It’s nearly 4AM and I can’t help but smile, that extra at the end was an absolute delight.
As far as the narration goes, another fine piece of work the sound effects that the team has been doing was done very well here. Just the right amount to not be distracting from the most important piece the narration.
The story was great as well, and should be picked up without hesitation.
~~ Spoilers ~~
I do have some thoughts about the story progression though. It’s been made readily apparent the ninth floor will be a major plot point, so much so that the author has skipped the 7th floor just so we get to it faster.
However that means that book six will either be about floor 8, or skipping floor 8 and going straight to floor 9. I wager the former over the latter. The issue I see though is that 9 has been built up so much especially in this book that people are now anxious to skip 8, just so we can see all the plot threads come together on floor 9.
Also when they eventually get to floor 9 and god forbid they complete it… what then? This has always bothered me since the beginning and especially more so with this one book per floor setup. No one in the history of this game has ever made it to the 18th floor, hell it hasn’t even been close. so not only will it take a large chunk of books to get to a situation where, unrealistically (in the sense of story logic), they get to the last floor will require either alot of skips or some really, really good writing.
We also know the AI is starting to become self aware, does this mean instead of hitting the 18th floor, the story will end a little after the ninth. Will the narrative pivot to our MCs fighting the AI instead of just surviving it? It’s hard to say where this story wants to go, and that concerns me.
It’s been five great books, and I honestly can’t tell if floor 9 is to be a midpoint or and endpoint. Either way I am hopeful that the author has a plan and is sticking to it. I look forward to book 6, thank you for a great experience with book 5.