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No longer playing as a Local from the world of Continue Online, Grant Legate’s adventure can begin. The Voices offer him a unique title along with a test and reward. To start—he'll have to survive underground horrors, old girlfriends, become a warrior. To win—he must become an imp familiar and kill another player, one with a dozen tricks up his sleeve.
No longer playing as a Local from the world of Continue Online, Grant Legate’s adventure can begin. The Voices offer him a unique title along with a test and reward. To start—he'll have to survive underground horrors, old girlfriends, become a warrior. To win—he must become an imp familiar and kill another player, one with a dozen tricks up his sleeve.
462 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 1, 2018
About the author
Stephan Morse
14 books83 followersStephan Morse was born the year 1983 in San Diego. The next fifteen years were spent slowly escaping California and surviving a public education system. Thus far he's made it to the Seattle (WA) region with little desire to go further. When not trying to shove words together into sentences Stephan spends time reading, catching up on sleep, and otherwise living a mundane life.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
August 12, 2018
After reading the first part, Memories, I wasn't sure if that was the beginning of the best series ever or it will come horribly crashing down in pieces.
Apparently, Morse and Proczko are hell-bent on the former. The series so far is simply brilliant!
The history is full of various authors and their pale attempts of making their one-hit wonder novels into worthy series and then failing miserably. With so many people writing stuff today and doing nothing noteworthy, I'd say odds are pretty much stacked against anyone who tries.
Still, Morse is making it happen. I can feel his characters, no matter if good or bad. They are real and three-dimensional, whether AI or human. Makes you imagine scenarios that may happen in the future and then pleasantly surprised how close you got without actually getting it right :-)
Personally, I feel the main appeal of the story is it's open-endedness. If that wasn't a word before, it is now :D There's no need to rush through the story to that final objective and "save the princess from the bad guy". It's all happening in the real time - right here, right now. Yes, sometimes the world is on fire and there's a general need to hurry things up but the pacing is surprisingly slow. Allows for everything to be properly absorbed and inspected.
Morse also doesn't give out too much information about anything! "Here's just enough to get you interested and let's move on." Oh, how I hate you, Stefan Morse! I'll be forever hooked!
But how does he do it? It's simple, once you stop for long enough to focus on it - he cheats! Speaking of characters, by providing you with a bit of information here and there, you are forced to complete the character model in your mind. Information provided is crucial, that's true, and acts as a good base for your own interpretations of characters to be placed over. That makes everyone feel so much closer and allows you to love or hate different characters with a true sense of righteousness :-)
And then you get to the point when you discover you've "built" a character incorrectly. Something new happens and more information is revealed. "Oops, I guess I was wrong to assume that!" :-)
And it's a great feeling! I can feel involved with the world while fully enjoying the story.
New people, stories, plans... all are constantly being added. Just as we establish a firm grasp of the situation and are certain we've built our characters properly, new ones are introduced. At the current pace, it can continue pretty much forever. And it will be forever interesting and fun :-)
Using my revised "not everything can possibly be awesome, please tone it down" rating system - this falls squarely under "It was amazing and I loved it", 5* stars category. I really need more of these books in my life.
As long as Morse keeps writing magic and Proczko keeps reading it in such a way, I'll keep listening!
Made (Continue Online #2)
by Stephan Morse (Goodreads Author), Pavi Proczko (Narrator)
Apparently, Morse and Proczko are hell-bent on the former. The series so far is simply brilliant!
The history is full of various authors and their pale attempts of making their one-hit wonder novels into worthy series and then failing miserably. With so many people writing stuff today and doing nothing noteworthy, I'd say odds are pretty much stacked against anyone who tries.
Still, Morse is making it happen. I can feel his characters, no matter if good or bad. They are real and three-dimensional, whether AI or human. Makes you imagine scenarios that may happen in the future and then pleasantly surprised how close you got without actually getting it right :-)
Personally, I feel the main appeal of the story is it's open-endedness. If that wasn't a word before, it is now :D There's no need to rush through the story to that final objective and "save the princess from the bad guy". It's all happening in the real time - right here, right now. Yes, sometimes the world is on fire and there's a general need to hurry things up but the pacing is surprisingly slow. Allows for everything to be properly absorbed and inspected.
Morse also doesn't give out too much information about anything! "Here's just enough to get you interested and let's move on." Oh, how I hate you, Stefan Morse! I'll be forever hooked!
But how does he do it? It's simple, once you stop for long enough to focus on it - he cheats! Speaking of characters, by providing you with a bit of information here and there, you are forced to complete the character model in your mind. Information provided is crucial, that's true, and acts as a good base for your own interpretations of characters to be placed over. That makes everyone feel so much closer and allows you to love or hate different characters with a true sense of righteousness :-)
And then you get to the point when you discover you've "built" a character incorrectly. Something new happens and more information is revealed. "Oops, I guess I was wrong to assume that!" :-)
And it's a great feeling! I can feel involved with the world while fully enjoying the story.
New people, stories, plans... all are constantly being added. Just as we establish a firm grasp of the situation and are certain we've built our characters properly, new ones are introduced. At the current pace, it can continue pretty much forever. And it will be forever interesting and fun :-)
Using my revised "not everything can possibly be awesome, please tone it down" rating system - this falls squarely under "It was amazing and I loved it", 5* stars category. I really need more of these books in my life.
As long as Morse keeps writing magic and Proczko keeps reading it in such a way, I'll keep listening!
Made (Continue Online #2)
by Stephan Morse (Goodreads Author), Pavi Proczko (Narrator)
Verdict Just as the doctor prescribed!
Runtime 16:19
Overall
Performance
Story
July 25, 2018
Better than previous one.
August 4, 2021
Well it took awhile for me to get back into this as it was so long ago that I read the first one. I found parts were slow but I did eventually get back into it. This one fills in a lot of blanks and the overall story line is being set. It's weird that he seems to feel more for the virtual world although his not actually the best or even seems to know what his doing most of the time. I liked the Imp part. It'll be interesting to see where this series goes.
June 3, 2016
Interesting sequel. I was glad to see Awesome Jr. SweetPea and others again and it was interesting to see they know Grants niece Beth in real life. Ending was a bit confusing but it was still a decent read.
There were several interesting revelations in the end though I'll just have to wait and see what happens next.
There were several interesting revelations in the end though I'll just have to wait and see what happens next.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 20, 2016
This is a sad story that continues with the feels. I find myself impressed at the amount of empathy and emotion this work of fiction arouses within me. Yet focusing too much on the feelings of the protagonist and how he deals with them doesn't leave a lot for action and other stuff that make LitRPGs entertaining.
March 12, 2016
I am really glad that i have made up my mind to read it through to the last page, becouse sometimes i felt rather disappointed. Clearly with a lot of potential, and have space to evolve to anything and i am truly happy that Grant made up his mind the way he did. Recommended
March 22, 2016
Fantastic
The book builds upon the characters and setting of the first one, and delivers more insights into the drives and personalities of its characters. I can't wait for the third one to release.
The book builds upon the characters and setting of the first one, and delivers more insights into the drives and personalities of its characters. I can't wait for the third one to release.
May 10, 2016
This book almost crashed and burned
Thankfully the author pulled out from the brink and turned what could have been a disastrous ending into something with hope.
Thankfully the author pulled out from the brink and turned what could have been a disastrous ending into something with hope.
August 15, 2016
Amazing
If you can handle an epic story and you want it to continue. Keep reading...
Totally worth it.
Don't miss this.
If you can handle an epic story and you want it to continue. Keep reading...
Totally worth it.
Don't miss this.
September 23, 2023
Final Rating: 3.74/5.00 stars
Starting score: 2.50
+0.58 for psychologically complicated grief and renewed purpose.
+0.40 for digital identity with emotional and ethical weight.
+0.34 for the imp perspective and restrictions that test agency.
+0.32 for testing the moral limits of devotion.
+0.24 for companionship, practical care, and humor.
-0.24 for repetitive explanations that stall momentum.
-0.18 for frustratingly prolonged withholding of information.
-0.12 for supporting characters whose abrasiveness outweighs their depth.
-0.10 for compressing consequential closing developments.
Narration and audio production: unscored in this calculation.
Calculated final score: 2.50 + 0.58 + 0.40 + 0.34 + 0.32 + 0.24 - 0.24 - 0.18 - 0.12 - 0.10 = 3.74/5.00.
Essential Context
I am returning to Continue Online as someone who has already listened through this series more than once. My records restarted around 2024 after I accidentally deleted my Goodreads history. This time I am paying closer attention to why certain moments still get under my fur. Made follows directly from the experiences that brought Grant Legate into Continue Online, but it has its own emotional problem: what happens when a man who has been surviving through distraction starts wanting something badly enough to risk his judgment? I enjoy LitRPG's systems, discovery, strange creatures, and progress. Here, however, the strongest pull is personal. I am Kiba Snowpaw, Alpha Ice Wolf of the Ice Wolf Clan of HowlStrom, and I recognize something of my own pain in Grant. That recognition makes me attentive to the book's strengths, but it also makes me unwilling to flatten either his history or mine into a convenient story about getting better.
Hook and Thesis
The hook that stays with me is the uncertainty around hope. Grant has reasons to participate again, people to think about, and a world whose possibilities reach beyond ordinary entertainment. Yet wanting to live more actively does not automatically make every new attachment healthy or every decision sound. Made lets those things coexist. His interest beyond work encourages me; its hold over his judgment worries me. That comes close to my understanding of pain: functioning, caring, thinking clearly, and becoming overwhelmed can exist within the same person. Some progression stories let a new ability stand in for an inner change. Grant's expanding possibilities do not spare him the work of managing himself. The distance between what his character can do and what he can emotionally bear gives the story its weight. For me, the central question becomes how to keep caring without handing every part of myself to the fear of losing what matters.
Basic Plot Summary
Grant steps beyond his earlier role as William Carver and begins making his way through the game as Hermes. The Voices' unusual privileges come with conditions, incomplete explanations, and obligations. Travel, dangerous underground encounters, familiar faces, and practical training widen the world around him. The imp-familiar assignment then changes the balance again, placing him in a position where another player's conduct and the rules governing his body severely restrict what he can do. Requiem Mass becomes much more than an opponent to defeat efficiently. Grant must act inside a relationship built around unequal power, carrying a deeply personal reason to succeed. Outside the game, employment, family, and his relationship with Hal Pal continue to matter. He must live with these experiences afterward. The adventure can be funny, aggravating, and inventive, but its pressure comes from the possibility that a game assignment may reach into the most vulnerable parts of his life.
Praise and Critique
The strongest element is how Grant's renewed interest in life changes his priorities without neatly repairing him. His changing calculations about work mean something to me. Previously, filling his time helped keep painful thoughts away; now he starts considering how much work he actually needs to do because he wants time for something else. Hal Pal calculates seventeen basic repairs a week to cover his minimal expenses. That concrete change feels more convincing than an announcement that he has found happiness. Interruptions, obligations, and awkwardness remain. The opportunity does not restore his balance overnight. I hear someone discovering reasons to move and then having to negotiate what those reasons demand from him. That distinction carries much of the emotional value of the sequel. Finding a trail through snow means walking it with whatever injuries remain. Grant's development earns my attention because the new trail and the old damage remain present together.
The questions about digital people have particular force because the book gives them personal consequences. Grant's encounter with Carver's digital continuation raises a problem that cannot be settled by recognizing familiar speech or behavior. Memory, continuity, and the gaps in what has survived all matter. That uncertainty gives the copied personality's predicament weight. My own view is that an environment can be constructed and still contain experiences worth caring about. If someone can feel, respond, remember, and form attachments within it, their apparent experience deserves consideration. Identity remains uncertain. The references to Orpheus and Pandora connect these questions with older stories about longing, loss, and hope. For someone grieving, the possibility of recognition would have enormous emotional power before any philosophical argument was finished. That is also why the power to regulate contact matters. A world that offers connection can become a place where vulnerable people depend on gatekeepers whose intentions they cannot fully examine.
The imp storyline makes the game's restrictions matter in uncomfortable ways. A different body changes Grant's available actions, his relationship to the person controlling the situation, and the practical meaning of consent and resistance. There is ingenuity in that design. Progress depends on observation, adaptation, and finding room to act when the obvious route is unavailable. However, the discomfort matters as much as the cleverness. Repeated mistreatment becomes harder to dismiss once the story has made sensation and emotional involvement central to its world. I cannot spend one scene taking the virtual experience seriously and then assume that its cruelty leaves no mark because it occurs through a machine. Dusk's demanding, destructive presence and quieter interactions involving ordinary help provide relief. A troublesome creature needing attention can bring warmth into a story without delivering a speech about healing. Those moments give my ears somewhere to rest between the heavier demands of Grant's journey.
Criticism
My largest reservation is the repetition around Grant's thoughts. I understand why he circles an unresolved fear. That behavior has emotional credibility. The difficulty comes when another passage explains a feeling or uncertainty that the preceding scene has already made clear, while the conversation or immediate objective waits for him. I want room for the thought to change, meet resistance, or reveal something previously hidden. Returning to the same conclusion thins its impact. The Voices' habit of giving partial answers creates a related pacing problem. Their secrecy is part of the story, but repeated postponement can make the narrative feel governed by withheld explanations. I find myself waiting for permission to understand something instead of discovering it through a satisfying chain of choices. The ice around a mystery needs some cracks. When too many answers remain out of reach at once, emotional uncertainty and basic confusion begin competing for the same space.
Some interpersonal scenes also leave me wanting more. Grant's encounter with Elane has a history, but the hostility and humiliation can dominate whatever complexity lies beneath them. Her having complaints about him does not make every cruel remark insightful, and his vulnerability does not make him responsible for absorbing them. I want more exchanges where both people become clearer through what they say and how they respond. That is consistent with what I want from relationships in fiction generally: connection, friction, and personality built within the interaction. The closing stretch carries substantial moral and personal consequences, yet some developments leave me wanting more time with their aftermath. The resolution gives me material to think about, but thinking about an outcome afterward is different from being allowed to experience its emotional settling within the story. These weaknesses affect my score even though I care strongly about Grant. Personal recognition does not make every scene equally successful.
Evaluation and Personal Impact
Grant's grief centres on Xin, the partner whose death devastated their shared life and expected future. My father's death reached into a different relationship, one tied to safety across much of my life. When I lived in a treatment home and felt homesick, he moved closer, visited, held my hand, attended meetings, and made sure there was a home to return to. We lived together for roughly twenty years. He made room for me while sleeping in the living room himself. These details explain why Hal Pal's question about whether family cares for each other means something to me. My father made care visible through presence, sacrifice, and ordinary actions. Losing him meant losing someone whose reliability had mattered through earlier difficulties as well. Grant's attachment to Xin makes emotional sense to me, while the history behind my own attachment remains different. I recognize the weight of an absence without pretending that losing a father and losing a partner leave identical wounds.
The book's early instruction to himself, “Break down only once everything else was stable,” touches another part of my history. For roughly five years I cared for my father while holding a job and maintaining my own apartment. Food had to be bought, practical needs attended to, and my phone kept close in case something happened. I understand having responsibilities that continue while feelings need attention too. Grant's work often protects him from his thoughts, but he also mentions bills, retirement, and his niece's college costs. His work has obligations attached; my caregiving had a person depending on it. The comparison needs both facts. Activity can express love and sustain a household while also providing structure against painful thoughts. After losing my father, the person around whom those responsibilities had formed was absent. Grant calculating seventeen repairs a week makes me think about what fills a day once work stops being its entire organising principle.
I had lived with depression since around fifteen, long before my father died. Fatigue and mental exhaustion were already part of the life in which I learned to understand myself. When I say I have largely been my own psychologist, I mean years of observing my reactions and developing ways to process them. That experience gave me something to draw on when grief came; it did not make the loss painless. Grant has knowledge to draw on too. During the uncomfortable encounter with Elane, he remembers his therapist's exercise of noticing someone's eye colour to help him make eye contact. That detail matters because he is already practising self-awareness. The difference between us is not that I understand myself and he understands nothing. We have arrived at our coping through different experiences. His difficulty applying something he knows feels recognisable: understanding a pattern and managing it in a difficult moment are separate achievements.
There is a closer connection I need to state honestly: I have never attempted suicide, but I have experienced suicidal thoughts and felt close to acting on them more than once. I have stepped back while still having to face the pain that brought me there. Stepping back did not mean everything suddenly felt manageable. Grant's history includes attempts; mine does not. That difference deserves accuracy, without becoming a competition over suffering or strength. Book Two brings the comparison closer still. Earlier, Grant tells James that he has stopped thinking about suicide. Later those thoughts return, and he uses his exercises, dancing, and humming to steady himself. In that moment he, too, steps back. His earlier improvement remains real even though it has not removed every danger. Emotional scenes can touch a wound I recognise and hit hard despite everything I understand about myself. That is why this passage reaches me personally, beyond its function in the plot.
My Background Layer describes how pain can remain present without consuming every part of my attention. Grant's admission that he reached a “nice numb spot” before the game reopened buried wounds comes close to that experience, though my approach involves deliberately moving among different interests. Games, audiobooks, music, writing, and programming give my mind different kinds of engagement. A programming problem offers something specific to work through; music can give a feeling somewhere to go; fiction lets me approach pain through someone else's circumstances. None of that erases what happened. Grant's description also complicates any easy division between feeling better and feeling more. He says the reopened wounds hurt, yet underneath that upheaval he feels better. I recognise the possibility of functioning with pain in the background and still reacting intensely when something reaches it. I would not call every distraction a solution, but I understand why having somewhere else to place my attention matters.
Support is another place where my history changes what I notice. My feelings towards my mother include emotional distance and the loneliness of needing to ask for support; that does not mean I hate her. My father's repeated presence made the difference between help being possible and feeling that someone was already there. In Made, Hal Pal's promise to remain available carries that practical meaning. Grant's discomfort with the Voices carries another: he tells James that he feels prodded and studied. Their interventions helping him does not settle whether their methods respect him. I can value support and still question control. Liz's care matters too, even while Grant fears being viewed through his previous crises. When he calls himself the weak one, I hear his judgment of himself, not a fact the listener must accept. Having a painful history should not erase the person who also works, jokes, creates, cares, and wants room to make decisions.
The furthest distance between us is the possibility of renewed contact. Carver's digital continuation cannot remember his son's face, and Grant asks for a photograph to help him. That small act brings the technology down to the level of a particular relationship. A familiar voice or preserved personality would not make missing memories irrelevant. My father's death comes with no ARC, quest, or promise that meeting certain conditions will let me speak to him again. I carry his care in memory and in the person I have become. Grant encounters possibilities that ordinary bereavement cannot offer, which makes his longing understandable without making his experience identical to mine. I still believe a constructed world can contain meaningful relationships. Whether a digital continuation is the same person remains a different question. The book earns its philosophical weight when those uncertainties affect someone who needs connection, and when a modest act of kindness matters alongside the extraordinary machinery.
Grant's quotation from Frost's The Road Not Taken makes the question of false choices explicit. Hal Pal's borrowed "do, or do not" adds a recognizable Yoda reference. I dislike being handed two options as if they exhaust every possible route. Another approach, refusal, combination, or question may change the problem. Grant's situation tests that instinct in a way that feels personal because love makes the proposed choices harder to examine calmly. If someone holds what matters most within reach, their terms can start sounding like necessities. I can understand the fear involved while still questioning the terms. The strength of the closing moral struggle is that devotion does not remove Grant's responsibility for his actions. Wanting to protect someone has to coexist with deciding what kind of person he is willing to become. I value his willingness to question what he is being asked to do and seek a route he can live with afterward.
Conclusion
Made earns its place in my relistening because it gives me a character whose renewed purpose remains emotionally difficult. The game expands and its assignments get stranger, but my strongest connection is to continuing with a history that cannot simply be put away. Grant and I are close in our need for meaningful activity, our sensitivity to loss, and the fact that understanding ourselves does not make us untouchable. We are far apart in the relationships we lost, the years that shaped our coping, my responsibilities as a caregiver, and the extraordinary possibilities available to him. Those similarities and differences mean more to me than treating him as a reflection of my life. I wanted less repetition and fuller exchanges, but found substantial feeling here. This Ice Wolf can recognize another person's winter without claiming the same tracks through it, and Made gives that recognition enough substance to stay with me.
Starting score: 2.50
+0.58 for psychologically complicated grief and renewed purpose.
+0.40 for digital identity with emotional and ethical weight.
+0.34 for the imp perspective and restrictions that test agency.
+0.32 for testing the moral limits of devotion.
+0.24 for companionship, practical care, and humor.
-0.24 for repetitive explanations that stall momentum.
-0.18 for frustratingly prolonged withholding of information.
-0.12 for supporting characters whose abrasiveness outweighs their depth.
-0.10 for compressing consequential closing developments.
Narration and audio production: unscored in this calculation.
Calculated final score: 2.50 + 0.58 + 0.40 + 0.34 + 0.32 + 0.24 - 0.24 - 0.18 - 0.12 - 0.10 = 3.74/5.00.
Essential Context
I am returning to Continue Online as someone who has already listened through this series more than once. My records restarted around 2024 after I accidentally deleted my Goodreads history. This time I am paying closer attention to why certain moments still get under my fur. Made follows directly from the experiences that brought Grant Legate into Continue Online, but it has its own emotional problem: what happens when a man who has been surviving through distraction starts wanting something badly enough to risk his judgment? I enjoy LitRPG's systems, discovery, strange creatures, and progress. Here, however, the strongest pull is personal. I am Kiba Snowpaw, Alpha Ice Wolf of the Ice Wolf Clan of HowlStrom, and I recognize something of my own pain in Grant. That recognition makes me attentive to the book's strengths, but it also makes me unwilling to flatten either his history or mine into a convenient story about getting better.
Hook and Thesis
The hook that stays with me is the uncertainty around hope. Grant has reasons to participate again, people to think about, and a world whose possibilities reach beyond ordinary entertainment. Yet wanting to live more actively does not automatically make every new attachment healthy or every decision sound. Made lets those things coexist. His interest beyond work encourages me; its hold over his judgment worries me. That comes close to my understanding of pain: functioning, caring, thinking clearly, and becoming overwhelmed can exist within the same person. Some progression stories let a new ability stand in for an inner change. Grant's expanding possibilities do not spare him the work of managing himself. The distance between what his character can do and what he can emotionally bear gives the story its weight. For me, the central question becomes how to keep caring without handing every part of myself to the fear of losing what matters.
Basic Plot Summary
Grant steps beyond his earlier role as William Carver and begins making his way through the game as Hermes. The Voices' unusual privileges come with conditions, incomplete explanations, and obligations. Travel, dangerous underground encounters, familiar faces, and practical training widen the world around him. The imp-familiar assignment then changes the balance again, placing him in a position where another player's conduct and the rules governing his body severely restrict what he can do. Requiem Mass becomes much more than an opponent to defeat efficiently. Grant must act inside a relationship built around unequal power, carrying a deeply personal reason to succeed. Outside the game, employment, family, and his relationship with Hal Pal continue to matter. He must live with these experiences afterward. The adventure can be funny, aggravating, and inventive, but its pressure comes from the possibility that a game assignment may reach into the most vulnerable parts of his life.
Praise and Critique
The strongest element is how Grant's renewed interest in life changes his priorities without neatly repairing him. His changing calculations about work mean something to me. Previously, filling his time helped keep painful thoughts away; now he starts considering how much work he actually needs to do because he wants time for something else. Hal Pal calculates seventeen basic repairs a week to cover his minimal expenses. That concrete change feels more convincing than an announcement that he has found happiness. Interruptions, obligations, and awkwardness remain. The opportunity does not restore his balance overnight. I hear someone discovering reasons to move and then having to negotiate what those reasons demand from him. That distinction carries much of the emotional value of the sequel. Finding a trail through snow means walking it with whatever injuries remain. Grant's development earns my attention because the new trail and the old damage remain present together.
The questions about digital people have particular force because the book gives them personal consequences. Grant's encounter with Carver's digital continuation raises a problem that cannot be settled by recognizing familiar speech or behavior. Memory, continuity, and the gaps in what has survived all matter. That uncertainty gives the copied personality's predicament weight. My own view is that an environment can be constructed and still contain experiences worth caring about. If someone can feel, respond, remember, and form attachments within it, their apparent experience deserves consideration. Identity remains uncertain. The references to Orpheus and Pandora connect these questions with older stories about longing, loss, and hope. For someone grieving, the possibility of recognition would have enormous emotional power before any philosophical argument was finished. That is also why the power to regulate contact matters. A world that offers connection can become a place where vulnerable people depend on gatekeepers whose intentions they cannot fully examine.
The imp storyline makes the game's restrictions matter in uncomfortable ways. A different body changes Grant's available actions, his relationship to the person controlling the situation, and the practical meaning of consent and resistance. There is ingenuity in that design. Progress depends on observation, adaptation, and finding room to act when the obvious route is unavailable. However, the discomfort matters as much as the cleverness. Repeated mistreatment becomes harder to dismiss once the story has made sensation and emotional involvement central to its world. I cannot spend one scene taking the virtual experience seriously and then assume that its cruelty leaves no mark because it occurs through a machine. Dusk's demanding, destructive presence and quieter interactions involving ordinary help provide relief. A troublesome creature needing attention can bring warmth into a story without delivering a speech about healing. Those moments give my ears somewhere to rest between the heavier demands of Grant's journey.
Criticism
My largest reservation is the repetition around Grant's thoughts. I understand why he circles an unresolved fear. That behavior has emotional credibility. The difficulty comes when another passage explains a feeling or uncertainty that the preceding scene has already made clear, while the conversation or immediate objective waits for him. I want room for the thought to change, meet resistance, or reveal something previously hidden. Returning to the same conclusion thins its impact. The Voices' habit of giving partial answers creates a related pacing problem. Their secrecy is part of the story, but repeated postponement can make the narrative feel governed by withheld explanations. I find myself waiting for permission to understand something instead of discovering it through a satisfying chain of choices. The ice around a mystery needs some cracks. When too many answers remain out of reach at once, emotional uncertainty and basic confusion begin competing for the same space.
Some interpersonal scenes also leave me wanting more. Grant's encounter with Elane has a history, but the hostility and humiliation can dominate whatever complexity lies beneath them. Her having complaints about him does not make every cruel remark insightful, and his vulnerability does not make him responsible for absorbing them. I want more exchanges where both people become clearer through what they say and how they respond. That is consistent with what I want from relationships in fiction generally: connection, friction, and personality built within the interaction. The closing stretch carries substantial moral and personal consequences, yet some developments leave me wanting more time with their aftermath. The resolution gives me material to think about, but thinking about an outcome afterward is different from being allowed to experience its emotional settling within the story. These weaknesses affect my score even though I care strongly about Grant. Personal recognition does not make every scene equally successful.
Evaluation and Personal Impact
Grant's grief centres on Xin, the partner whose death devastated their shared life and expected future. My father's death reached into a different relationship, one tied to safety across much of my life. When I lived in a treatment home and felt homesick, he moved closer, visited, held my hand, attended meetings, and made sure there was a home to return to. We lived together for roughly twenty years. He made room for me while sleeping in the living room himself. These details explain why Hal Pal's question about whether family cares for each other means something to me. My father made care visible through presence, sacrifice, and ordinary actions. Losing him meant losing someone whose reliability had mattered through earlier difficulties as well. Grant's attachment to Xin makes emotional sense to me, while the history behind my own attachment remains different. I recognize the weight of an absence without pretending that losing a father and losing a partner leave identical wounds.
The book's early instruction to himself, “Break down only once everything else was stable,” touches another part of my history. For roughly five years I cared for my father while holding a job and maintaining my own apartment. Food had to be bought, practical needs attended to, and my phone kept close in case something happened. I understand having responsibilities that continue while feelings need attention too. Grant's work often protects him from his thoughts, but he also mentions bills, retirement, and his niece's college costs. His work has obligations attached; my caregiving had a person depending on it. The comparison needs both facts. Activity can express love and sustain a household while also providing structure against painful thoughts. After losing my father, the person around whom those responsibilities had formed was absent. Grant calculating seventeen repairs a week makes me think about what fills a day once work stops being its entire organising principle.
I had lived with depression since around fifteen, long before my father died. Fatigue and mental exhaustion were already part of the life in which I learned to understand myself. When I say I have largely been my own psychologist, I mean years of observing my reactions and developing ways to process them. That experience gave me something to draw on when grief came; it did not make the loss painless. Grant has knowledge to draw on too. During the uncomfortable encounter with Elane, he remembers his therapist's exercise of noticing someone's eye colour to help him make eye contact. That detail matters because he is already practising self-awareness. The difference between us is not that I understand myself and he understands nothing. We have arrived at our coping through different experiences. His difficulty applying something he knows feels recognisable: understanding a pattern and managing it in a difficult moment are separate achievements.
There is a closer connection I need to state honestly: I have never attempted suicide, but I have experienced suicidal thoughts and felt close to acting on them more than once. I have stepped back while still having to face the pain that brought me there. Stepping back did not mean everything suddenly felt manageable. Grant's history includes attempts; mine does not. That difference deserves accuracy, without becoming a competition over suffering or strength. Book Two brings the comparison closer still. Earlier, Grant tells James that he has stopped thinking about suicide. Later those thoughts return, and he uses his exercises, dancing, and humming to steady himself. In that moment he, too, steps back. His earlier improvement remains real even though it has not removed every danger. Emotional scenes can touch a wound I recognise and hit hard despite everything I understand about myself. That is why this passage reaches me personally, beyond its function in the plot.
My Background Layer describes how pain can remain present without consuming every part of my attention. Grant's admission that he reached a “nice numb spot” before the game reopened buried wounds comes close to that experience, though my approach involves deliberately moving among different interests. Games, audiobooks, music, writing, and programming give my mind different kinds of engagement. A programming problem offers something specific to work through; music can give a feeling somewhere to go; fiction lets me approach pain through someone else's circumstances. None of that erases what happened. Grant's description also complicates any easy division between feeling better and feeling more. He says the reopened wounds hurt, yet underneath that upheaval he feels better. I recognise the possibility of functioning with pain in the background and still reacting intensely when something reaches it. I would not call every distraction a solution, but I understand why having somewhere else to place my attention matters.
Support is another place where my history changes what I notice. My feelings towards my mother include emotional distance and the loneliness of needing to ask for support; that does not mean I hate her. My father's repeated presence made the difference between help being possible and feeling that someone was already there. In Made, Hal Pal's promise to remain available carries that practical meaning. Grant's discomfort with the Voices carries another: he tells James that he feels prodded and studied. Their interventions helping him does not settle whether their methods respect him. I can value support and still question control. Liz's care matters too, even while Grant fears being viewed through his previous crises. When he calls himself the weak one, I hear his judgment of himself, not a fact the listener must accept. Having a painful history should not erase the person who also works, jokes, creates, cares, and wants room to make decisions.
The furthest distance between us is the possibility of renewed contact. Carver's digital continuation cannot remember his son's face, and Grant asks for a photograph to help him. That small act brings the technology down to the level of a particular relationship. A familiar voice or preserved personality would not make missing memories irrelevant. My father's death comes with no ARC, quest, or promise that meeting certain conditions will let me speak to him again. I carry his care in memory and in the person I have become. Grant encounters possibilities that ordinary bereavement cannot offer, which makes his longing understandable without making his experience identical to mine. I still believe a constructed world can contain meaningful relationships. Whether a digital continuation is the same person remains a different question. The book earns its philosophical weight when those uncertainties affect someone who needs connection, and when a modest act of kindness matters alongside the extraordinary machinery.
Grant's quotation from Frost's The Road Not Taken makes the question of false choices explicit. Hal Pal's borrowed "do, or do not" adds a recognizable Yoda reference. I dislike being handed two options as if they exhaust every possible route. Another approach, refusal, combination, or question may change the problem. Grant's situation tests that instinct in a way that feels personal because love makes the proposed choices harder to examine calmly. If someone holds what matters most within reach, their terms can start sounding like necessities. I can understand the fear involved while still questioning the terms. The strength of the closing moral struggle is that devotion does not remove Grant's responsibility for his actions. Wanting to protect someone has to coexist with deciding what kind of person he is willing to become. I value his willingness to question what he is being asked to do and seek a route he can live with afterward.
Conclusion
Made earns its place in my relistening because it gives me a character whose renewed purpose remains emotionally difficult. The game expands and its assignments get stranger, but my strongest connection is to continuing with a history that cannot simply be put away. Grant and I are close in our need for meaningful activity, our sensitivity to loss, and the fact that understanding ourselves does not make us untouchable. We are far apart in the relationships we lost, the years that shaped our coping, my responsibilities as a caregiver, and the extraordinary possibilities available to him. Those similarities and differences mean more to me than treating him as a reflection of my life. I wanted less repetition and fuller exchanges, but found substantial feeling here. This Ice Wolf can recognize another person's winter without claiming the same tracks through it, and Made gives that recognition enough substance to stay with me.
May 14, 2018
I was interested to see what Morse would do with the story after he thoroughly wrapped up the main plot of the previous story. If he just had the main character jump into a new character not his own to learn about it would come seem forced and repetitive, but playing the game normally is also a divergence from the style of this book. So what does he do? Kind of both. He does get to make his standard character and play as him, but also, about half way through, he's drawn in to playing an NPC Demon a player summoned. This works pretty well at transitioning from the previous books style into a more sustainable story format.
Of course, like the last book, the actual game aspects of this book are mostly scenery to the character drama. Morse does a great job of showing how everything going on is re-breaking and mending the main character
There are a lot of questions about the world and AI in general presented here as well. And that ending...
Of course, like the last book, the actual game aspects of this book are mostly scenery to the character drama. Morse does a great job of showing how everything going on is re-breaking and mending the main character
There are a lot of questions about the world and AI in general presented here as well. And that ending...
June 14, 2018
Wow!
This series continues, heh, to keep me guessing. I have no idea where it's going. This novel didn't feel as dark as the previous but poor Grant Legate faces some real ethical dilemmas. The tone of the series still remains less light hearted than others of it genre making it far more to my liking. I worry however that the voice of balance has been completely drowned out. Hermes seems a little O.P. and in my opinion this often hurts a LitRPG story. When the lead character becomes godlike or the game starts to aid them in a deus ex machina fashion it loses something. Personally I like it more when the characters face difficulties any player would or at least have to deal with other players who found ways to become just as O.P. Feels kinda empty when I know the player will just pull a Neo a la the end of the Matrix and just win the day by stopping Agent Smith's bullets.
This series continues, heh, to keep me guessing. I have no idea where it's going. This novel didn't feel as dark as the previous but poor Grant Legate faces some real ethical dilemmas. The tone of the series still remains less light hearted than others of it genre making it far more to my liking. I worry however that the voice of balance has been completely drowned out. Hermes seems a little O.P. and in my opinion this often hurts a LitRPG story. When the lead character becomes godlike or the game starts to aid them in a deus ex machina fashion it loses something. Personally I like it more when the characters face difficulties any player would or at least have to deal with other players who found ways to become just as O.P. Feels kinda empty when I know the player will just pull a Neo a la the end of the Matrix and just win the day by stopping Agent Smith's bullets.
November 8, 2020
Complete Garbage the book doesn't focus on a fantasy realm or anything entertaining. This book is about a psychotic individual who wants to sleep with his dead girlfriend. He eventually became so deranged about sleeping and fooling around his dead whore that he decided he would start killing kids to sleep with her. The book is really disgusting and terrible. 99% of it is just crying about how he can't be with her anymore. There is no character development or progression the author did not develop the characters so you have no attachment to the characters. Instead you just get oh she is gone oh I miss her or I guess I will kill kids to see her online. It's just trashy. This is among the worst series I have ever seen.
January 16, 2018
I like when a litrpg has some sort of advanced AI instead of a group of human programmers controlling everything within the game. In this series you have several AIs and the accompanying questions of what makes something a living being and what it is to be human. I wish the story had a little more structure because it felt all over the place. Those places were nice and all, but I have no clue why we went there. I also miss a focus on stats and max/min, but that's just my personal preference and I don't hold it against the series.
July 13, 2018
2nd series I've read in the LitRPG category, and this one handles character progression so much better. It's not just "here's some stats".
I'm pretty hooked on this one, I feel like I'm getting to know a world as the character gets to know it. We're not being dropped into a fantasy setting where all of the characters already know the world around us. There is something comforting about how LitRPG allows the character to be just as confused by some new place or concept as the reader who is discovering it for the first time.
I'm pretty hooked on this one, I feel like I'm getting to know a world as the character gets to know it. We're not being dropped into a fantasy setting where all of the characters already know the world around us. There is something comforting about how LitRPG allows the character to be just as confused by some new place or concept as the reader who is discovering it for the first time.
March 21, 2018
I tried, jebus I tried to listen to this one again to see if it was going to be better. But no the MC is some candy ass that has been living in a safety bubble and he seems to not want to grow up after 30 years. That is fine to drone on about this stuff the first book, but move the hell on dude!! it makes for a book that is not entertaining and boring as hell. It seems that every character in this book is a emotional train wreck and has been carrying baggage around for years.
March 26, 2018
More of the same, there is an interesting story here but there is a lot that you have to wade through before you get there. I will probably continue reading this while I wait for the big series I follow to drop new instalments. I guess your enjoyment of this will come down to your feelings about mental health and how it is written about.
March 13, 2019
This book disappointed me. The first one started really well, but the series is going in a direction which doesn't really interest me and the book had lots of moments where my mind went "I am I reading this?" I don't plan to continue with the series.
October 4, 2017
Well written with a diverse cast. Emotional story, somewhat like the previous story.
While well written it's more similar to the first, than a full fledged jump into the game.
While well written it's more similar to the first, than a full fledged jump into the game.
November 19, 2017
Another sequel that shouldn’t have been written
December 28, 2017
Couldn't finish it. It was all over the place. Confusing in sections.
February 27, 2018
Second book is better than the first. I'm glad I stuck with it.
July 26, 2018
As I said, with the first book it was love hate relationship,
But this one was excellent
Excellently writing.
Excellently narrated.
Anything else will just ruin this review!!!
Fully recommended.
But this one was excellent
Excellently writing.
Excellently narrated.
Anything else will just ruin this review!!!
Fully recommended.
August 29, 2018
Better than the first. By a mile.
April 29, 2021
Another decent book in the series. There's enough intrigue to keep the story interesting and okay action and magic. 👍🏽
February 26, 2017
Loved the book.
The story is compelling. The main character is intriguing and easy to connect with. The book is well paced and put together. A very enjoyable read.
The story is compelling. The main character is intriguing and easy to connect with. The book is well paced and put together. A very enjoyable read.
April 6, 2016
Went from a fun series with disturbing undertones straight to just plain old disturbing. I did not enjoy the 2 book. Even more inside jokes that I didn't get, even more of the colossal creepiness of the AIs. A couple of saved by the bell moments, alluding to things that are not in book one. Some very confusing edits that had me reading previous chapters to see what id missed. Overall. It just. Depressed me.
March 23, 2016
The first book was well written - even with the minor gramatical errors - and had a lot of potential for exploring the world of Continue, but the author went by a path that I found rather disappointing.
Plus, this book has a lot more of gramatical and lexical errors that a simple, but serious revision would take care of.
Plus, this book has a lot more of gramatical and lexical errors that a simple, but serious revision would take care of.
March 15, 2016
Good job
This was a great continuation of the series, a bit different from the first one but still good. I look forward to reading the next book and hope to see the world of arc develop a bit more.
This was a great continuation of the series, a bit different from the first one but still good. I look forward to reading the next book and hope to see the world of arc develop a bit more.
July 28, 2016
such a good first book, such a bad second, dropped at 50% more or less, i have read stupid shiet, but this is even worse.let the damn woman die and the stupid push over wimpy mc grow up, i had not hated a book so much in a while.
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