All the Skills
by Honour Rae
Amazon Kindle, 2022
All the Skills is a series of fantasy novels of the deck building genre. Yeah, it was new to me too. It's closely related to litRPG, and indeed may be a sub-genre -- in this case, I think it is -- but the characters collect cards to get powers, and all stats and abilities are tied to their cards.
Arthur is a young peasant living in the borderlands, an area in which the kingdom is actively reclaiming land from the scourge. His village is entirely populated by prisoners and their children, and life is hard, always unfair, and often deadly. By law, no one in this village can have a card other than the guards.
Cards are basically just superpowers, but to get one you have to kill a monster or other magical creature, buy it from someone who has done so, or kill someone who already has a card. Common cards do fairly useless things -- weasel summoning, creating a breeze, etc. -- while Uncommon are generally useful, Rare cards are so powerful that only the wealthy can afford them, and Legendary and Mythic cards are actually pretty close to what we usually think of as superpowers. People can have multiple cards, but having even one Common card is valuable, as it is the only sure protection against infection with the scourge.
Arthur has no expectation of ever gaining a card. But one day he witnesses a dragon attack on a vehicle transporting a particularly valuable card -- a Legendary card with the power of collecting and enhancing skills. The dragon lets Arthur live, leave, and take the card -- on the condition that the card must never reach the local baron, and with the understanding that the cards powers should help the peasants revolt against said Baron.
Things quickly become more complicated, with first the necessity of hiding that he has the card, and then the necessity of hiding that he has such a powerful card. Arthur picks up skills often without meaning to, and finds that those skills shape his options, and therefor his actions, in unexpected ways. And events escalate quickly.
Whatever you thought of that description, this is a surprisingly engaging book. If you like books like Mother of Learning or Blessed Time, this is very much like those, and perhaps better. The underlying mechanic is a bit odder than many books of this type, but the writing is better than most. This may be my favorite progression fantasy series, although admittedly I haven't read many. That said, it is very much more a progression fantasy than it is anything else, and if you don't like that sort of thing, you probably won't like this. While this is written for adults, it would also fit well into the young adult section, with no content above PG-13.
All the Skills is currently followed by All the Skills: Book Two; the story structure suggests that there will probably be five books altogether.