The Castle at the End of the World

By: Justin Marks

Narrated by: Christian J. Gilliland

Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

GROW—EXPLORE—DEFEND

It has been six months since the System changed the lives of Jason and his friends. They made new allies, built a home in a new world, and rescued friends and family. Now, they are heading out into the new world to see what has survived.

Will they find more of humanity in the wilderness, and will they find people they can trust? They have learned more about this new world, but they will discover there is much they still do not know.

They still don’t know what all the rules are or what’s coming next. They do know that if they work hard and stay together, they can face whatever the System throws at them. They will make sure that what is left of humanity has a fighting chance of surviving what comes next.

Jason and his friends have more leveling, dungeon crawling, base building, and exploration while making new friends and enemies in book two of this LitRPG series.

©2024 Justin Marks (P)2024 Royal Guard Publishing LLC

The Life of an Adventurer

I love this series. It is like a comforting adventurer's journey as they navigate the time after the collapse of the world.

Exploration, dungeons, bandits, and the desire to help others. These are characters that you root for and listen to with bated breath as they try to make the world a better place.

This series really falls into the slice of life category for me. While there are plenty of fights, the story really isn't about that. It's about surviving, getting stronger, and working to help others.
10 out of 10. A great series!

Pleasant

Sometimes, a book falls into the category of a pleasant pastime, which, in my opinion, might mean that it is neither bad nor good but an okay pastime. So far, this series falls under that description.

Part 2

If you liked the first one you're going to like this one.
The story continues and they are trying to not just survive, but thrive.
I'm giving this book 6 out of 5 stars.

Castle

A very run read with great supporting characters. It grabs your attention and holds onto it.

This reads like a summary of particularly boring events.

That isn't too say nothing interesting happens, only that it's conveyed horribly. I'd forgive you for not remembering who's who, each character has so little personal and class identity it doesn't even matter.

Magic is so expensive and so low impact that it somehow manages to be even less interesting than the bonking with a staff the Druid MC does for 90% of fights, and when he passed on the beast transformation ability AGAIN, I nearly screamed.

It's hard to explain how poorly this is written without going into gamer speak. Essentially, every skirmish feels like a child smashing their toys together with little to no description, strategy or guile. Forces run at each other and their health somehow drops by them being in proximity with each other. Characters honest to god 'taunt' and that's how entire fights go, with enemies sticking to the tanks until they die with very little exception.

This is supposed to be an all-powerful system, but it reads like a particularly poor rpg from the 80s...

I felt similarly during the first book, but I thought I'd give book 2 a go. Big mistake, and I nearly yeeted my phone when the druid, after spending most of the book grinding to level 20, picked an ability that just meant more toy smashing and tank n spank.

Really, really bad. Don't recommend.