Like them I do not. That’s my biggest issue with Dungeon Crawler Carl (once it gets going and stops info-dumping). I just tried to read Apocalypse Eater. It’s a bit unfair to the author, but I only made it to page 2. The universe is awful enough that I don’t want to know any more about it.
I don’t leave bad stars or reviews for things such as that. It’s not the author’s fault that I don’t like that sub-genre. The start of my chapter one includes a (not explicit) gay sex scene. I want readers to know to bail out of my book quickly if that’s not their cup of tea rather than sneak it up on them later. I’m OK with the idea of bailing out on page 2. I don’t know that it’s ever happened to me before, though.
I don’t like post-apocalypse books for much the same reason and I’m writing one.
There are parts of my Earth that will become dystopic. For the most part, I’m ignoring them. There will (probably) eventually be connections, but at the start I’m leaving the awfulness off-screen. There is a reason the book is set in the country, not a city.
The 5th Directive has billions of people die – but it hasn’t happened, yet (by book 2; book 3 is still pre-order). Judging by what’s happened so far, it will be brutal and ugly and also mostly not relevant to our intrepid hero (and friends). It’s also a one-off, not a semi-stable dystopia. This is the approach I’m taking.
Unrelated: I’ve solved the monster wave (lack thereof) problem. Monster count is based on human count. The area is sparsely human-populated, so it’s also sparsely monster-populated. I do need a monster wave attack on the town, but they need to discover safe zones first. I think I may defer it into book 2. There is so much going on in book 1, already. Maybe near the end (which is all that’s not written, yet).
Note that this also makes cities places one does not want to be. Good luck building a wall around a modern city. Even though not physically impossible (see Great Wall of China), how are you going to man it?
