Meet Your Maker Volume 2: An Epic Fantasy LitRPG

Meet Your Maker, Book 2

By: Johnathan McClain, Seth McDuffee

Narrated by: Johnathan McClain

From the imaginations of Seth McDuffee, author of the bestselling Big Sneaky Barbarian books, and award-winning screenwriter and audiobook narrator Johnathan McClain comes the second volume of this meta LitRPG to answer the oft-considered question . . .

"What would it look like if Brandon Sanderson had written The Princess Bride?"

Bruce Silver thought he'd written the ending to his series. But the story disagreed.

Still trapped inside the fantasy he believes he created, Bruce has survived monsters, magical systems, and the awkwardness of being mistaken for Carpathian Einzgear, the dead hero hekilled off. But as Bruce begins to repair the damage Carpathian left behind, he'll discover something worse than a corrupted plotline: a world he can no longer control.

The System is glitching. And there may be more to his story than Bruce realizes. Meanwhile, the group of soul-bonded allies he never meant to abandon—his Heart Guard—is beginning to come undone.

Now, Bruce must confront the cost of every word he wrote . . . and all the ones he didn't. Because the enemies rising against him aren't just monsters or cults or angry wizards. They're consequences.

Meet Your Maker Volume 2 is the continuation of a series that blends epic fantasy, absurdist comedy, and metafictional mayhem in a story about authorship, accountability, and the people who keep believing in you even when you stop believing in yourself.

©2025 Johnathan McClain and Seth McDuffee (P)2025 Podium Audio

Come for the Chaos, Stay for the Depth

If the first Meet Your Maker pulled me into this completely ridiculous, hilarious world, Volume 2 made it very clear that there is a lot more going on underneath all the chaos than I originally realized.

The story expands quite a bit here, including the addition of another POV with Mael, and we start digging deeper into Bruce's relationship with the world he created—and whether he ever really had as much control over it as he thought. One line from Brit sums up one of my favorite questions running through the book: “Did you choose to write Riftbreaker, or did Riftbreaker choose you?” Those ideas about creation, identity, and control gave me a lot more to chew on than I was expecting from a series that can also make me laugh over something completely ridiculous thirty seconds later.

And I mean that as the highest compliment.

The humor and pop-culture references are still everywhere. *Dune* and Wu-Tang are just two examples, and nothing seems to be off limits. But the references don't feel like they're there just for the sake of dropping another reference. They're part of Bruce. He's been thrown into a world that shouldn't exist, surrounded by things he created but doesn't completely understand anymore, and pop culture becomes part of the language he uses to make sense of what he's seeing. Sometimes it's a quick comparison, sometimes it becomes an entire bit, but it also tells us something about the way Bruce's brain works and keeps a piece of his old world with him while he's trying to survive this new one.

Then there's Johnathan McClain.

I genuinely don't know how one narrator is doing all of this.

At some point you stop thinking about Johnathan as one guy reading an audiobook and start hearing an entire cast that just happens to be coming out of one person. Bruce has a voice that feels completely his own, but then Johnathan can leave him behind and become someone so thoroughly different that I forget I'm listening to the same narrator. These aren't slight changes in pitch with an accent thrown on top. The characters have different rhythms, attitudes, ages, energy, vocal textures, and personalities. He can move from ridiculous to threatening to vulnerable without losing the identity of the person speaking, and even characters who barely stick around are given enough personality that they feel fully realized while they're there. Then he'll jump right back into Bruce like he never left. There were moments when I genuinely had to remind myself that I wasn't listening to a multicast production. That's not just range. That's acting.

One of my favorite narration choices involves Mael. When the story moves into Mael's third-person POV, McClain changes the **narrative voice itself**, then gives Mael an even deeper, rougher, more gravelly speaking voice. That distinction matters in an audiobook with this many characters and moving pieces. He's not simply giving everybody a different voice; he's using the performance to help tell you where you are in the story and whose perspective you're experiencing.

That's what continues to impress me most about his narration. The book asks a LOT from one performer. Some characters are inherently ridiculous, some need to carry genuine emotional weight, and some exist somewhere in between. McClain commits to all of them. Even characters who appear briefly get enough personality to feel distinct. When the text gives him something completely absurd to work with, he goes all in instead of winking at the joke, and that commitment is a huge part of why the comedy works so well in audio.

Volume 2 also made me appreciate how strange the tonal balance of this series is. It can be incredibly ridiculous—in the best possible way—and then suddenly hit you with an idea about identity, authorship, choice, or whether a creator can ever truly control their creation. It keeps taking ideas that shouldn't work together and somehow making them work.

If you enjoyed the first audiobook, Volume 2 gives you more of everything that made it fun while opening the door to something much bigger underneath it. More characters, more worldbuilding, more ridiculous references, more questions about Bruce and Riftbreaker, and an even bigger playground for Johnathan McClain's narration.

At this point, I wouldn't want to experience this series any other way than in audio.

5 stars — and absolutely headphones required.

Masterful mix of humor and character

Seth and Johnathan produce the best comedic fantasy around. I often highlight favorite lines and this book has six fold the amount of belly laughing scenes. I loved the cast, both for the way each contribute—even Brit—and the way Johnathan’s narration adds that extra bit of awesome. On top of these noteworthy laughs, Meet Your Maker also has a strong introspection to the writer’s process. All the fears, the risks, the failures, and even the moments of glory manifest into a fantasy world as unpredictable as the next joke.
Rza the Warden is my vote for best supporting actor. He got bars for days. Lock it up. Down homie.

MTMV2 is so much fun!

"Meet Your Maker" Volume Two is a crackling good ride. Do yourself a favor and get the audiobook. Come for the outstanding narration, stay for the inventive and compelling set pieces, and then stay longer for the provocative excavation of whether or not we are the architects of our own lives. Do you write your own life's story, or are you bound by choice structures imposed on you by others? To find out, take the plunge and immerse yourself in this rollicking tale that poses the question asked by the most important rock ‘n’ roll lyric ever penned, which is, “Who are you?”

Should you get book 2? Heck yes!

Ostensibly you listened to book one and are pondering if book 2 holds up. Is it as witty and masterfully written and performed? I’d say yes and even more so, the series is hitting a stride and McClain’s performance is out of this world. Pick it up!

The connection..

My heart.. literally. I hope the 3rd book comes soon because man.. the emotion is real.