I loved this continuation of the LitRPG adventures of Damon and Chester. The story had the perfect balance of humor, love, friendship, real life issues, danger, machinations, politics, supernatural elements, fighting, and morality. Damon lives in a world where everyone lives within the “system,” which includes skills, abilities, spells, classes, and essence. This book begins exactly where the last book ended – Damon, Malina, Kristan, Marko, Franja, Renata, and Lamora have learned that Chester is actually a calamity, a monster God. His fellow calamities are fused their world with Basania. The resulting mess has altered the world physically and is full of new monsters and the dungeons are still being corrupted. That’s just the beginning of their new adventure to continue to get stronger and acquire new skills, adjust to the new world, figure out Chester’s forgotten past and work on completing the various quests given to them by the system. Every time the small band gets out of one mess, another takes its place. I love that Damon, and by extension Chester, continues to be a sweet, naive, messy, lucky, sarcastic, kind of dumb, and awkward man who regularly screws up which makes him a very likeable and relatable hero. The story includes what you’d expect from this genre – fighting, dangerous situations, supernatural creatures, evil entities, henchmen, loyal friends, tragic back stories, mystical coincidences, snark, and laughs. I will definitely keep reading the series to see what happens next with Damon, Chester, Melina, and all the new members of their party/found family.
Ryan H Reid, Dorrie Sacks, and Jeff Hays did a phenomenal job narrating the story and characters into life with enough change of inflection, tone and cadence to voice multiple characters quite convincingly. This was one of the best narrations I have ever heard. Reading the story was great but listening to it raised the enjoyment to a whole other level.