Riftside 2

A LitRPG Fantasy Adventure

By: Cassius Lange, Henrik Saetre

Narrated by: Justin Thomas James, Jessica Threet, Jeff Hays

Ash Aldrich forged a legend with his soul hammer, Roq. Now, the real fight begins.

A newly-minted Hammerlord, Ash, finally has a home of his own and a party he’d fight and die for. The next chapter in his life is about to start, but along with that come many responsibilities, like…where do they put the monster trophies? And who gets what room? Sometimes it is good to have simple problems as every new dawn somehow piles on more and more dangers on his plate.

House Domitius is still coming for the smithy and for Ash’s parents. They will stop at nothing, when a familiar face returns with reinforcement, even bending the guild and bank to their whim, or using deadly force.

The Hive Mind unleashes newly evolved horrors at Sentinel Station, and every new wave is more dangerous than the last. Holding the monsters back only serves to prolong the inevitable: Dawnwatch’s fall, but there’s not much they can do with an even greater threat looming Riftside. Something is picking off adventuring teams one by one, and leaving no witnesses. Peace has become a luxury no one in Dawnwatch can afford.

But the greatest challenge may even come from within, as Roq demands his own breakthrough, and the party weighs on keeping him secret from even Nabeeh and their closest allies.

Fans of Riftside 1 will devour this explosive sequel. If you crave relentless progression, strategic party combat, epic loot, and a crafting system with real stakes, your next addiction is here.

The Riftside war is escalating. Don't get left behind!

©2025 LitForge Press (P)2025 Soundbooth Theater

Platypus

muahahahahaha (minimum word count for a review is 15 word by the way one two)

Good World, Clunky System

I picked up Riftside books 1 and 2 during a sale and honestly let them sit for a while. They didn’t immediately grab me visually, and I kept choosing my usual favorites instead. When I finally ran out of those, I gave book one a try — and ended up enjoying it quite a bit. That led me straight into book two.

Overall, I’m glad I continued.

Let’s start with the narration. In book one, Roq the hammer was… loud. Distractingly loud. It genuinely pulled me out of the experience at times. In book two, they clearly adjusted the mix, and it helped significantly. Roq’s volume now matches the other main character voices much better. I still sometimes wish his delivery was a little more subdued — I understand what they’re aiming for with the character — but at least it’s no longer overpowering.

Story-wise, the progression remains engaging. The characters keep me invested, and there’s enough forward momentum to maintain interest. However, I continue to struggle with the system mechanics.

The leveling structure feels clunky.

To move from one tier to the next (1–9, 10–19, etc.), you must reach level 9, fully max experience, and then use a Class Gem. The problem is how rare those Class Gems are. It’s implied you essentially need to defeat named monsters to obtain one, which creates a massive bottleneck. Early on, they’re priced around 50 gold — which seems reasonable — but then the cost shifts into the hundreds and becomes borderline unobtainable unless you’re extremely lucky or politically favored.

On top of that, gaining experience requires consuming Mind Gems, which drop at roughly a 1-in-20 rate from normal groups. Each level takes about 10 gems, give or take, though the variance isn’t clearly explained. It becomes a grind layered on top of a bottleneck. At times it felt like the author realized just how restrictive the system had become and introduced an alternate experience path specifically for the main character to ease the grind — though notably, normal characters don’t have that same option.

For me, this is the least polished aspect of the series. The ideas are interesting, but the execution makes progression feel more tedious than rewarding.

Near the end, there were also a few developments — especially the setup of a nemesis — that felt somewhat contrived. Not enough to ruin the book, but enough to cause a bit of eye-rolling.

And because the author apparently wants this mentioned: Platypus.

There. It’s officially part of the review.

All jokes aside, despite my frustrations with the system mechanics, I still enjoyed the book. The world has potential, the characters are compelling, and there’s enough here to keep me moving forward in the series.

For me, this was a good installment with noticeable rough edges — enjoyable overall, but still in need of some refinement.

Types of people

My only criticism the only criticism I have for all that LitRPG’s is the lack of lGBTQIA representation I’m starting to suspect that most LitRPG’s are written by heterosexual males border lining on homophobic since it’s always a lack in most LitRPG’s that I find for genre to be so steep in video game, logic and lore something very modern day, although the societies are usually depicted in the distant past you or on other worlds, you would think that they all come from the same planet, you would think that the writers wouldn’t shy away from being more diverse in their fictional worlds and fictional characters that’s all I just like to see some people that the lead characters meet in a day-to-day to not be always heterosexual

pladapuss.....

I liked the first two books..I just wished they were longer 17 hours is not enough time ....Rock is my favorite character we need more time with Rock..and his humor...

Amazing story platypus

This was a fantastic twist and turn adventure to ash and rock and all of his family and friends. Adventure. i hope to see many more books out of this series.
And think that soundbootheater is doing an amazing job please keep up the good work platypus lolol