War Aeternus 2: Sacrifices

By: Charles Dean

Narrated by: Jeff Hays, Annie Ellicott

Length: 14 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's Summary

Desperate to save as many people as he can from a horrible fate in the cruel game of the gods, Lee and his small group of friends abandon the relative safety of Satterfield for the great city of Kirshtein. Tensions within the city have reached a breaking point after the arrival of an enemy Herald, and Lee is soon caught up in the struggle for power.

Captured, imprisoned, and forced to fight for his life on the blood-soaked sands of the Kirshtein arena, Lee has to figure out how to survive long enough to mend the rifts in the broken city before it falls apart completely. 

Armed with new skills, joined by new allies, and up against his most dangerous enemy yet, Lee's bid for survival in the War of Eternity takes on even higher stakes as he learns the what true leadership requires. Now, with an ominous new threat looming in the distance and an army on the horizon, Lee has to answer one question: Can he pay the price of victory?

This is the second installment of War Aeternus, a popular LitRPG Gamelit book that focuses on the adventures of Lee, a regular office worker stuck in a game-like world.

©2017 Charles Dean (P)2018 Charles Dean

It's more than Miller time!

Its Miller Time!!!

Holy cow. As much as I have enjoyed The Bathrobe Knight by Dean and Haygood, the Bearded Lord of Bacon and Booze has really created a brilliant series in which a regular Joe, Lee, finds out that he is related to a powerful god named Augustus, and that he has to participate in a competition between gods and their heralds known the Faith Game.
I loved book one, but honestly, book two completely amped up the story and made it so much better as it has progressed far more than I would have ever hoped. Dean has seriously upped his game. I’m talking he went from playing old maid to strip poker. The writing is far improved, the story is far tighter, and the characters are so interesting. I really cannot say just how much I enjoy the paladin of Justice, Miller, and Lee, the MC, as people. You really get to know a lot about them in this go around and the rest of the party. More importantly, Lee learns how to magic up some of the most delicious beer anyone has ever tasted.
Lee and Augustus still have some issues in their relationship, although I begin to sense that the old shapeshifter has a lot more to him than he lets on. Lee finds a gal pal back in the real world, and finds out that her family may be just the right fit for him even if they did try to kill him. This book really hits its stride with the arena battles, and Lee learning to adapt and improvise on his feet in order to survive. The big bad for this book is another herald, and Lee has no idea of what he is getting himself and Augustus into when he decides to take him down; still this is all good fun. Or is it?

I’m not going to lie. We do have some tragedy here that cannot be downplayed, nor would I want to. It really lends some gravitas that book one was needing. It did choke me up, and made me feel for Lee in a way that I have not sympathized with a character in a looong time. We also get to know about Miller’s own tragic backstory, and you will see just how deranged Dean can be to his best characters. The man is utterly merciless. I LOVE it. For me, the best scene came with the confrontation of the team with the psycho lady Firbolg. She was, hands down the best fun psycho character I’ve heard in 10 years. She was written and played perfectly, like a master with a Stradivarius. Man, is Dean on fire with this story or what?

The narration here is proof that two people can make an entire world come alive. Jeff Hays, the mystical master of the Vocal Arts, and Annie Ellicott combine their talents, powers, and skills into one amazing audible adventure. Without a doubt, my favorite voice in this book is Hays’ Miller. If I hear him for more than 30 seconds I spend the rest of my day talking to everyone like him. The fools think I am just doing an Ah-nold impression. Annie really pulls at your heartstrings in this book. This is twice now that she has almost made me cry, and I am no gurly man! You cannot ask for better, and it was nice to see the pair of them handling things rather than the whole squad. This really felt like a narration rather than a production, and that is just what I am looking for.
This book has some startling revelations, and simultaneously creates new mysteries. Lee learns how to handle his magic, and yet realizes that he really doesn’t know enough yet. He does a lot more than just creating golems now. So, we get some serious growth, development, and powering up in this book. All signs point to book three being even bigger and better, and the way that Dean has been promoting the new character, Jade, I fully expect some joy joy feelings when book three hits. All I know is that I’ll be around as long as Dean keeps pumping out quality material like this. Don’t miss the train, get on board before we leave the station.

Keep bringing the Bacon, Oh bearded one!! To be fair, I may have been a little less generous in my video review, this book is easily one of the best I've ever read, it is exponentially better than book 1, and deserves more love than I can give it alone! Even though I did receive a promo code for this review it in no way influenced my considerations of the material, and in fact, inspired me to be more honest. Getting a code generally makes me harsher as a reviewer as I am more often concerned what someone like Me will decide based on my review.

If this review helped, please press the YES below. Thank you immensely!!!

As seen on the LITRPG AUDIOBOOK PODCAST, please check it out on Youtube.com

Wow amazing

I kinda excepted the ending , but was still very sad
Great book worth every penny

outstanding story

I really want to say the book was really well-written and that the backstory for Miller was greatly done and that the development of characters was something that I agree greatly appreciate especially since the pain and the hurt felt so real

chapters out of order book starts chapter 8

the first chapter is 8 finish book then go back to chapter 1 it sucks I thought book skipped bunch of time then got to 8

How to do this book justice?

I gave Book 1 three stars, but Book 2 gets the highest of five stars.

In the 50 or so series I’ve read, not one has had a Book 2 that so much improved on Book 1.

Compelling, humorous, thought provoking, intriguing, and with many characters you really, truly care about. I could not put this book down, and carried my phone around, stayed up all night, and never stopped listening. This book is quite an achievement in the genre.

I’m going to have to move some other LitRPG series down my list of the best to insert War Aeternus, maybe all of them.

You’ll still need to start with Book 1, but don’t be turned off by the almost incoherent direction and awkward narration. It all starts to come together, and Jeff Hayes shows the consistency here in Book 2 that we’ve come to expect from him.

Good writing but a few major mistakes

Okay first off, I almost ignored the womanizing in this book because it is a lot less extreme than other books. But its still there so -1 star.

And I took a second star off for the following issues. The main protagonist's power suite is not only versatile... Its automated. This one fact might have been enough for me to knock a star off on its own. The main character did not have to solve his delimmas he simply activated his powers and waited for the 'system' to figure out how to make them useful. But it wasnt the only problem. In reverse order of significance, Armored medium levelled enemies were going down after just a few shots as if they didnt have a hitpoint pool, for a book that makes so many comparisons to the abrahamic religions, the writing often seems rather ignorant of said religion and most significantly. I got so damn frustrated trying to figure out what was internal monologue and what wasnt. Some voice modulation would have been a big help, heck, I would have accepted even a continous "he said, he thought". So all these issues though probably none alone would knock a star, together drop it to 3 stars.

awesome

I never wanted the book to end. I can't wait to get to the third book and continue the story.

This series makes me laugh

The series is great, the characters are compelling, but best of all, the humor actually makes me laugh.

He has an English Degree?!

I am not proud to admit I actually wasted my time to read not only this book and the previous one, but I read all the utter crap the author dumped after the book ended that added ten more percent to the written content. I am angry I wasted part of my life on this lazy writing. It is as if written by someone high or drunk and at first buzz it is way over explained! Everything with too many details and stupid quips he thinks are humorous, but just leave the reader confused, to after the buzz is gone, entire new species he does not bother to describe. What do they look like? Where do they come from? I did not know Miller, the MC's BBF, was one of these other species till mid- book 2, I thought he was a regular human heavy-melee-fighter type player!


Here is an example of the writing to be found in these books, the author's definition of an important title of the MC's:

-Cheat Code Fighter: Forget long sequences of directional pad input. The only button-pressing you’ll be doing to get this title is using your creativity, wits and stunted sense of fair play to really drive your enemies up a wall.-

Is it funny? Does it better flesh out the title and enlarge our understanding of his character? No, and No. Yeah, I read two books of that!!!! Why? Well, I was doing busy work when the first audible book started... It was awful, lazy writing (have I mentioned that?) that made me angry to listen to. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to reach the controls to switch it off then ...3 hours later...it got sorta interesting. ... "Sorta Interesting" ... This is the best it ever gets during both books. Yet still I read them, listened to the 1st book mostly and read the second book. You know how some books have cult references... But no, no clever wit here. A few times I got sorta interested however my interest only lead to confusion. Just when I think he is going to explain something as in the, Game Manual, I discover it is instead a "joke" list of characters. Describing the same character but with a different name (like he didn't think we would notice. ) twice or listed characters that were not even in the book!

SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!!

Towards the end after the author escapes the jail he writes a jumble of words and sentences, only they don't tell us what the MC is doing, the plot doesn't exist.

Example: "I am going to stop a messenger going to an army that is marching here next to another one ..one of those may be an ally from somewhere else that will stand by us as long as it is convenient, but the messenger will give a message from someplace for the general to attack. The general does not want to attack and wishes she didn't command the fate of others, but she is a Firbolg (this species is never explained but they hate humans) so she will do her duty! The general and the messenger drink bad wine"


and the stage is set for: ACTION!

That is the plot after he gets out of jail. Hope I didn't spoil it for anyone.

I would like to tell the author, "Dude, you are not funny. Stop trying." Maybe: Don't drink, Write, then hit Publish. I would like to warn everyone else to pass these books by, do not be enticed by sorta interesting like I was. You will regret it so much writing a vague, confused 1000 word review to explain your helpless, angry-confusion will seem like a GOOD IDEA!

The books just keep getting better

This book was very well written and very enjoyable. I really loved the character development of miller. Kinda glad of the ending book was getting a little bit boring with all the heterosexual romance drama that we are so use to seeing. The challenges are main character is facing are very well written and feel like real challenges.

GOOD BOOK

I have over 300 audible titles and I have to say that the narration and performance of this book is one of the best I've heard. It's a compelling universe with a great story and awesome characters

Brilliant

I loved everything about the audiobook. The narration was excellent as normal. The book was well written the only complaint I have is Amber died.