This one was less of a LitRPG adventure and more of a mystery/thriller with a little magic and fairly small nod to the RPG aspects of the previous book. It was entertaining and interesting but much more of a self-contained story than any kind of epic or adventurous tale.
Justin Thomas James was the same as usual… Over all he did a decent job, but his standard flaws were still present. I.e. he repeatedly mispronounced words that are easily google searchable. At the level that Soundbooth Theater operates these days this is pretty inexcusable. Jeff Hayes needs to pull JTJ aside and tell him that if he’s not familiar with a word then the least he can do is to spend the 2 seconds it takes to look up the word in a google search. It’s just a matter of professionalism at this point.
LCW did her standard thing which is OK, but in my very subjective opinion some of her voices often come across as irritatingly high pitched and over enthusiastic to the point of caricature. If you like her style then she did the same good job she always does.
Also, as is the trend with SBT these days there was a bunch of jarring music and sound effects. Not only did the music sound like it was made with the standard patches on a Casio piano with built-in speakers, but it just pulls you out of the story and fails to add anything to the experience. I appreciate that they’re ambitious and trying to further their craft, but in my opinion the music is a little too “canned” and even if it were written and recorded by John Williams it would still be superfluous to the experience of listening to an audiobook.
Overall it was worth the credit, but I hope the next book heads back towards a broader and more expansive story.