Master of Puppets Books in Order

Master of Puppets is Eric Ugland’s strangest LitRPG series to date, an apocalyptic tower climb filtered through the mind of a man who thought he was ready for the end of the world. Del Roosevelt is a Secret Service agent and obsessive prepper who has a plan for every disaster he can imagine.

The one that actually happens is nothing like the charts in his basement.

When Del wakes up after the event, he is half‑buried in a mountain of trash. His thumbs are gone. His body is small, red‑furred, and unmistakably not human. Around him are bizarre “people” and a vertical world that runs on quests, levels, and the whims of a wizard somewhere far above.

Book one, Master of Puppets, follows Del as he panics, blunders, and slowly accepts that all of his meticulous prepping is useless here. Survival now means learning how this tower works, what this new body can do, and who—if anyone—he can trust. Along the way he teams up with an academic rat, an exiled little dinosaur, and other misfits who are only marginally less confused than he is.

In Menagerie of Mayhem, Del earns the title Champion of the Midden and promptly finds himself in chains. Thrown into a dungeon tier where gladiator‑style battles entertain bored elites, he has to fight monstrous opponents for the chance to escape to Ratopolis. The levels he climbs through are stacked with rigged games, cruel wardens, and even a gang of mobster squirrels who may be allies or another threat.

The series plays with absurdity—wisecracking landlords, murderous cookies, talking animals—while never quite letting you forget that Del is dealing with real trauma. His identity as a survivalist, his old ideas about control, and his isolation are all interrogated as he stumbles upward. The tower is as much a metaphor for his mental state as it is a physical structure.

Compared to Ugland’s Vuldranni books, Master of Puppets is more surreal and less anchored to familiar fantasy tropes. You still get clear mechanics, combat, and progression, but wrapped in a dreamlike atmosphere where every floor might obey a different logic.

Readers who enjoy experimental LitRPG, oddball casts, and stories where personal growth matters as much as power growth will find a lot to chew on here—even if some of the chewing is done by monsters.