One Adventurer’s junk is another Crab’s treasure.
Balthazar was just a random giant crab enjoying his life in a fantasy world full of bothersome human adventurers, but then he had to go and accidentally discover the secret of attributes and levels. And also pie.
With baked goods and coin as his new life goals, he turns to the competitive business of trading the random junk adventurer’s loot every day.
Follow Balthazar as he does everything to find a baker… except leave his pond, because exploring the dangerous world out there is for suckers. Witness how adventurers just can’t seem to stop dying around his home. And cheer for a crab who makes great new friends by simply buying them.
As of writing this review, I’ve read the first published ebook.
I’ve read a few LitRPG stories now that where the premise almost seems to come from a meme. All the Dust That Falls follows a robovac that gets isekai’d. Rock Falls, Everyone Dies is about a rock trying to roll down a mountain. Merchant Crab, you’ve guessed it, is about a crab.
From what I can tell, the trick to meme books is pacing. You have to move fast, get the reader invested in the characters and an escalating plot quickly, before the novelty of the meme wears thin. I am not sure that Merchant Crab did this for me. Chapters feels like episodical arcs, many events feel like randomly generated encounters when playing DnD (which they probably are given the comments of several adventurers), and the larger multibook plotline seems overshadowed by the cliched “Greedy merchant doesn’t like the new crab on the block” book arc.
Balthazar, our main crustaceon, is written to be grouchy. A literal crabby crab. Initially this is humorous, and the coincidence-filled setup of the first few chapters is well-constructed. When this continues onward though, it makes the MC unlikeable, instead of funny. I was assuming that the LitRPG system of skills and stat points would solve this, and Balthazar’s constant investment into intelligence would make him more personable or reflective. While there are small elements of this, it definitely feels minor in comparison to the skill investment.
Or to put this another way, after gaining his first few points in intelligence, every subsequent level up and +1 intelligence has, AFAIK, no impact on Balthazar’s personality or the plot. Each level, he gets a skill, but again these seem effectively unused. This isn’t a surprise, for even Balthazar when reviewing one of his level up skill options, thinks about how nothing really seems useful and that he might as well continue to invest in Leadership, despite having never used it. Maybe the System will come into things later, but right now it feels like something bolted on instead of something impactful that provides meaningful choice and power to the MC.
The book plotline is fairly standard, as mentioned before. A greedy merchant doesn’t want competition and decides to shut Balthazar down. While off-screen, every character tells Balthazar how cunning and ruthless this merchant is. When onscreen, such as the scene with the merchant and the taxman, the merchant is written to be arrogant and stupid, which feels like its done simply so Balthazar can dunk on him. There’s a wider plot line touched on numerous times, (SPOILERS NOW I GUESS) which hints that the world may be akin to a VRMMO situation. The adventures are the players, everyone else is an NPC, and that’s why they (normally) can’t gain levels, why Balthazar is unable to leave his pond area, etc. I’m hoping there’s a twist coming up on this, because the VRMMO genre is very dead, and the stories hinting toward it had me pulling away slightly. The second book isn’t out until Feb, so I guess I’ll keen an eye out on reviews to see where the plot ends up going before I continue with the series.
Onto the merchant side, there is a bit of focus on gathering loot, and building a proper store, all for Balthazar to earn more coin. I’m not sure there’s too much more to say on that side - the crab buys random stuff from adventures, and sells it back to others. It’s a simple store, similar to the initial setup in Jake’s Magical Market, and we’ll have to see if this series pivots away from the market aspect as well. Guess time will tell.
