. As a reminder, at the end of book two Jake took a new skill allowing him to summon temporary dragon wings. The Hawk moves in to correct Jake, mostly via head pecks and wing flaps, and the two become fast friends.

This friendship leads Jake to the Cloud Continent.

The Cloud Continent was a refreshing change of pace from the generic forest and cave biomes we’ve seen thus far. The continent is a massive landmass in the sky, kept aloft by a bedrock of clouds. Upon the continent is an entire ecosystem of life, including giant birds, wind elements, and more. Hawkie and Jake go exploring.

Not too long later, Hawkie introduces Jake to his mate—Mistie, a Mist Hawk in the D-Grade. And Hawkie has another surprise besides, an egg. The two hawks are tending to their first egg, seeking to enact a powerful ritual to empower their hatchling within.

Jake thinks this is all grand and helps, securing much-needed powerful materials for the ritual via fighting a massive elemental and providing some of his own, thus bonding himself to the Hawk family. Hawkie and Mistie decide to follow Jake home and make nest within his valley.

We take a break from exploring in the sky when Jake returns to his city to find news of a fort nearby with thousands of people in a bad spot, being regularly attacked by monsters and facing overcrowding.

Miranda wants them as citizens of the city, so off we go!

Upon arriving at the fort we are introduced to the commander, Philip. While their introduction is a bit tense due to the state of the world, quickly the power disparity between them and Jake forces the fort into negotiations to potentially relocate to the city.

The fort has seen regular and consistent attacks by evolved cows and bulls, always in about the same number, just enough to be a threat but not enough to turn deadly. Jake calls foul on this, rightfully suspecting a greater mind behind the attacks, and goes off to find and deal with them.

Enter the Minotaur Mindchief. The Minotaur is a vengeful sadist of a creature, one having been a bull but evolving to gain sentience and advance to D-Grade. Unfortunately, the Minotaur remembers his past treatment and develops a somewhat deserved hatred of humanity. If that were all, it might be fine, but the Minotaur goes too far, killing and torturing his way across the local farmlands.

Jake introduces himself like the good neighbor he is, the two duke it out, and roast beef ends up back on the menu. I summarize, but the entire process of tracking the Minotaur down, the fight, and a very large battle back at the fort were all highlights of the book.

The remainder of the book introduces us to Sylfie—Hawkie and Mistie’s baby hawk hatched—who happens to form a strong bond with Jake, seeing him as something of an uncle. That’s right, the bird is sentient as well, though still young. Cute scenes of fluffy bird times follow.

From there, Jake fights a massive D-Grade fungal beast, evolves into D-Grade himself, choosing a new class based on his archery and magical prowess, and earns a never-before-seen profession upgrade—The Heretical Chosen—based on his informal and irreverent friendship with an ancient viper god, the Malefic Viper.

This new profession makes Jake no longer reliant on the Viper for his skills and grants him the unique ability to dive into the Viper’s past to glean inspiration for ability upgrades. I’m excited to see where this takes us in the future.

Thus the book closes as we look forward to a World Congress in book 4, potential reunions, and perhaps new foes.

Mistie and her Egg

The Good

We get a lot of character interaction with Jake in this book. While he still goes off on his own often, for a good chunk of the book he’s playing off new and established figures. This helped a lot with pacing, giving us more plot and character development than the previous two books combined.

Overall, the action scenes were less drawn out in book three. I still could have done with a few fewer fights, or making them shorter, but overall they were more manageable than those that came before.

And most of the fights present had new stakes involved, or at the very least a real foe to contend with. It’s only so interesting seeing Jake fight unintelligent beasts. Fighting a speaking sentient creature, one with a will as powerful if not more than his own is far more exciting.

I also really enjoyed the dynamic between Jake and the Hawks he befriends. They are unable to outright converse due to a language barrier, but they fall into a good rhythm and it makes for some very sweet scenes with the baby chick and as Jake gets to know his new friends better.

Overall, a lot of improvements this time around. More character interaction, more character development, more varied world-building, and better more interesting opponents all make for a much-improved read.

The Meh

I still found the fight scenes are drawn out. Not all, but when Jake is off simply exploring for the sake of exploring I tend to find myself growing bored.

One should never be bored during action, at least not if it’s done right.

A bit less action for the sake of action could graduate the series from a fun but ultimately mid-tier entry into the genre to being one of the greats.

The Bad

Thankfully, I don’t have anything specific to place in THE BAD. I have some ongoing complaints about pointless fight scenes, but they fell in THE MEH of this review.

This book was a big improvement over the initial two entries.

I’m hopeful for the next, and plan to report in shortly upon it!

Final Thoughts

This was my third review of this series. I think going forward I’ll be reviewing the books in groupings of two or three at a time. We’re well established in the world by now, and quite simply I don’t see the value for readers in individual book reviews at this stage of the series.

That may change if I run into one book in particular that is either exception or very bad, but for now, my next review of Primal Hunter will be a group deal.

See you then!