A death-grinding LitRPG where a Path-less outcast turns dying into the fastest progression engine going — relentless, brutal, and never once willing to slow down.
Path of the Deathless
As of writing this, I’ve read through the first book.
Blurb
The war started without warning. They killed Shiv in passing. That was their first mistake.
Shiv is an outcast without a Path, kept down by a city lord determined to make sure he never amounted to anything. Hated by his neighbours and ignored by the System, he certainly wasn’t meant to become a hero. Then he died defending the very people who despise him, and the universe gave him a second chance.
Shiv Awakens in the Abyss with the Path of the Deathless, a power that turns every brutal end into a new beginning. In a realm of nightmares, treasures, and impossible wonders, he discovers the truth: each death makes him stronger.
Now the Abyss isn’t a prison. It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet of XP, and Shiv is starving.
Thoughts
OstensibleMammal writes like a man personally offended by the idea of a reader getting comfortable. Path of the Deathless is one of the most relentlessly propulsive progression fantasies I’ve read, and nearly everything about it is excellent. The prose, the dialogue, the character work, the worldbuilding — all top notch. The fights are the standout (and oh boy there are a lot of them), because the destruction, the scale, and the sheer physical weight of them are brought to life so damn well.
The premise does a lot of the heavy lifting up front. Shiv starts as an outcast without a Path, hated by, ya know, pretty much everyone, and ignored by the Syste. Then he dies defending the very people who despise him, which triggers his path to awaken. Every death makes him stronger, and he comes back to life by sapping vitality from someone/something/the world. He’s like an ethereal cockroach. Our weak MC does not stay weak for long. He becomes a monstrous force with startling speed, and the progression stays fun and fast-paced the whole way through rather than sagging into the usual mid-book grind.
The characters are the real hook for me. The interactions and the dialogue are sharp and distinct, everyone has a voice, and I actually care about this cast. Shiv and Adam are your shit-talking best-frenemies, and Shiv and Uva are your aggression-filled-love-at-almost-first-sight. Their interactions are adorable. Which actually leads into my main complaint for the series, which is Mammal should probably be placed on a watch list.
Too much! Too fast! There is constant fighting, constant tension, and an author who cannot physically stop himself from raising the stakes on every page, and after a while I found myself begging for someone, anyone, to catch their breath. It has been literal books since these people last got to just sit down and relax. I miss the calm after the storm. The bonding scenes. The low-stakes stretches where a character gets to actually play with a shiny new skill before something tries to kill them for it. Those quiet beats are what make the loud parts hit, and they are in desperately short supply here.
If you’re a D&D player, you know some DM’s are the “Yes, and…” type, and some are the “Yes… but…” and BAM, the conflict has twisted in some unforseen way and now you have to solve Y while you also need to solve X. Mammal is that guy. At the current point where I’m reading (feels like at least 8 books of content in, the dude writes so damn fast its ridiculous) Shiv, to my count, seven escalations deep without being able to catch his breath. I’d list them all out, but it would effectively be a list of spoilers, so I won’t.
So yeah, the author tortures his characters with what I can only read as sadistic delight, and if you can stomach the sheer unrelenting pace of it, there is an A-tier story here doing almost everything else right. Just don’t expect it to let you rest.
