Tower of Power by Ivan Kal — On the Radar

What this is. A research-based profile of a series Worth the Credit hasn't yet personally read. The opinions below are sourced from public reception — not from the founder. When Worth the Credit reads it and forms a verdict, this page becomes a full review.

At a glance

• Author: Ivan Kal — Croatian LitRPG / progression-fantasy author. Background in electronics and IT before going full-time on writing.
• Series length: 6 books, complete. Guild Master → The Goblin Horde → The Grand Tournament → The Great Raid → The Tower's Price → The Invasion.
• Narrator (audiobook): Ryan Burke
• Publisher: Tantor Media (audiobook); Mountaindale Press / Aethon Books (print/ebook)
• Genre: LitRPG, system-driven, MMO-flavoured. Tower-climbing structure with guild dynamics.
• Where it sits in the Kalverse: This is the earlier of Ivan Kal's two flagship series — the foundation he built before Infinite Realm. Both series live in the Kalverse, a shared multiverse where characters from each series occasionally appear in the others, while each remains structurally standalone.

The premise

Morgan is a normal college student by day, online-gaming guild leader by night — until he's hit by a car. A man in a wet suit appears and offers him a new chance at life in a world built on rules similar to the MMOs Morgan loves. The promise: complete the Tower of Power, and the reward is power and material consequence beyond what Morgan's normal life offered.

The new world is hostile by default — everything wants to eat his face — and Morgan's survival depends on rapid system-mastery plus a partnership with two half-elf twins who become his early guides. The series follows his climb of the Tower in the company of the guild that forms around him, with the underlying genre-DNA running closer to MMO tower-climbing than to cultivation or progression fantasy.

How it relates to Infinite Realm

This is the question most prospective readers will care about, because it's the question Worth the Credit's Infinite Realm review implicitly raises: if Ivan Kal can write an S-mid series, what does his other major series look like?

The honest community read across Goodreads and the LitRPG forums:

• Tower of Power is the earlier work. Ivan Kal's craft is visibly more refined in Infinite Realm than in Tower of Power. The structural intelligence Worth the Credit praised in the Infinite Realm review — the dual-MC framing, the post-tutorial opening, the deliberate genre fusion — is not present in the same form in the earlier series.
• The author himself acknowledges the trajectory. In public-facing Q&A material, Ivan Kal directs readers from Tower of Power toward Infinite Realm as the natural next step rather than the other way around.
• It's not a knock-on, though. Tower of Power sits at 4.24 on Goodreads across hundreds of ratings — the community read is "solid LitRPG, worth reading," not "skip the early stuff." It's just not where the author's best work currently lives.

The interpretation: Tower of Power is the work that built Ivan Kal's audience and gave him the craft foundation to write Infinite Realm. A reader who loved Infinite Realm and wants more from the author has good reason to come here — but should come with calibrated expectations rather than expecting the same level.

Community reception

The Goodreads rating across the Tower of Power series sits around 4.24, with several hundred ratings on Book 1 and the count declining naturally across later entries (the usual series-attrition pattern). The qualitative reception is positive but not effusive — typical descriptors include fun, solid LitRPG, good MMO-tower energy.

The praise tends to cluster on:

• MMO-faithful execution. Readers who specifically wanted "actual MMO mechanics rendered in book form" — guild dynamics, raid structures, tournament events, tower-climbing progression — credit Tower of Power as one of the cleaner versions of that subgenre.
• The supporting cast. The half-elf twins (Morgan's early companions) and the broader guild membership are credited with carrying the series's character work, with several reviewers noting that the guild dynamic feels lived-in rather than perfunctory.

The criticism, where it exists, tends to focus on:

• Less structural ambition than Infinite Realm. The story shape is more conventional MMO-isekai. Readers who came in via Infinite Realm and were expecting the same architectural intelligence sometimes report a step-down.
• Earlier-Ivan-Kal prose. Some reviewers note the prose is less polished than the author's later work — a normal trajectory for any prolific author, but worth flagging for readers who have Infinite Realm's register in their head as the baseline expectation.

Who this is for

• Read this if: you loved Ivan Kal's voice in Infinite Realm and want more of his catalogue; you specifically want MMO-flavoured LitRPG with tower-climbing structure; you don't mind that the author's craft was earlier in its development at this point in his career; you want to read into the Kalverse from its foundation rather than its current apex.
• Skip this if: Infinite Realm's structural ambition is what hooked you and you can't recalibrate for a more conventional shape; you don't care for MMO-faithful LitRPG specifically; you'd rather wait for Worth the Credit's eventual verdict before committing six books of time.

What's pending

This is not a Worth the Credit review. There is no tier assigned, there is no founder verdict, and the editorial position is "Ivan Kal's craft floor is high enough that this series belongs on the radar even before we've read it, but the actual opinion has to wait for the actual reading."

When Worth the Credit reads Tower of Power and forms a verdict, this entry gets replaced with a full review at /reviews/tower-of-power/ and the URL above redirects through. Until then: this is the briefing.