She's finally back aboveground, but she's not home free just yet. The Gray family is still missing, and their situation is a little more complicated than she first thought.
The only one she can locate is Nick, the older brother, and he has been captured by the Blood Syndicate, an international crime syndicate headquartered in one of the most dangerous regions on the continent. With group of unlikely allies, she needs to dive into the Jungle and help mount an attack on the Blood Syndicate to rescue her humans.
Meanwhile, Sophie finds herself stranded on an island with a mysterious, seemingly insane woman.
It's a LitRPG, but the protagonist is not focused on her advancement. She's concerned about more important things, like rescuing the children of her adopted family. There are a few infodumps of her character sheet, but not many. Which is a good thing since I find such exhaustive listing of a character's abilities, a common trope in the LitRPG genre, to be uninteresting filler.
In fact, Elise doesn't go through another evolution in this book at all. In the prior book she went from Forest Rabbit to Lesser Rabbit Changeling in 4 steps, and in this book, she gains a few levels and a couple of minor skills, but nothing else. What advancement she makes largely focuses on her learning to use her existing abilities more effectively.
In the last book, Nick, Sophia, and Bianca used a scroll to teleport away from the Ice Warg's attack. It turns out they all scattered to different destinations. Sophia mostly rescues herself, but Nick and Bianca definitely need saving. This book largely focuses on Elise's journey to rescue them.
Solid world building, good character development, interesting story and compelling characters. My main criticisms are the usual for new faces to my library: get an alpha reader group, do thorough proofreading, solve spelling and sentence structure issues ahead of publication.
There's evidence of some work. However, it's lacking, particularly as one gets further into the story. A couple sentences end without being finished. Spelling errors increase, etc.
Build a trustworthy and enthusiastic team to help you! This is so easy at this point. Many will want to join you at the beginning and be a part of your journey. Take advantage of this enthusiasm and take your story to the next level. Good luck!
I doubted I would like it as much as the first, which I doubted I'd like, and how delightfully wrong I was with both books. I'm impressed by the author, and the audio book is spectacularly narrated with nothing annoying. I am impressed by details about skills and the world, that are integrated in a meaningful way as the story progresses. I love the main character's desire to improve the world and save people without wholesale slaughter, too often seen in books with "monster" and "LitRPG" in the title. Of course, the violence happens but it is secondary or tertiary to the main plot points. I am pleased to see the third volume is out soon. Terrific story telling! It kept me going through hours of garden weeding, when I normally listen to music.
This is a decent follow up to the first book. I'd even say good.
However, it does follow other characters more and more. Which is fine but it's not all bunny girl as it were.
It does avoid the odd pacing that some of the dark elf-dwarf conflict in the 1st book had, most of the book is pushing forward on one task - finding the missing 3 from the beginning of the first book. It's a strong book theme and is nicely resolved and gives us a good indication what the next book will be about. Also our heroine begins thinking about what she's doing and what she wants and what she's capable of - all nice development notes.
Overall good plot line, great character development, interesting direction for the MC to take, grammar and sentence structure are very good outside of the many, many, many errors, many instances of the wrong word, missing words, incorrect names, missing punctuation, left over things from whatever software the writer uses, there's a glaring error in the first paragraph, very unlikely anyone proofread this.
Author desperately needs to at least read the compiled book before publishing.
I quit halfway through. The main character was never my favorite, her reactions were very realistic for someone thrust into this setting. But that is not why I read fantasy. She was cowardly and hesitant. I though she would show growth after the events from the first book, but this one was a complete regression. The focus on the missing kids was boring, since I never liked their characters to begin with.
The second book is well written and keeps the world building and character development moving very well. This is not a short book which is so refreshing. Many of the threads from the first book are tied up but leaving plenty of areas for the next. I really appreciate the work and craft to set things up well.
Seriously this book was enjoyable, but I forgot what The author did in the last book. The author is able to lull you into a feeling that this is just a happy-go-lucky book and then stuff happens. The only negative I would say is the long descriptions of the system mechanics for the world are boring. I fell asleep twice reading them.
Amusingly enough, the author has leveled up between first and second books in this series. The story is tighter and flows better, and there are fewer distracting sections. Elise is also becoming a more complex and interesting character as she learns more about her own abilities.
Good characterization all through the book. Multiple plots, and people to care about. The last chapter was a surprise, and poor Alice! I would love to have book 3 now. 🤓
How did all the rich jerks get out into base in the middle of the jungle? We see a teleport gate at the Lappin compound, but none at the base in the jungle til after the Blood Syndicate is defeated, presumably set up by Ostra or allies.
This was absolutely fantastic! I enjoy the world building and character development in this series. It's absolutely wonderful. What an excellent story!
I thought this one was a little better than the first, but a lot of plot threads were resolved and I am feeling that I can wait a while before reading further.
Loved it. Not as strong as the first book I think, but the story and characters are still really great. Kind of refreshing for the story to cannon towards some Big Events (tm) by the end of the second book instead of dragging it out for several novels.
Looking forward to the next one. Hopefully the typos are cleaned up a little better.