Reddit reviews Learning German through Storytelling: Mord Am Morgen - a detective story for German language learners (includes exercises) for intermediate and advanced

Es ist eine krimiserie. (detective series) Das E-book ist kostengünstig. (ive given up on conjuating kostengünstig today, my brain has forgotten how...) - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learning-German-through-Storytelling-intermediate-ebook/dp/B007QT2EVQ

So the biggest issues you will encounter is that the tree doesn't teach a lot of the genitive case, which you see more commonly in written German than in spoken German. Here's a good reference to get you over the hump: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~german/Grammatik/Nouns/genitive.html

Some German grammarians will tell you that the Genitive is going away, which is why it's not spoken much, but in an older book like The Metamorphosis, you will see it.


Secondly, in German, especially older German, you will see a lot of written Simple Past tense (das Präteritum) which is again not that common anymore, as most Germans speak the Present Perfect instead (das Perfekt). Dartmouth to the rescue again with an article on each linked above.

Finally, as I noted above, the Metamorphosis is an older book, so some of the language might appear dated, though looking through the book at Project Gutenberg I'm seeing that I understand a fair bit. My recommendation would be to start the tree, and then look at a few of the good books that are available for German learners. I really like the books from André Klein, such as "Mord am Morgen" which are crimis (crime stories) and they're written in such a way that you can understand them with a beginner's level of German, they include slang, and definitions for odd or unusual words you might not have seen before. There's a whole series of them, and they're available as ebooks for cheap. Here's a link to the first book: http://www.amazon.com/Learning-German-through-Storytelling-intermediate-ebook/dp/B007QT2EVQ

I definitely think you should give it a go because Duo will give you a huge leg up in learning German over all, and reading it, so you can't lose, and eventually you'll get to the point where you can read the book and many more great works of German literature in their original language.

Cheers!