This is the story of Runner, who is being logged into a virtual world to attempt to save himself and 499,000 men and women from being entrapped in a game. The only specifics Runner remembers is he is IT personnel on a ship, but can’t remember his password to get him into the systems to help everyone. The issue is that all the “players” had their consciousness fully loaded and and if they die, they go brain dead IRL. It doesn’t help matters that the players had their memory scrambled and every time Runner levels he gains the memory. Runner is hoping that the memory of the passwords will come back to him.
Personally harem stories are not really for my cup of tea, but this one has a better focus on the actual adventure. I didn’t realize what type of book this was but by the time I found out through listening I was already into the story. As of the writing of this review I have listened to all 3 books in the series and I feel I should warn readers/listeners that the harem aspects get heavier as the series goes on and the story becomes less adventure and more large scale combats. I really like the variety of characters, which all seem to have their own deep personality, habits, and role. Other than Runner, the party consists of females; a thief/rogue, a mage, a barbarian, a merchant, and Runner as the jack-of-all-trades. Some of my favorite moments involved Runner figuring out his “many skills, master of none” build, Runner questioning if npc lives matter, funny moments when Runner gets reprimanded by his teammates for doing stupid things, and the banter between all the characters.
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.
(note: this book is part 1 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)