REVIEW: Born Different (book) by V. Nator

Born Different is a monster evolution LitRPG fantasy. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Click hatches from an egg at the same time as their many other siblings, but while most of those siblings rush out and immediately get eaten by other larger monsters in the Rockford Hamlet Dungeon that is their home, Click is more cautious. They learn from others' experiences and gradually figure out how to catch their own food...only to find themselves at the mercy of a bully of a larger sibling, who forces them to hunt and then steals all their food. After evolving enough to scare off their bully and move on, Click continues to learn how the world works and tries to make the best choices it can whenever the System prompts it.

Meanwhile, the humans living outside Rockford Hamlet Dungeon aren't wild about the signs that the dungeon is awakening. Adventurers have been called in to clean the place out enough to force it back into dormancy. They represent the biggest threat Click has ever encountered, and Click will do whatever they can to protect their home and their people.

The cover for this one snagged my attention and made me think of Okina Baba's So I'm a Spider, So What? I was happy to see that this wasn't just a rehash of that series - Click was a monster right from the start, rather than a human reborn as a monster, and Click's evolutionary path went in a completely different direction from the one taken by the main character in Okina Baba's story. 

Overall, this book was just...okay. Click, unlike their siblings, was born with a much higher Intellect level. Unfortunately, you could really see the author struggle with how to write from the POV of a nonhuman character trying to learn about the world without referencing behaviors, concepts, body parts, etc. that only a human would be familiar with.

It was relatively interesting, seeing where Click's evolutionary path would go and how they'd go about solving various problems. I think readers were supposed to sympathize with Click as a very smart little spider bullied by one of its brawnier siblings, but I wasn't entirely sure I actually liked this character whose evolutionary choices seemed designed for mind control. Still, Click was a monster, and I didn't really need to like them in order to want to see where their story would take them.

There's no indication on my copy of this book that this is part of a series, but this is definitely only the very beginning of a larger story - just as Click was starting to get new ideas, inspired by seeing human technology and weapons in action, the book ended. It looks like this was originally published on Royal Road, so I checked there, and there are a few additional chapters and indications that the author hopes to publish another volume after this one, but the last update was almost 2 years ago. Even though this was only a so-so read for me, I wouldn't mind continuing it for at least another volume or two, so I guess we'll see whether those additional volumes ever happen.