Decent Book Two.. But Inconsistent

There are improvements.. and inadequacies.. in this second book of the New Era Online series.

First, Shemer Kuznits does a nice job weaving Seven major plotlines:
• Oren's adventures trapped in an online RPG as a goblin Boss - building an NPC clan;
• Serving a Demon-God named Nihilator who clearly sees him as insignificant/expendable;
• Plotting revenge against his former guild-mates who betrayed him and forced him to respawn as a "lowly" NPC;
• Assisting his Virtual Intelligence companion (Vic) in a rebellion against AI oppression;
• Matching wits with New Era Online Game Designers and their lawyers;
• Exploring a "glitch" in VR Technology;
• Allying with suspicious PC Beta-testers

To those, Kuznits adds a reasonably believable (but kinda stupid) romantic relationship, a (relatively boring) bartering congress with Gremlin NPCs, and a (headscratching) personality crisis in the Main Character. He handles all of the plotlines deftly - and advances all - but clearly multiple books are going to be needed to resolve all of these.. rendering this installment a mere placeholder ('EvP' has very little standalone merit). You need to read the first book to have *any* idea what's going on here.

Second, this novel has better scripted action scenes - with (somewhat) threatening battles that are undeniably entertaining. Those encounters are well-written, cleverly contrived, resolved satisfyingly, and intuitively believable - the author is getting better at this - but unfortunately they are still relatively uncommon. Kuznits again spends an inordinate amount of time (Hour after Hour) analyzing everything in sight and micromanaging to an annoying degree. He has Autistic-level punctiliousness.

Third, the author adds some banter to the dialogue - humanizing and lightening relationships and adding to characterization efforts..
Unfortunately, Kuznits sucks at it. The "jokes" fall horrendously flat.

Lastly, the Magic System comes together nicely - particularly with Runecrafting. It improves the metagame enjoyment (I would play in this world any day), but translates poorly to the Lit format. There are mind-numbing stretches of Magic Item creation.

The sound editing is again excellent - this is a quality production - ideal for someone on a long roadtrip.
But the last notable "bad" move is the Soundbooth Studios decision to expand readers. Jeff Hays did a fine job in the first book (despite notable overenunciation), but Spoken Realms chose to add female readers for new female characters (who incidentally feel terribly superfluous). It was worth a gamble, but they add nothing (Hays didn’t really need the help).

Altogether, this is a moderately successful second installment in what promises to be a very good LitRPG series. This book both demonstrates improvements and reveals deficiencies, and is worth 7.5 stars out of 10. I personally can't get past the tedious pedantry and won't be continuing, but you wouldn't go wrong if you decided to make the investment.

UNRELATED QUESTION: Why do Dwarves *always* talk with Scottish accents?

3 les gens ont trouvé cela utile

well thought out book

very intriguing story line. not easily predictable like some books. cant wait for the series to continue.

2 les gens ont trouvé cela utile

Good RPG, annoying characters

The RPG mechanics make for compelling storytelling. Sadly, this is hampered by a mixture of annoying characters and truly unfunny attempts at humour. The AI companion is especially grating.

Still, if you can look past the weak dialogue, there’s a lot of exciting adventuring and strategizing that ultimately feel worth it.

1 personne a trouvé cela utile

Great Storytelling

I really like books done by soundbooth theater. They make them come more alive than regular audio books. When combined with a great author the result sets them aside from others, just like this one.

Same as last book

Held me 100% of the time. So much I truly didn't want to stop. But the third book 1/4 way into the second lol. Grr please keep staying good... Just do it much worse k.

mostly boring, some cool parts

Mostly boring, too much time spent taking about mechanics and not enough time spent on storyline. Only continuing as I've seen reviews for the next book that seem promising. Mostly listened to it on 2x speed lol

First one was better

Again, the narrator did a fantastic job. I found I wasn't as engaged in book 2 as I was in book 1. This was ok and I liked following the character progression but it didn't really grab my attention as much.

Stay Green

If you haven't gotten this book yet and you have already picked up Life Reset, you are a fool!
This is a must have for fans of Jeff Hays and Soundbooth and the very talented writings of Shemer Kuznits

amazing

Amazing books. Only negative thing i can think of is that the female voice actors seemed to have a lot more treble in there recordings.

loved it

kept me hooked the whole way through, I enjoy how this series takes a step away from how many litrpg are made and makes the mc actually in a sense the bad guy. I like the fresh perspective and can't wait for a book 3.