Manipulating Magic

Jeff the Game Master, Book 2

By: Jaime Castle, Troy Osgood

Narrated by: Nick Podehl

Jeff the Game Master is a Level One player...Wait, what?

After the rogue patch did its damage, Jeff and the rest of Infinite World’s players face a new threat: Shelarag, the Mother of Dragons. Well, there was a father; what did you expect? She’s pissed. Someone killed her lover, and now they will pay.

Still tasked with figuring out who or what is responsible for the chaos, Jeff must also figure out what the heck a Manipulator Class is. To help him on this journey, former GMs Torvi and Snapdragon will apply their extensive knowledge of the game to power-level Jeff and attempt to restore normalcy to the game.

Meanwhile, Dak, Jeweliette, Oliver, and the rest of the party find themselves stuck in the next questline to destroy dragon after dragon after dragon...after dragon. Maybe Dan Shaklee should just pull the plug already...

Manipulating Magic is book two of the Jeff the Game Master series. It picks up where the first left off, and his exploits are only half the fun. Experience a unique spin on the LitRPG genre, not just providing the perspective of the players, but also of one of those mystical, magical, all-powerful GMs we all dream of being.

©2021 Aethon Books LLC (P)2021 Podium Audio

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Great Audible Experience

Very excited to see how this develops now that therea a focus on how things started evolving on their own!

Enjoyable sequel

More laughs and deeper insight into the mystery of the rogue patch made this an enjoyable sequel. Now we’re starting to enjoy the other characters involved in this quest, though Jeff remains my favorite part. Nick does an awesome job as usual. The forums continue to crack me up. Especially AlphaMale.

My mind wondered a lot.

I couldn’t keep my mind in the book, it kept wondering. Guess it was kind boring, kept jumping around too much for me I couldn’t get emotionally invested in the main character.

Great work

Loved this book and the first one. Can't wait for the third book to come out.

The Power Of Human and AI

This book turn out a lot greater than I thought. The emergence of the characters into the game is a little intense. I can not wait to hear the next book.

Great way to end a book!

I loved the laughs and twists. The name drops were hilarious.
This was a fun and funny story and the narrator was spot on!
I'm ready for the next installment!

Really enjoying the story

Rogue AI becomes railroading gamemaster. I imagine this would make DnD horror stories on the forums. On that note, i do like when the book does the small forum chapters. I am really interested in where this story is going and an excited to get to the next book.

Characters: I like them, except the ones i am not supposed to like and those I appropriately am annoyed with. I also like that, despite the title, this has actually turned into assemble cast. Jeff is cool but I really like Dak and his crew. I hope their wayward tank becomes a hero before the series ends.

Narration: This guy does a great job in all the books I have heard him in. His range of voices makes it easy to tell who is talking.

Overall: Would recommend and will get next book.

Really Tried

A story about a rogue AI creating a boring and tedious quest chain makes for a tediously boring story, especially when all the focus of the story is to point out how boring and annoying it is. There are a lot of interesting aspects, but also a lot of misunderstanding on how mmo’s tend to work, especially when it comes to players who are only in it for the endgame. The author assumes that those who raid miss out on learning how to dungeon dive or learn any of the lore or finer details of the game. While you can find literally any personality type you want playing an mmo, those who raid are generally players that actually like the game they’re playing, which assumes they would learn the finer points.

The author does, however, get the forum experience pretty accurate. It’s not all complaining in forums, but when there are complaints, the authors depiction isn’t far off.

Solid Sequel with Glaring Flaw

Overall, this sequel is fine. Nick Podel's narration is amazing; especially with the Forum chapters.

The writing of the plot is okay. What drags this story down is Torvi's awful characterization. I cannot comprehend why two competent authors decided to insert an 'Angry Black Woman' caricature into a solid story, especially in the place of a seemingly important character. Nothing from the first book indicated that Torvi should have such an abhorrent 'personality'. She contrasts with Crush, another character that is a jerk. The difference being is that Crush has some depth to him; Torvi isn't even one-dimensional. If it were not for having to suffer through Torvi's asinine existence, the story would be infinitely better.