Oil and Ash (A LitRpg, Card-Deck, Apocalypse Adventure)

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

In 2080, Joel’s job as a heavy-duty mechanic on an oil rig off Kitimat British Columbia’s coast is brutal but necessary. Ocean levels have swallowed much of the land, making fuel more vital than ever. He pushes through every shift for one reason—his family waiting back home.

Then, one stormy night, an explosion rips through the rig, and Joel’s only focus is survival. But as he claws through smoke and darkness, a chilling message flashes:System Merge in one hour.

Suddenly, the rules of reality twist. Digital interfaces hover, levelling up skills and revealing cards that pulse with strange power. Mutated creatures and ruthless raiders roam a world Joel no longer recognizes.

To get home, he must master this new system, grow stronger, and unlock dark truths hidden within the game-like mechanics. But survival is just the beginning—because Joel isn’t the only one adapting to a world changed forever.

I will be posting chapters: on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Book One will be taken down at the end of Febuary.

Information

Status: Ongoing
Year: 2025
Author: Apollo149

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.6/ 5.0
Followers: 84
Views: 7,070

Chapters(18 total)

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(10)

Lightning ElementalistRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Intense, Compelling, and Gritty Storytelling
For anyone who might not read more than the first few lines of this review, let me give you a TL;DR:
Oil and Ash is absolutely worth your time, Joel is a compelling character with a realistic and powerful source of grit and determination. If you’re looking for a gritty, progression focused, LitRPG, you’ve come to the right place. I know I did.
Now onto the longform.
Style-wise, Oil and Ash hits the genre it’s targeting damn near perfectly. From what I can glean, it depicts a corporate fueled pseudo-apocalypse before the System even arrives to fuck up everything further. The chapters flow into one another, often leaving me asking for more, something I can’t say about everything I read, here or over on Kindle.
The story is compelling from the jump, while still managing to make Joel feel like someone you can relate to. The second chapter is where you learn what Joel’s fighting for and, speaking as a parent, I can’t agree more with how he acts moving forward. The heart card system is intriguing, and I look forward to figuring it out alongside Joel and his ragtag group of companions.
Grammatically, this story is in the top 5% of what I’ve read recently and I’m a Sanderson fan, so I read a lot. I’ve only caught one or two batches of smashed together words and maybe one or two missing commas. Otherwise, flawless.
I kind of already touched on character, but Joel is someone you want to root for. He has real goals and isn’t afraid to fight for them. Even Apollo’s minor side characters get a bit of background, making it even more heart wrenching when bad things happen to them on the regular.
Overall, where I am in the story, I can honestly say I’m hooked. I fully intend on finishing this story and then checking out more of Apollo’s works on here and over on Amazon.
Abraham-DeWittRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Overall: Oil and Ash is a well-written story about a coming System Apocalypse in a world already ravaged by flooding and other ecological disasters. Up to where I've reached in the story, the events so far would best be described as a "disaster movie" on an oil rig. There is a suggestion that the System will add to the problems faced by Joel, the main character, and I find the concept of a protagonist having to deal with a System Collapse while already dealing with a major disaster to be very interesting.
Style: As stated before, the style is excellent. The prose, grammar, and diction are all in the upper echelon of stories in this genre. You would expect writing of this quality in hardcover novels sold at Barnes and Noble.
Grammar: No issues as far as I could see.
Story: I found the story to be very compelling. You can really see everything Joel has to lose before things start to go wrong, and the world hinted at in the first few chapters shows that such tragedies are par for the course.
Character: There hasn't been much dialogue up to where I've reached in the story, but what I've seen of Joel so far shows him to be an interesting character. You can see Joel's character from his thought process and the things he does during the disaster on the oil rig.
AsentumRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Style: The author does a wonderful job detailing the world and the thoughts of the main character, Joel. As someone who is quite ignorant when it comes to oil rigs, I didn't have any issues following along. The author also uses long, detailed paragraphs to describe the world and his characters. While slightly overwhelming at first, the more I read and the more my interest grew, the less of a bother it became.
The author also uses vivid metaphors when describing how Joel feels, so much so that I felt like I was on the rig with him and could smell the salty sea air just as much as he could.
The way the author handles System Notifications is also a very nice stylistic touch.
Grammar: No issues with grammar whatsoever. There were a couple of times when I had to Google a word because I wasn't sure about the spelling, only to find out that, yes, the author did in fact spell that word correctly.
Story & Character: From Chapter 1, we get hints of how the world has changed through Joel's perspective and reminiscences. There's a lot of good worldbuilding that casts Joel as an underdog of sorts, just doing everything he can for his family back home. The early chapters do a good job of showing what kind of person Joel is and how he acts under intense pressure.
So far, each chapter is more intense than the last, and the story doesn't waste any time getting to the point.
I think the most interesting thing right now is seeing where Joel goes from here. We've already seen hints of the chaotic world before the system, so how bad will it be once it starts? There's anticipation in wondering where the author will take Joel next and what will test him as he inches his way back home.
CIGAPRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
The story is very well done in all aspects. The start is immediately action packed and tense, giving a very proper high pace for a panicked situation. This is further enhanced by high quality writing, with no noticeable spelling or grammatical errors, as well as excellent word choice and sentence flow.
The descriptions show the scene perfectly, making it very easy to visualize what's going on, which is also helped by the author's use of "showing" and not "telling," which allows one to really feel and understand the scene without it feeling too monotonous or boring to read.
Overall, the story feels very unique, with compelling characters, settings and a proper setup. I'm looking forward to where this is going!
Fandom, Food, and FamilyRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I liked this story, especially the main character. His goals are relatable and he has reasonably aspirations. He wants to go home, he only left to provide for his family, he has something to fight for. That and the easy readability the story has makes it a good one to me.
GodOfZapRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
"Oil and Ash" is an enthralling read that masterfully combines disaster fiction with LitRPG elements. The vivid descriptions of the oil rig pull you right into the action, while Joel's character is relatable and well-developed. The suspense and unexpected twists kept me on the edge of my seat. This is Highly recommended!
Kleo EriliRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
The future state of our world that Oil and Ash describes is already pretty dire, with all those eco-catastrophies, climate change, rising sea levels, political instability (wait a minute...) and whatnot, but main character Joel, an engineer working on an oil rig can't catch a break and comes from the frying pan into the fire, when first the oil rig goes full Deepwater Horizon (never go full Deepwater Horizon!) and then – as if he didn't have enough problems already – there's a system apocalypse on top of all that, yikes!
So, as you can imagine, it get's pretty survival action pretty soon. The family oriented, strong mechanic Joel works well as a sympathetic main character with a good survival instinct and the group dynamic between him and the other engineer hunks on the oil rig works well as well (... well). I especially liked it that Joel is just gay without further explanation or it being stereotype-y, it's simply a part of who he is and that's that.
The vibe is a little bit like an Andy Weir book but without it going too much in the competence excess direction, it's more soft-sci-fi-survival than hard-sci-fi-survival.
The grammar is literally perfect, no mistake whatsoever.
Go give Oil and Ash a read, it sure is a thrill!
A. StargazerRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
My biggest criticism of this story is that the basic plot is fairly common in the litrpg genre. System appears and everything goes to heck. It's a common trope and one that's not always done well.
Except that this story does it well. Very well indeed. In fact, things go to heck even before the system arrives.
After the first few chapters, in which the characters and setting are introduced, the story quickly becomes intense as event after event happens, leaving the poor MC reeling in his attempts to 'just get to safety.' At the same time, the ominous countdown continues, signalling the literal end of the world as he knows it. As if things couldn't get any worse, right?
The writing of the action scenes is, in a word, visceral. That's how I'd describe it. From the moment the fecal matter hits the rotary device, everything is extremely intense and non-stop. It leads to a unique and intriguing style, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Grammatically I saw few if any errors.
The characters are well done. I actually thought that the opening chapters were a little slow, but they were necessary to introduce the MC and the other characters, show their motivations and introduce us to the world as it existed before the apocalypse. overall 5 stars.
The one half point I'm detracting is from the story because it is, after all, a fairly generic plot when you strip away the intense action and the great characters. But it's still a unique spin on the genre, and I feel that a 4.5 is well deserved in this category.
Overall I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this story. Keep writing author!
GrumpsterRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
Oil and Ash focuses on Joel, a mechanic working on an oil rig who is thrown into a world of chaos as he fights against the storm. Starting off with what I've enjoyed about Joel, he's a very relatable character, I'll start with that, and the very essence of his human nature is something that adds greatly to his story, as he remains both someone we can understand, but is also resilient to the challenges coming against him. The oil rig is described so vividly that it makes you feel like you're there, with the suffocating heat and the action heavy moments taking place there being a joy to read.
The story is very high stakes, with both survival and LIT RPG mechanics involved, adding to the layered story with systems that are both interesting and intriguing. The supernatural element really add a level of mystery with the story, made better with the incredibly polished grammar and variety of sentence structures - making the story not only flow well, but has a good rhythm to the method of how everything ties in together. The dialogue is very clean and natural, especially between Joel, Pete and Bill, which exemplifies the emotions present within not only Joel, but all the supporting characters.
Henrik SaetreRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
Wow! Talk about intense start!
this story has some of the most vivid prose I’ve read in grounding me in the story. That is its biggest strength, but it is also its weakness.
the descriptions are so visceral I feel like I’ve been on the rig with Joel as it collapsed (spoiler?). This is absolutely amazing, but it can bog down the story advancement as there are so much descriptions. And I wanted the story to move faster because I got into it. Partially because of the vivid descriptions. So that’s the balancing act, which I feel is nearly there.
the main character, Joel, is interesting and I swiftly root for him and understand both his motivations and dreams.
the video call scene was *chefs kiss*. If you know you know.
such clear motivation set up for the series. A strong driver.
the plot is interesting, and I look forward to learning more about the system. But following the accident I really feel like I was there. Had to even cut past (haha) a part because it was so visceral. (Poor chef!)
the world building is solid and believable. Stupid greedy corporations! Makes me curious about the wider world though, and look forward to learning more!
grammar is great. Didn’t spot any errors.
I think this is the type of story that is perfect for Royalroad, to find its feet here, and then make its way into the broader world (should the author wish so.)
It would really be about trimming down some of the descriptions and tightening the opening, because it’s really good, it’s just moving a bit slow which would lose some people.
for me, as a Norwegian, with family who have worked in the oil and gas industry, I loved resign about it, and taking a leisurely stroll along the platform and learning more about it and the different parts.
But I can see this as a huge success on Amazon by tightening the opening 5 chapters into max two and then introduce the system, getting people invested and off to the races.
look forward to continuing reading and exploring the wider world!
overall, a fantast