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Mahanenko, Vasily

Entry updated 2 November 2026. Tagged: Author.

(1981-    ) Russian author, full name Vasily Mikhailovich Mahanenko. A longstanding player of Videogames, he drew on this experience to become an early popular exponent of Russian LitRPG, a form of fiction incorporating the rules, character attributes, and progression systems of Role Playing Games into prose narratives (see also Online Worlds; VRMMORPG). In 2013, he helped coin the genre's name, together with Eksmo science-fiction editor Dmitry Malkin and literary agent Alex Bobl, for a new publishing series devoted to this emerging genre.

His first novel, Barliona (2012 online; 2013; trans as Survival Quest 2015), inaugurated The Way of the Shaman ["Put' Shamana"] sequence (2012–2016 7vols; trans 2015-2018). Taking place in the Near Future, its principal setting is Barliona, a fully immersive Virtual Reality environment whose inhabitants experience a Fantasy world of quests, character classes, Monsters and Magic (see Avatars). Unlike conventional escapist portrayals of virtual gaming, Barliona also serves as an instrument of the state's penal system. Convicted criminals serve their sentences inside long-term immersion capsules, performing compulsory resource-gathering labour with their sensory filters disabled, so that they experience pain and exhaustion which paying players can avoid (see Crime and Punishment; Prisons). The game's currency can be converted into real money, turning virtual activity into part of the wider economy. The protagonist, Daniel Mahan – Dmitrii Mahan in the original – is framed and sentenced to eight years of confinement. His efforts to improve his position serve both as a familiar LitRPG progression narrative and as an account of resistance to technologically administered punishment. The expected movement toward epic confrontation and increasingly exceptional powers for the protagonist provides a conventional LitRPG narrative resolution. The authorized spin-off Bard ["The Bard from Barliona"] (2017-2026, 4vols; first 2 trans 2018) was written by Alexander and Evgenia Gedeon, the latter also known as Eugenia Dmitrieva. The English editions, published as by Mahanenko and Dmitrieva, return to Barliona from the perspective of a female rock musician who adopts a humanoid-plant bard avatar. Beginning with Bard: Otstupniki (2017; trans as The Renegades 2018), the series follows her involvement with renegade factions and the game's realm of the dead; later instalments explore musical performance within the virtual world and the ruins of a forgotten empire. Mahanenko continued the narrative with the Vtorzhenie ["Invasion"] subsequence (2019-2022 3vols), beginning with Vtoroi Shans (2019; trans as A Second Chance 2019). Set six months after the conclusion of The Way of the Shaman, it introduces a new protagonist, Brody West, while returning to Mahan as a secondary character and resolving some of the earlier sequence's unfinished plotlines.

Mahanenko continued his exploration of gaming environments in the Proekt Galaktiona ["Galactogon Project"] sequence, beginning with Galaktiona: Nachalo Igry (2016; trans as Start the Game 2015), and continued with Galaktiona 2: Poisk Uldan (2018; trans as In Search of the Uldans 2019) and Galaktiona 3: Chek na Milliard (2019; trans as A Check for a Billion 2019). Here the setting shifts to Space Opera, with Spaceships, exploration, and a competition offering immense financial rewards.

The Tëmnyi Paladin ["Dark Paladin"] trilogy (2017-2018), beginning with Tëmnyi Paladin (2017; trans as The Beginning 2017), develops a more comprehensive form of gamification, in which rules resembling those of computer games regulate existence itself, blurring the distinction between a simulated environment and an objectively existing universe. Poisk (2017; trans as The Quest 2017) expands the scale of its protagonist's mission, while Restart (2018; trans 2018) invokes the system's reset and its consequences.

A similarly radical relationship between gaming and reality informs the Mir Izmenënnykh ["World of the Changed"] trilogy, beginning with Bez Prava na Oshibku (2019; trans as No Mistakes 2019), in which an Alien Invasion transforms Earth into a deadly Videogame, leaving the decimated humans struggling to adapt to the resulting Post-Holocaust environment (see also Games and Sports; Horror in SF). The premise makes gaming rules an inescapable feature of the physical world, although the narrative retains the genre's emphasis on accumulating abilities and exploiting systemic advantages. Zhemchuzhina Yuga (2019; trans as Pearl of the South 2020) and Voploshchënnyi Noa (2019; trans as Noa in the Flesh 2020) extend the conflict.

The five-volume Alkhimik ["Alchemist"] sequence (2020; trans 2020-2021) belongs to the same fictional continuity as World of the Changed, but shifts the action to a society in which the Game has governed human existence for thousands of years. Humanity has survived a violent struggle for its place in this transformed world, where an divine-like authority enforces game-like rules (see Gods and Demons). The same continuity also includes Ideia (2021; trans as Idea 2021), the first and so far only novel in Tochka Otschëta ["Starting Point"], a prequel set thousands of years before World of the Changed exploring the circumstances surrounding the creation of the Game.

With Khroniki Tirisa ["Chronicles of Tiris"] (from 2025-2026 6vols; 2 vols trans 2025), Mahanenko turns more decisively toward Space Opera. Its protagonist, Kael Ardan, an ambitious young aristocrat who acquires an ancient intelligence, becomes involved in interstellar exploration, military training and conflicts among rival civilizations. The setting features Spaceships, precursor (see Forerunners) technologies, planetary destruction and Aliens, alongside the political rivalries of an interstellar empire. Although the narrative retains the emphasis on personal advancement characteristic of Mahanenko's earlier fiction, it abandons the game mechanics of LitRPG in favour of Military SF and space opera tropes.

Mahanenko's collaboration with Yuri Vinokurov, Izbrannyi ["The Selected"] (202-2025 4vols; trans 2024-2025), combines First Contact with LitRPG. After an immense extraterrestrial object appears near the Moon, groups of humans are periodically removed from Earth and transported to other worlds. The protagonist, Max, becomes one of these Selected and must survive in an environment regulated by an apparently universal game-like System, which as expected of this genre, governs abilities, advancement, and competition among its participants. As in World of the Changed, System rules operate upon physical reality itself, combining sf premises with the conventions of Fantasy adventure and Progression Fantasy. A further collaboration, Reliz: Zemlia ["Earth Release"] (2025-2026 5vols; trans 2025-2026), with Vladimir Koshcheev, similarly depicts the subordination of humanity to an externally imposed game system: Earth's inhabitants become non-player characters in a game controlled by aliens, turning human agency into a resource exploited by more powerful participants.

Further series include the five-volume Klan Medvedia ["Bear Clan"] (2021-2022 5vols; trans 2021-2023), emphasizing Reincarnation; Smertnik iz Roda Valevskikh ["Lord Valevsky: Last of the Line"] (2022-2023 10vols; trans 2023-2025), a revenge narrative involving a dispossessed aristocrat assigned to a deadly military unit; Zakon Dzhunglei ["Law of the Jungle"] (2023-2024 14vols; trans 2024-2025), which draws on the cultivation and martial-arts conventions of eastern-inspired Progression Fantasy. These sequences, as well as his recent Solo (2025-2026 8vols; 7 vols trans 2025-2026), are primarily fantasy.

Mahanenko's earliest identifiable published short fiction includes "Trinadtsatyi" ["The Thirteenth"] and "Istoriia Odnogo Reida" ["Story of a Raid"], both in V Igre (anth 2014). "The Thirteenth" is the more independent sf work: an amnesiac protagonist awakens in a virtual environment and is told that he is a serial murderer who must participate in a lethal game. His reluctance to harm even simulated creatures calls into question both the identity ascribed to him and the assumption that morally consequential actions can be rendered harmless by their occurrence in Virtual Reality. The story focuses more on psychological and ethical uncertainty than the author's longer, more conventionally progression-oriented fiction (see AI; Identity; Memory). "Story of a Raid", subsequently associated with the Galactogon universe, concerns a carefully planned military operation in a space-combat game. The raid is motivated by personal revenge, but it extends into the participants' financial and social lives. Closer to the author's usual interests, it explores how competitive virtual activity can reproduce real economic power and conflict.

Mahanenko helped establish Russian LitRPG as a distinct genre and introduce it to an international readership; by 2026, more than seventy book-length volumes in English (including several collaborations), had been published, making him among the most widely translated contemporary Russian-language speculative fiction authors. In particular, The Way of the Shaman popularized features that became characteristic of the genre: detailed status screens and skill trees embedded in the prose, a severely disadvantaged protagonist whose advancement depends on exploiting game mechanics, and an emphasis on party and clan dynamics, all handled with a mixture of humor, strategic calculation and occasional bleakness. By making game rules central to the narrative rather than incidental references to Videogames, his fiction at times raises questions about the commodification of human experience, the relationship between virtual Identity and physical existence, and the potential of game systems to become instruments of social control. His increasing reliance on powerful protagonists, intricate quests and expansive serial narratives, however, tends to privilege the satisfactions of Progression Fantasy over sustained exploration of these sf implications. [PKo]

Vasily Mikhailovich Mahanenko

born Tomarovka, Belgorod Oblast, USSR: 20 April 1981

works (selected)

series

Put' Shamana ["The Way of the Shaman"]

  • Barliona (Moscow: Alfa-Kniga, 2013) [vt Put' Shamana: Nachalo Puti; first appeared online 2012; The Way of the Shaman: hb/M Popovsky]
    • Survival Quest (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2015) [ebook: trans by Natalia Nikitin of the above: na/]
  • Put' Shamana: Gambit Kartosa (Moscow: Eksmo, 2013) [The Way of the Shaman: hb/Vladimir Manyukhin]
    • The Kartoss Gambit (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2015) [ebook: trans by Natalia Nikitin of the above: na/Vladimir Manyukhin]
  • Put' Shamana: Taina Temnogo Lesa (Moscow: Eksmo, 2014) [The Way of the Shaman: hb/]
    • The Secret of the Dark Forest (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2016) [ebook: trans by Natalia Nikitin of the above: na/Vladimir Manyukhin]
  • Put' Shamana: Prizrachnyi Zamok (Moscow: Eksmo, 2014) [The Way of the Shaman: hb/]
    • The Phantom Castle (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2016) [ebook: trans by Boris Smirnov of the above: na/Vladimir Manyukhin]
  • Put' Shamana: Shakhmaty Karmadonta (Moscow: Eksmo, 2014) [The Way of the Shaman: hb/Vladimir Manyukhin]
    • The Karmadont Chess Set (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2017) [ebook: trans by Boris Smirnov of the above: na/]
  • Put' Shamana: Vsë Tol'ko Nachinaetsia (Moscow: Eksmo, 2015) [The Way of the Shaman: hb/Vladimir Manyukhin]
    • Shaman's Revenge (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2017) [ebook: trans by Boris Smirnov of the above: na/Vladimir Manyukhin]
  • Put' Shamana: Poisk Sozdatelia (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo E, 2016) [vt Voina Klanov; The Way of the Shaman: hb/Vladimir Manyukhin]
    • Clans War (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2018) [ebook: trans by Boris Smirnov of the above: na/]

Bard

Series also known as Bard iz Barliony ["The Bard from Barliona"], an authorized spin-off of the Barliona universe. Russian originals are credited to Alexander and Evgenia Gedeon, the latter also known as Eugenia Dmitrieva; English editions credit Vasily Mahanenko and Dmitrieva.

Vtorzhenie ["Invasion"]

Series set in the Barliona universe.

Proekt Galaktiona ["Galactogon Project"]

Tëmnyi Paladin ["Dark Paladin"]

  • Tëmnyi Paladin (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo E, 2017) [Dark Paladin: hb/Vladimir Manyukhin]
    • The Beginning (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2017) [ebook: trans by Alexandra Tussing of the above: na/]
  • Tëmnyi Paladin: Poisk (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo E, 2017) [Dark Paladin: hb/Vladimir Manyukhin]
    • The Quest (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2017) [ebook: trans by Alexandra Tussing of the above: na/]
  • Tëmnyi Paladin: Restart (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo E, 2018) [Dark Paladin: hb/Vladimir Manyukhin]
    • Restart (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2018) [ebook: trans by Alexandra Tussing of the above: na/]

Mir Izmenënnykh ["World of the Changed"]

  • Bez Prava na Oshibku (2019 online) [ebook: World of the Changed: na/]
    • No Mistakes (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2019) [ebook: trans by Jared Firth of the above: na/]
  • Zhemchuzhina Yuga (2019 online) [ebook: World of the Changed: na/]
    • Pearl of the South (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2020) [ebook: trans by Jared Firth of the above: na/]
  • Voploshchënnyi Noa (2019 online) [ebook: World of the Changed: na/]
    • Noa in the Flesh (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2020) [ebook: trans by Jared Firth of the above: na/]

Alkhimik ["Alchemist"]

  • Gorod Mërtvykh (2020 online) [ebook: Alchemist: na/]
    • City of the Dead (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2020) [ebook: trans by Jared Firth of the above: na/]
  • Les Zhelanii (2020 online) [ebook: Alchemist: na/]
    • Forest of Desire (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2020) [ebook: trans by Jared Firth of the above: na/]
  • Sleza Alrona (2020 online) [ebook: Alchemist: na/]
    • Tears of Alron (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2020) [ebook: trans by Jared Firth of the above: na/]
  • Zhurnal Isr Keila (2020 online) [ebook: Alchemist: na/]
    • Isr Kale's Journal (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2020) [ebook: trans by Jared Firth of the above: na/]
  • Kopi Tartila (2020 online) [ebook: Alchemist: na/]
    • Tartila Mine (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2021) [ebook: trans by Jared Firth of the above: na/]

Tochka Otschëta ["Starting Point"]

  • Ideia (2021 online) [ebook: Starting Point: na/]
    • Idea (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2021) [ebook: trans by Jared Firth of the above: na/]

Izbrannyi ["The Selected"]

  • Izbrannyi: Kniga 1 (2024 online) with Yuri Vinokurov [ebook: The Selected: na/]
    • The Selected: Book 1 (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2024) [trans by Philip Parker of the above: pb/]
  • Izbrannyi: Kniga 2 (2025 online) with Yuri Vinokurov [ebook: The Selected: na/]
    • The Selected: Book 2 (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2025) [trans by Philip Parker of the above: pb/]
  • Izbrannyi: Kniga 3 (2025 online) with Yuri Vinokurov [ebook: The Selected: na/]
    • The Selected: Book 3 (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2025) [trans by Philip Parker of the above: pb/]
  • Izbrannyi: Kniga 4 (2025 online) with Yuri Vinokurov [ebook: The Selected: na/]
    • The Selected: Book 4 (Prague, Czech Republic: Magic Dome Books, 2025) [trans by Philip Parker of the above: pb/]

Reliz: Zemlia ["Earth Release"]

Khroniki Tirisa ["Chronicles of Tiris"]

links

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