Sweet Revenge

A New Kind of Freak, Book 2

By: Bananalloy

Narrated by: Ben Farrow

Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

New faces bring a new life outside of one's control. Embroiled in competition and battle, the perils facing a dragon must be triumphed through power, or else...

The unnamed Ice-cream Dragon pushed through the dangers wrought by humans and insatiable beasts atop the mountains. His might rapidly expanded as constant improvements steamrolled a middling competition.

However, that simple life cannot exist any longer. The return of magical power to the Evelard range brings attention in no small quantities. The fertile land and valuable mines were the cause of many wars across ages past, but the newfound dangers feel far more familiar. Magical beasts of varying power flock to conquer the valuable mountains, and simply recalling the towering figures surrounding him not long ago, the dragon's chance to rule the lands seemingly went up in smoke.

Not all is lost, though! The Sage's meddling not only led to this disastrous transformation—in the dragon's objectively correct opinion—but some compensation leaves him with a possible home if the mountain range of his birth can no longer accommodate him. Unwilling to leave and stubborn enough to temporarily persevere in this bountiful landscape, he must accept that the safety of the past has completely ended.

Hardly a lesson for him alone, but unlike others, he commands the ability to almost get himself killed. (Yes, again.)

©2022 by Bananalloy (P)2023 Podium Audio

A sweet listen!

I rather enjoyed listening to this audiobook. While it can sometimes get a small bit repetitive, it never fails to entertain. I mean, it's a story about a dragon made of icecream, how can it not? I can definitely recommend listening to this audiobook.

Ben Farrow's (the narrator) performance was really enjoyable and good. His voice for the youngling dragon remains adorably sweet, and the other voices he does aren't bad either. The only complaint I had was that he, when the POV switched, would continue reading on immediately. A small break would've helped a lot in figuring out the POV had changed. This isn't a big issue, though, since the POV doesn't switch too often. Apart from that, I have no complaints, and I look forward to listening to him again for book 3!

The characters are mostly good. And unlike the first book, there are actually quite a lot of talking characters this time and a lot more social interactions. I rather liked it, since it made Icy feel less isolated. I'm glad he made some friends. He deserves some friends. Sometimes the motivations of the characters feel a little weak and you'll be left wondering why a character did a certain action, but it doesn't happen too often, and the problem isn't nearly bad enough to not recommend listening. This is more a note towards the author. All in all, I liked the characters, though I still like Icy the most.

Which leads me to another thing I liked, which is sadly rather rare within the litrpg: a good sense of naming. Lots of stories always give the characters excuses like "I'm bad at naming things", and then give bad names. It's dull. This story has its own cute little backstory for Icy's name, though. Sure, the name is still simple and a bit on the nose, but that's the point. And the backstory behind it gives the name more depth than pretty much any other litrpg story does. It feels a little strange to focus on something like this during a review, but it's one of the things I noticed and really enjoyed, so I felt it needed mention.

The story is alright. Perfectly entertaining, if perhaps not very exciting. It's a lot of the same as the last book (which is fine, because I really enjoyed that one too). This books shakes things up a bit though by introducing a large scale background event that Icy takes part in, making everything more interesting. There also happens a lot more stuff in the wider world, which we're occasionally told about. They are really rather well timed. Every time I felt the story becoming a little repetitive, an alternate POV would come to shake things up again.

The only thing about the story I didn't like much was the whole thing with the Rose and the Eyeball. I won't spoil too much, but the whole event comes a little out of nowhere. Afterwards, it makes a lot more sense, as events and worldbuilding starts clicking things into place (in a way that shows it was actually thought about beforehand, not put in afterwards to fix the issue). But until then you'll probably be left a little reeling by the sudden plot development.

But despite that, I still really enjoyed the audiobook. And if you enjoyed the first book, I definitely recommend listening to this one too. This book is also generally just better than the first one, so if you're on the fence, I say: try it, you might be surprised

another amazing book! highly recommended

the latter part made me cry, but in a very good way.
I'm hyped for the next book abd am hoping it'll come out soon.