Hard Mode

Chronicles of Ethan, Book 2

By: John L. Monk

Narrated by: Travis Baldree

The choice is made. One hundred lives remain. Immortality is no longer an option.

After setting the game's difficulty to Hard Mode, Ethan learns his wife is in terrible danger. The game has labeled Melody an "unregistered personality" and turned her into a quest objective.

Now, a ruthless band of raiders are after her for their own reasons. Some want experience, others are looking for a new challenge. One of them - Lord Beast - pursues a darker objective. If he succeeds, Melody's personality will be destroyed forever.

Nothing in Mythian is what it seems, nowhere is safe, and every bargain has an expiration date. Even Ethan’s promise to himself.

©2019 John L. Monk (P)2019 Mountaindale Press

so gamelit/litrpg but system rules are unknown

book 1 author writes about a man who lost his wife but wife secretly wants to upload her conscious to a game world. something does a workaround and gets her uploaded, 5 years later that something contacts a depressed husband and tells him. he jumps at the chance to see her again retires and learns he loves his wife

book 2 crazy changes to leveling, odd physiological tests, crazy skill aquired but how does it actually work? still no explanation on what happened thoes 5 years after she died, seems amiss that this just becomes a known issue. ending is ok but doesn’t make sense since the cats out of the bag about her retirement plans.

at this point mc should have made some more logical leaps about everything but still doesn’t ask any of the right questions, also what is a unregistered personality vs a registered personality? this one is important because author states that her personality can be changed so i make an intuitive leap and say its because the upload of her conscious was faulty and incomplete. so there is your rub which may have been eluded to in book 1 and was partly in the little blip about book 2 to get an idea of what is coming but it wasn’t clarified again and instead new concepts were added and nothing from book 1 was reiterated except his wife is trapped and secretly planned to retire to a game world after telling him she didn’t want to do that.

awesome continuation of this series!

John L Monk gives us exciting action and non-stop thrills with this page turner of a LitRPG. Narration was spot on with Travis striking the perfect balance of characterization. Can't wait for more!

Such twists

I love the concept of Hard Mode. This book was exciting to read, following Ethan to see how far and how fast he can climb.

Knowledge is power (pain?)

This second book leaves me wanting more, more of Ethan and his adventures. This was a great follow up to the first book. I just hate having to wait for the next to see what will come for Ethan and his friends. Ethan does gain a great deal of knowledge through this novel but not all of it is good in the end.

A sequel either builds or destroys a series...

In Mythian: Book 1, I really connected with the MC, Ethan. Jaddow and Cipher were still shrouded in mystery though. Who were they? How did they know Ethan and his Wife? What was their motivation for helping him? We only got the briefest glimpses. I really grew to like Jaddow too in this book. He's hard on Ethan but he needs to be and Ethan does what we've come to expect of him, find a way to persevere. He must if he's got any hope of reuniting with his Wife. After I finished Mythian: Book 1, I actually wanted to continue the story with Hard Mode: Book 2. After finishing Book 2, I was suddenly impatient for Book 3 as I still was invested in the series. As it is with good books, they end and I had to find something else to read.

Reading the Pangea Online Book 1 from another author to help me pass the time also unexpectedly made me appreciate Ethan's character development that much more. Unlike Ethan, the MC of Pangea is so serious and rarely jovial enough for my tastes. There are too many real world social justice issues that invade the fantasy narrative. It just constantly reminds you that you're not in the story and destroys the immersion.

While more popular today than in other decades, the Pangea series promotes a ‘victim’ mindset or ‘poor me’ attitude which may as well be a RPG personality trait as it is a learned and acquired behavior in real life. I would never choose to create or play such a chronic complainer of a character. The book took also pity on the character thereby diminishing his achievements to the reader. This made Pangea Book 2 very hard to finish, I almost quit and the way it ended has together extinguished any desire to read the Pangea series further.

So I'm happy to say that in Hard Mode: Book 2 this not the case at all and is better than than the 1st. It doesn't suffer from any of these issues. It's got more characters, development, humor, adventure, fantasy, stats and ends better than many. You may actually care what happens to the MC and be able to genuinely sympathize with his plight rather than feel pity.

Why is all this? If I had to guess it would be because the author decided to think ahead of time about where he wanted to have the reader / listener end up before writing the other books and realizing that he'd painted himself into a corner. There's even a part which reminds me of Odysseus and Circe. I don't recall any story elements ruining the immersion to the point of pulling me out of the story world. Most importantly when the 3rd book drops, I'll want to experience it. If it's anything like the first two then it won't disappoint.