Nobody saves a village with preserves. Eric Stone is going to try anyway.
Eric Stone has an ethnobotany degree, forty-seven dollars, and three days until eviction. So when a job posting for a "remote herbalist position" promises housing, profit sharing, and a fresh start, he signs the contract without reading the fine print.
The fine print was a portal.
He wakes up in a field of purple grass under two moons, with a stat screen in his vision that lists his class as Error. The village of Oakhollow is thrilled to have him. They've had twelve new homesteaders in twenty years. None of them lasted.
Now he can see why. The homestead is a cabin with stars showing through the roof, something living in the walls, and a swamp where the back half of the yard should be. The last guy left behind a journal, a stuck door, and a lot of questions.
But Eric knows plants. And it turns out that in this world, a man who knows plants can make jam that does things. Preserves that steady your nerves. Spreads that sharpen your mind. A dark-roast substitute that isn't coffee, but he's working on it.
With a smart-mouthed frog who thinks he carried every fight, a moose who guards the porch whether anyone asked him to or not, and a System that grades his progress like a disappointed gym teacher, Eric starts turning the wreck into a home.
Then there's Dana. The village's half-demon hunter gave him a month to quit. She keeps showing up to check. She hasn't said why she's tired all the time, or why the marsh is dying from the inside out, or what the last homesteader was really looking for when he walked into the deep water and didn't come back.
Eric isn't a hero. He's a guy with a mace, a mortar and pestle, and a jar of something that glows.
It might be enough.
Homesteading, crafting, a snarky System, animal companions, slow-burn romance, and a village worth protecting. For readers who loved Beware of Chicken, Heretical Fishing, and Legends & Lattes.
Genre: GameLit
Eric Stone has an ethnobotany degree, forty-seven dollars, and three days until eviction. So when a job posting for a "remote herbalist position" promises housing, profit sharing, and a fresh start, he signs the contract without reading the fine print.
The fine print was a portal.
He wakes up in a field of purple grass under two moons, with a stat screen in his vision that lists his class as Error. The village of Oakhollow is thrilled to have him. They've had twelve new homesteaders in twenty years. None of them lasted.
Now he can see why. The homestead is a cabin with stars showing through the roof, something living in the walls, and a swamp where the back half of the yard should be. The last guy left behind a journal, a stuck door, and a lot of questions.
But Eric knows plants. And it turns out that in this world, a man who knows plants can make jam that does things. Preserves that steady your nerves. Spreads that sharpen your mind. A dark-roast substitute that isn't coffee, but he's working on it.
With a smart-mouthed frog who thinks he carried every fight, a moose who guards the porch whether anyone asked him to or not, and a System that grades his progress like a disappointed gym teacher, Eric starts turning the wreck into a home.
Then there's Dana. The village's half-demon hunter gave him a month to quit. She keeps showing up to check. She hasn't said why she's tired all the time, or why the marsh is dying from the inside out, or what the last homesteader was really looking for when he walked into the deep water and didn't come back.
Eric isn't a hero. He's a guy with a mace, a mortar and pestle, and a jar of something that glows.
It might be enough.
Homesteading, crafting, a snarky System, animal companions, slow-burn romance, and a village worth protecting. For readers who loved Beware of Chicken, Heretical Fishing, and Legends & Lattes.
Genre: GameLit