Luke battles strange creatures as he journeys across unfamiliar terrain to reach the God Machine and recover his long-lost family in this fantasy adventure.
Luke Bennet isn’t fighting alone anymore. The beautiful dwifkin Zea is stalwart by his side, and it’s a good thing too. As if the battle-prone squirrel folk and otter-kin weren’t enough, he’s got mercenaries, bands of raiders, and a bloodthirsty inquisitor on his tail. All he wants is to get back his missing family. Can’t a guy catch a break?
To that end, Luke is honing his skills by battling all the beasts that get between him and completion of his mission. Still, he and Zea are both banking on a bloodline purification ritual to help them get to the God Machine. And they’re trying not to think too hard about what will happen to them when Luke goes back to his home world. That is, if he survives that long . . .
Even as he levels up again and again, enemies keep coming out of the woodwork. The church sees all off-worlders as apostates, but it seems to have a particular loathing for Luke. Why does the Pantheon want him dead? Why does everyone appear to want him dead?
I liked this book. You may be asking if you liked why only three stars? I tell it's because this book is actually 76 pages shorter than the listed page count. You may say I've counted and the page count is correct. Be that as it may, 76 pages are nothing but stat pages. Each time the stat page is listed it takes an entire page. There is one at the end of every single chapter. Most of the time it's not even needed. So a 400+ book is actually a 300+ book. Normally that is a decent page count, however 76 pages could have been a lot more story telling. Also I found one plot hole and some other mistakes that I will post on Goodreads. You can still read even more on Royalroad.
My other problem is that the two main characters spend most of the book trying to get enough points to get a skill that will keep them from going mad at higher levels. As soon as the MC has those points did he buy the much needed skill? Nope! He decided to hang on to them because of a slight feeling he might need them. Of course he has just the right amount of points to buy the skill that he really doesn't seem to need to fight the big bad. But hey now we have a reason for the MC to gain more levels and push himself closer to madness in book three, so there's that.
5/10 The MC should already have his end game powers but that would mean less books to sell so the MC kept getting silly reasons to spend all of his points.
Regardless of what others wrote on this book, it's a good story. If you don't like stat sheets page through them. Story is right in line with the first book. The MC and friend are busy running for their lives as well as leveling. The church is a major pain ,as well as their pantheon of gods. And thank gods ,we don't have ants as bad as the ones in this world, lol.
The stats at the end of every single chapter is so annoying! I don’t need the reminder of what their stats are even every 4 chapters! I don’t think I’ll go another book dealing with this!
I listened to this audio book but couldn't finish it. Because i listen whilst driving, haveing the stats read for both characters at the end of each chapter annoyed me immensely. especially when all of the chapters are about 12 minutes long and the stats take 3 minutes to read. However I was enjoying the story.
Not only did the world get bigger and the plot much more nuanced, the main character actually grows as a person in this book. And the ending had massive revelations that made me really interested in the final book.