(Note: this book is part 2 of a 3 book series, which for some reason is not put together as a series on Audible. Just search for “Otherlife” and you should find the other books)
Book 2 takes place immediately after the events of book 1, with the crew having left the city ahead of the siege. Runner still hasn’t discovered the password he needs to save the remaining crewmates left in the game. If you remember from book 1, crewmates are truly dying when killed in the game and this is taking a toll on Runner. Runner also continues to shift and change the game world each day by making more and more “NPCs” realize their reality is a game. Not only is Runner’s actions giving sentience to npc’s, but also the counties he takes action in. Runner has also been contacted by the outside world. Now runner has to deal with in-game events and his contact to the outside world via an A.I as a middle man, a middle man that is trying to help the crew from the outside while also helping study humans.
This book 2 is more of the same from the first book with more of a focus on the backgrounds of Runner’s harem, with less adventure and Runner leading an army. There are more female characters joining in the story, but none that join the 4 main ladies in Runner’s harem. Something I was looking forward to was the characters gaining class promotions, but the event is just glossed over and Runner doesn’t even get one, which makes sense considering his “jack-of-all-trades, master of none” build. Some of my favorite parts of this book were getting to know some of the ladies backgrounds and Runner having to deal with obstacles due to them. Another is Runner starting to encounter the gods of this virtual world, which makes for some interesting situations particularly with “Minxy”
Runner really struggles with his loyalty in this book as he has decided in book 1 that the npc’s of the game are just as real as any of the players he is trying to save. It doesn’t help that a large majority of the players are trying to kill him now as well since he has been framed for the reason all the players are in the game in the first place. Runner is being slandered to the point that they think he is playing god and twisting his every actions and relationships into something devious. The annoying part of this is Runners lack of communication with the other players concerning the allegations, Instead of making his case he decides that he should send 1 message to a single person and then shut off or ignore any communications from players, which makes him look very guilty and unwilling to be part of the community he is trying to save. His decision on this makes up about 2/3 of Runner’s major problems, which is pretty silly considering he is essentially making his situation go from bad to worse. This issue is what makes this book my least favorite of the 3 books. If it weren’t for the character progression in Runner’s harem and a very surprising ending, I would likely not have liked the story as much.
Jeff Hays does an amazing job portraying all the characters, and he does an amazing job with female voices to the point I forget I’m listening to a man narrate in a mostly female cast of characters. However, as many female characters as there are I wonder why a female voice actor was not selected to narrate this book. Even with that thought I still think Hays did a great job here, as usual.