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The Weirdest Noob #3

The Gods of the Second World

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The Second World is a mire of intrigue; the game's creators have left several backdoors permitting them to terminate anyone at will, and an unlikely sequence of events has brought someone unsuspecting into their field of attention.

One player has managed to upset the game world's balance, and now he's hunted by everyone. Every clan wants to recruit him for his achievements, while other powers want him for their own, more sinister purposes. Now Ros must contend against an unseen enemy backed by the world's most powerful corporation, while relying on only himself and his few trusted allies. The stakes have never been higher…

Don’t miss the final book in The Weirdest Noob trilogy!

309 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 29, 2017

276 people are currently reading
160 people want to read

About the author

Arthur Stone

55 books262 followers
Arthur Stone is the pen name of one Arthur Smirnov, a prolific author in the sci-fi and fantasy genres.
Born in 1973 in Donetsk, Ukraine, Arthur worked as a geologist, and also in the environmental sector and industrial archeology all over the world. He lives and works in Ukraine.
Arthur began writing fiction in 2005 on a bet, and thus his addiction was born. His first book was published in 2006, and by mid - 2025 he had published a total of 84 books in Russian, English and German-speaking markets.

Arthur Stone - email arthurstone2017@gmail.com

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5 stars
490 (39%)
4 stars
412 (32%)
3 stars
242 (19%)
2 stars
80 (6%)
1 star
25 (2%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 70 reviews
Profile Image for atmatos.
814 reviews143 followers
December 3, 2017
Lacking Something.

There was something missing in this volume that the other volumes had. Reading at times were tedious, and the plot felt rushed in places. I don't know if this is the final volume, but if it's not I hope the next book finds what book one and two had.
Profile Image for Roger.
85 reviews19 followers
October 23, 2018
Meh

Meh, this series turned into less of litRPG and more a spy type thriller. The addition of the main purpose of the game seemed really forced and killed the book for me. Not a fan at all.
Profile Image for Freedom.
46 reviews71 followers
December 7, 2017
If you purchase this book, I strongly recommend beginning at the Chapter 12 mark. Everything prior is a frustrating snoozefest which made that part of the book a chore to slog through. Because I love this series, I will be reading his next book S.T.Y.X. Humanhive which already has much better reviews.
Profile Image for Lukas Lovas.
1,392 reviews64 followers
April 2, 2018
Interesting ending to the book. We got to see more points of view, especially the bad guys, and it was well written overall. I disliked that I felt our protagonist succeeded because he was backed by the right people rather than because of his own cleverness/skill/determination, but apart from that, the ending felt satisfactory and despite there being room for more books from this world, I feel this was a well written and rounded trilogy.
Profile Image for Bru82.
40 reviews
April 24, 2018
Sometimes things don't add up: you take a decent plot, a good environment, a good author and what you get?
A nightmarish end of the series book.

Honestly I've never been so drastic with a score, but...
what's the good to find in those pages?
11 reviews4 followers
December 3, 2017
A very weak end.

Multiple editor notes scattered throughout the story. The story felt rushed like the author was just trying to get it done. The dialogue in the latter half rolled together without any breaks to differentiate whom was speaking.
Profile Image for Akshay.
805 reviews5 followers
February 14, 2024

The Gods of the Second World (The Weirdest Noob, #3) by Arthur Stone:



The Gods of the Second World, the third installment in the The Weirdest Noob series by Arthur Stone, continues the whimsical journey of the protagonist through the fantastical virtual reality world. While the series has shown promise in previous books, this installment struggles to maintain the momentum, resulting in a narrative that feels disjointed and lacks cohesion.



Stone's writing style retains its trademark wit and humor, with quirky dialogue and playful descriptions that attempt to bring the world of The Gods of the Second World to life. However, the narrative suffers from pacing issues and an overreliance on comedic relief.



In this book, readers continue to follow the adventures of the protagonist as they navigate the challenges of the virtual reality game, encountering new quests, allies, and adversaries along the way. While the premise remains engaging, the plot feels scattered and unfocused, with numerous subplots vying for attention without ever fully coalescing into a cohesive whole.



The world-building in this installment is expansive, with Stone introducing new elements and mechanics to the virtual reality world. However, these additions often feel arbitrary and underdeveloped, lacking the depth and complexity needed to fully immerse the reader in the setting.



Moreover, the character development in The Gods of the Second World feels lacking, with the protagonist and supporting cast failing to undergo significant growth or evolution throughout the narrative. The relationships between characters also feel underdeveloped, robbing the story of emotional depth and resonance.



When critically analyzing the plot, it becomes apparent that The Gods of the Second World suffers from a lack of direction and purpose. While the series has excelled in providing light-hearted entertainment and humorous escapades, this installment fails to deliver a compelling narrative arc or meaningful stakes. Instead, it relies on a series of loosely connected events and comedic set pieces to drive the story forward, resulting in a narrative that feels shallow and inconsequential.





Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5)



The Gods of the Second World (The Weirdest Noob, #3) struggles to maintain the charm and excitement of its predecessors, resulting in a disappointing installment that fails to live up to its potential. While it may provide some entertainment for fans of the series, it ultimately falls short in delivering a compelling and engaging narrative.

Profile Image for Li Kim Min.
43 reviews2 followers
August 12, 2018
Read up to 65% ...

As much as I love this series the 3rd book's translation problems is just getting a little too awful for me. Sometimes it almost feels like a google-translate. The problem is worsened by the fact that for some reason this book is now half infodump and half storyline.

The infodumps which can last pages of just outright exposition about gaming mechanics can get pretty technical, as well as boring, so with a bad translation it's just painful to read through.

Also the infodumps can be pretty jarring because it sometimes comes from the MC who still think he's a noob but is suddenly explaining exactly how many percent kill rates are...but somehow still suck enough to be called a noob at this point despite the how many stat bonuses and titles he's already earned? It's just a little too trite by book 3 to have the MC call himself in anyway a noob. By now he's a normal gamer as opposed to a noob.

There's also that time where he spent a few pages talking about someone else's stats in torturous detail when he shouldn't be able to know because 1. he's supposed to be a n00b and 2. he just met the character and thus should have only surface conjectures about their character build. It was insane how he knew the tiny minutiae of Thyri's character build. It was basically a badly done 4th wall break.

The other thing that bothered me is how the author is trying to bring up the tension and suspense in the book regarding the MC's IRL situation but having almost ignored the fact in book 2, trying to get the reader to care more about the MC's body so much in Book 3 is weird. They're almost trying to throw James Bond level of villainy in this book in the IRL side that it's conflicting with the in-game storyline tension. I think it would have been smarter for the author to choose which conflict was more important (InGame vs IRL) rather than try to do both equally because it came out really hasty, rushed and unfocused. +++ infodump galore.

Couldn't finish. Wanted to but in the end it got a bit too painful with the bad translation and the infodumping galore.
Profile Image for Beefgir.
157 reviews4 followers
May 16, 2019
i got about half way through before i was forced to stop.

its not good. the writing changed.
i was really enjoying the story in the previous books, but this book just decided to stop with proper format.

so here is what is wrong.

its like the author had someone proofreading everything in the last books. guiding him, and telling him how to make a good story.
this book he decided hes got this, and tried to wing it.

for every 1 paragraph of story, there are 10 pages of game mechanics that are not relevant.

its like the author created this great world, but got so into it, he wants to tell everyone how every single little piece of it worked, at the cost of the story and actual events.

i was reading, and reading, and reading, and i honestly had no idea what was going on in the story. so much so that it felt like i was just checking in on the main character periodically, and we may have missed a lot of events. And then they had side stories. different people doing different things in the background, and real world. interesting, but not wholly relevant. it added more clutter, and much less focus on the main story.

I was not sure who Ross was with, why he was where he was, where he was going, and why his old companions where not with him. the character did not seem to be making rational choices any more. and with ALL the extra wording describing game related things and how everything worked, the character seemed to forget basic things until after he did them. Also, since it was spewing all these detailed game faqs about how the game worked perfectly, that i can only imagine where from Ross's perspective, he claimed to be a noob, and that he understood nothing. it just felt loose and poorly written.

so im sorry. this series had a great thing going. a truly interesting and unique character. an unusual world and a compelling story. "make money, hide, dont get caught by guilds, level up, build your party."

instead it became "hide kinda, you are not special anymore, leveling up is not a focus, forget about your party."

sigh...
Profile Image for Chris Evans.
903 reviews43 followers
April 3, 2018
I've written before about what the Russian Power Fantasy (Power Adjacent Fantasy) seems to be. That being the main character always seems to be special for reasons other than power and relies on far stronger support to achieve their ends. .

The first book in the series fallows that very closely, with Ros relying on powerful pets to accomplish tasks while his level is stuck at 0. I had through book 2 was breaking this mold with Ros actually become significantly powerful in his own right and taking the lead. It also seemed he was moving towards a goal of changing the way things worked.

This book, though, falls back to the classic power Adjacent Fantasy rules. Ros is still powerful, but most of his power comes from his connections and who/what he can summon. Still the book remains a low stress read and is quite enjoyable as such. As a conclusion to the trilogy, things are wrapped up quite satisfactorily.
67 reviews1 follower
November 21, 2020
TLDR: A nice cap to the story of the series, some cool new ideas presented, story itself pretty good, but all brought down by the (to me) bad reading style (everything emphasized means aural assault and it all ends up seeming bland).

Good: it gives a great ending to the series with lots of details that make is so.

Neutral: Some great new characters and story elements for them was introduced but there was almost nothing done with them - we don't even learn of those elements until the very end. Maybe this is setting up for the next series (?) but it is something that I would have loved to see more of. So '+' for presenting the ideas and getting me quite interested, '-' for doing almost nothing with it.

Bad1: I didn't like the voice talent's style here, it just seemed so wrong how everything was emphasised and left me feeling that all the wrong things were emphasized (don't know if that is actually the case or if it really was just everything being emphasized that left me feeling the important things were ignored). I had to put the audiobook aside for a week just to get over this, before powering through just to finish.

Bad2: There seemed to be a lot of extra unnecessary talk about game elements and many passages just seem too wordy for what they try to say - stuff that could have been said in a line or two seem to take several paragraphs.
Profile Image for Vincent Archer.
443 reviews22 followers
July 23, 2018
I hesitated, but finally put a 2-star only rating because of multiple things.

First, the dynamics are all different from previous books, you get characters that were interesting that get shelved, new characters that get introduced for no real good reason, and the mess that is "outside politics" get shoved down. Plus a semi-ridiculous series resolution. It feels like the series was supposed to resolve in 3 books, and that was time to wrap the story, and the rushing is obvious.

I almost put a 2-star rating, but the addition of horrid editing, leftover notes from translation/writing made that third book a painful experience, compared to the previous 2 which were much, much better.
Profile Image for Rohan McElwee.
20 reviews2 followers
December 27, 2017
Books 1 & 2 in this series were interesting and quite well done. This is typical LitRPG material with people in the real world using technology, including full immersion capsules to access an AI controlled virtual world. I’m not going to focus on the plot but I did want to explain my 2 star rating. This book is full of exposition and verbal padding, as if the author had run out of material but perhaps had a contract to fulfill. I can recommend the first two books but not this one. The writing style is significantly different to the earlier books and I caught myself wondering if it was written by the same author.
Avoid unless you are a diehard fan.
116 reviews1 follower
February 19, 2020
Excellent

Mr. Stone did it again on Noob 3. He kept the storyline going. He added technical details to add realism and teach those of us who do not understand game mechanisms. He added more Third World actions to this book than the previous two.
He received four stars this time (five previously) due to his rather gratuitous use of foul language. It caught me by surprise this time. No need for it in a book series he has written so well. This book also contained numerous grammar issues not evident in the previous book. Sad for that as editors help make the book flow better.
Well done all in all.
Profile Image for C H.
125 reviews
December 13, 2017
Its as though a different author wrote this.. a noobster

I stopped reading 1/4 into it and I skipped a lot of pages. The worst thing is that I had this on pre-order. Money lost... oh well. The writing is rather trashy and the storyline is so fudged up that it's obvious that the author was just trying to get the book out as quick as possible. There is nothing holding my interest, nothing that makes me want to bother with the rest of the book. 1 star and deleted from my list. Author is not to be confused wth quality.
Profile Image for R. Scott VanKirk.
Author 9 books11 followers
March 24, 2020
Flawed, but still entertaining

This book was a decent conclusion to a fun series. It had quite a few flaws. The editing was non-existent they were a lot of typos and the author went off on unnecessary expeditionary sidetracks often. If you plan on reading this book, don't hesitate to skip long tracks about How things work, or game mechanics, or that sort of thing. The end of the book, while not surprising, was very satisfying. And in this genre fraught with unfinished infinite series, that was a good thing. If you like fairly crunchy litrpg, I would recommend the series.
Profile Image for Michael Lynn.
332 reviews
May 18, 2020
I have seen a few reviews saying that the first half of the book had overly detailed and less interesting explanations of abilities and skills but I did not find this to be the case. The flow was very consistent with the books in the series and I was satisfied with the ending and overall content of the book. I hope the author chooses to revisit this series as I think there is still more to do but if not the end tied up almost all of the loose ends. I have no problem giving this and the series 5 stars.
Profile Image for Michael.
12 reviews
November 30, 2017
Surprises...

I really enjoyed this series going though the first 2 books in just a couple days and pre-ordered the 3rd book. Just finished it but actually had a tough time getting though it as it was alot different than the first two with alot more issues it seems. Jumping perception became the norm and there was a bunch of gibberish included into the book that made no sense to me.
16 reviews
December 14, 2017
Good book, nice end to the series.

The POV jumped around too much and made it confusing. Even then the loose strings were tied up fairly well. Seemed a little rushed at the end and skipped a lot of the game details.



*Spoiler alter!*


What happened between levels 62 and 130?
What skills was he putting points in?
Is there a final character sheet that compiles his bonuses, skills and stats?
Profile Image for RandomLibrarian.
132 reviews5 followers
February 16, 2021
Not bad

It all worked out, but I feel like I met the hero’s, watch the preparation, learned about how awesome they are then have the book end before the real adventure began... so much potential but in the end once the book escaped excruciating detail and solo play it didn’t really hold up to the hype it built for itself. Good story abs the ending wasn’t bad but it feels like a giant missed opportunity.
33 reviews27 followers
November 30, 2017
Unfinished draft uploaded to Amazon.

Rushed to publish without removing translator's and editor's comments. This is the hardest book of the series to get through because there are so many formatting and editorial errors. Looks like it was pushed out before being complete.

There are also several characters' POV included, which distracts from the story.
298 reviews5 followers
December 15, 2017
Seriously? I quit at 50%. Just filler.

I pre ordered because I liked the first books. This was obviously some rushed crap that the author knew was bad.

I am sure this was due to the deadline. Well I hope the money grab was worth it. You lost my business.

You should have taken whatever penelty from Amazon in order to produce good work.
4 reviews
May 9, 2018
Just terrible

The begining of this trilogy was wonderful. Safely this last installment was horrendous. The shear amount of grammatical errors would be enough to put any English teacher into a coma. This book was not once proof read before being published. There are author notes left in the book. Saddly this book wasnt worth the money or the time to read.
Profile Image for Kurt.
287 reviews2 followers
August 6, 2020
A good, though not great, conclusion to the series. This book dragged a bit more than the previous two and I found myself skimming quite a bit more this time around. The author tried to wrap up the various plot threads, but did so with mixed results.

Still a series worth reading - I just felt the last book could have been more polished.
631 reviews15 followers
November 8, 2021
Ok not so good

The first was ok interesting the second was so so,the third was not good at all to much other stuff got inserted into the book the writer tried to stretch the story as long as possible till it was not worth finishing overall I flipped way to many pages for this series to be rated anything less than so so
95 reviews
April 30, 2023
Disappointed

Mr. Stone. You seem to be an excellent writer. This series was fun to read right up until you added the hate crimes and homophobia. Seemingly just for the purpose of spreading hate. Those chapters would have been fine without them. Also, the proof reader/editor failed spectacularly on this final book.
133 reviews
September 13, 2023
What a fun series.

This is a fun read. You can tell it is an English translation. But the translation errors are not too bad and will I am sure be fixed with updates. I love the may plot threads that sit idle until just the right moment. And come on and emoji monster.. perfect
Profile Image for ovizii.
5 reviews
November 30, 2017
Enjoyable but...

Great book but the writing style was confusing, sometimes it sounded like the author was talking to himself, sometimes it seemed he had left notes to his editor in the book.
Profile Image for diane l de ville.
41 reviews
December 5, 2017
Good book but some odd editing choices.

I really enjoyed the story and was happy how it ended. I would have rated 4 stars had the book not had the feeling of a draft thanks to a few things that where missed
Displaying 1 - 30 of 70 reviews

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