SL Rowland Books in Order

If you want a funny LitRPG redemption arc: Sentenced to Troll → Sentenced to Troll 2 → Sentenced to Troll 3
If you want an underdog VR adventure: Death and Axes → Magic and Mayhem → Vials and Tribulations
If you want a villain point of view: Path to Villainy
If you want a darker standalone mystery: Land of the Dogs

S.L. Rowland was born in the South and now lives in the mountains of East Tennessee with his Shiba Inu, Lawson. He writes cozy fantasy and LitRPG, two branches of fantasy that sound far apart until you notice what they share in his work: likable outsiders, lived-in worlds, and a fondness for quests, jokes, and second chances.

Games came first.

Rowland has described himself as a lifelong gamer and fantasy fan, and those influences show up everywhere in his fiction. Tabletop RPGs, video games, and big secondary worlds all feed the books. He still remembers Super Mario World as one of his earliest gaming memories, and he has pointed to J.K. Rowling as the writer who first made him want to build worlds of his own.

Before the novels, there were bad Harry Potter-style scribbles and a batch of zombie short stories written in college. He has been pretty open about the fact that it took years, a lot of false starts, and plenty of unfinished drafts before he completed a book. He does not outline much, tends to write his way into the story, and often revises as he goes.

He is, by his own description, a pantser.

His first published novel was Land of the Dogs in 2017, and not long after that came Death and Axes, the start of the Pangea Online trilogy. That series follows Esil, an underdog from the margins of a massive game platform, and it gives Rowland plenty of room for tournament stakes, clever class mechanics, and virtual worlds that feel like places people could actually live in. By the time Magic and Mayhem and Vials and Tribulations roll around, the series is balancing competition, friendship, and real-world pressure.

A year later he launched Sentenced to Troll, the book he has said is his personal favorite. It takes a guy punished for online trolling and drops him into immersive therapy as a forest troll, then lets the joke grow into a bigger story about empathy, community, and earning the right to call yourself a hero. Readers who like humor with actual heart tend to latch onto that one fast.

He likes looking at fantasy worlds from the edges instead of the throne room. Path to Villainy follows a kobold NPC who finally remembers every time players used him and killed him, while Cursed Cocktails shows another side of Rowland altogether, quieter and cozier, without losing the warmth or the fondness for oddball companions.

Again and again, his books come back to similar ideas: found family, misfits, class gaps, and people who have been written off learning how much they matter. Even in his game-based fiction, the appeal is not just stats or skill trees. It is the people inside the systems, and the way friendship or kindness can change the shape of a whole world.

When he is not writing, he reads, plays video games, lifts weights, and hikes. He has also said he loves traveling and has road-tripped coast to coast three times, which feels about right for a writer whose stories keep moving into new corners of the map. He still roots for Atlanta sports teams, which may be the grimmest long-form character arc of all.