Rating: 4.5⭐️
Author Beatrix Penrose, just a fabulous writer, has written, among her other works, a collection of series that are fantasy LitRPG series, each one a short story that captures the essence of the characters and world they inhabit.
I’m slowly reading both. Smite the Soil series and this one, Last Boss Farm, each different and so beautifully engaging.
Malgrath and the farm has been quietly building , steadily improving along with their companions. So it was only time before they faced another challenge. This time with new applications.
Each new application brings a new set of challenges and a unique personality seeking something that only the farm has to offer.
It’s amazing how Penrose can make 40 pages feel so full of brief character development for new people and still bring meaningful moments for all involved.
It’s a delightful read. And I’m anticipating the next one in the series.
Author Beatrix Penrose has become an auto must have for me.
Last Boss Farm (5 book series):
Last Boss Farm #1
The Stranger Problem #2
The Conditions #3
The Applications #4
The Vacancy #5
Love the covers.
Buy link
Three applications. Two are genuine. One is not.
The KEEPER Network is open. Word has spread. On the same morning, three sponsorship applications land on Malgrath’s desk: a retired
Necromancer with declining health and seven years of quiet coastal work behind him. A Weather Manipulation Villain who directed three storms she has spent two years trying to forget.
And Vorath the Consuming — Level 61, seven outstanding hostile designations, reason for applying: opportunity.
Opportunity is not a reason. It’s a test of whether the KEEPER classification can be used as cover.
Then Gurt draws a map in the mud. Four days east. A fortress. A mark Malgrath recognises. Gurt and Hobb have been at the sanctuary since the beginning — since before the beginning, sheltering against the barn walls when Malgrath arrived. Nobody asked where they came from. Now Malgrath knows.
The declination letter will be precise. The challenge that follows will be harder. And somewhere behind the barn, Hobb has been building something for seven months that nobody knew about — a garden with a carved stone at its centre that says, in Underrock: Here we put down what we carried. Here it grows instead of weighing.
The Applications is the fourth book in the Last Boss Farm series — a LitRPG cozy fantasy about the limits of a good idea, the past that arrives with new residents, and a World System that has now used the phrase “cautious optimism” twice and seems to mean it more each time.
The KEEPER Network has four members. Eleven Thriving ratings. Three new protocols. The garden is growing.
May 19, 2026
Language
English
Print length
40 pages
Book 4 of 5
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 