Die. Respawn. Repeat. 2

De: Silver Linings

Narrado por: Austin Rising

A coming doomsday and not nearly enough power to stop it. Yet. With Ethan Hill, time never runs out.

Ethan's gathered a base of power for himself, but he isn't the only one with access to the Interface. An attempt to find friends lost in time ends with him matching wits with a Trialgoer—one who's long since beaten her Trial and now controls all aspects of life in her perfect, crystalline city.

She-Who-Whispers is both controller and puppetmaster of everything that happens within the so-called perfect city of Isthanok. She hears everything that happens within her city, controls every action and reaction by her people. That perfection is threatened only by the city's few rebels … and now also by Ethan, who sees her perfectionism for what it really is. An extension of the Integrators and their control.

Whisper might have power on her side, but Ethan has time. Time, information, and allies both new and old. His dive into the Interface and the extent of what he can do is only just beginning.

He'll unravel the secrets of the Trials, and when he does, the Integrators themselves won't be able to stop what's coming.

Book two of this action-packed LitRPG apocalypse progression fantasy seamlessly merging aspects from apocalyptic system LitRPG's like He Who Fights with Monsters and Primal Hunter, with time loop stories like Mother of Learning.

©2025 Silver Linings (P)2025 Recorded Books

Tonal shift

Book 2 in this series changes tone pretty dramatically. In book 1, we get small-scale action that loops back to the beginning of the story each time the protagonist dies. In book 2, we get much more consequential action and shorter loops.

For an author or reader, this change makes sense. Looping everything rapidly becomes tedious, and would be even more tedious to live through. (See Groundhog Day, which does much the same.)

The change advances the master plot significantly, but for me, this comes at the expense of my story immersion. This kind of looping structure already has a serious risk of reducing stakes so far that they become trivialized, and I'm afraid the change didn't help this for me.

The author does present new characters, and goes to some lengths to make the reader care about them. Unfortunately, the results are a bit mixed for me. Some of the characters are deep enough and sympathetic enough that I really enjoyed them, and some are written such that it seems the author wants me to care, but I don't.

I already have the next book in the series, so I'll probably continue at some point, but it won't be a priority. To be clear, I don't know that I would have the same reaction to this book at a different time, but at this time, I could not connect to it at all.