The Bookwyrm's Review of Tower Climber 2 by Jakob Tanner

 

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Rating: 9.5/10

Synopsis

Climber academy was only the beginning....

Now an official tower climber, Max is thrust into the competitive and deadly world of the tower. 

While taking on dangerous missions and defending the city against powerful monster-waves, Max must train and uncover the truth about his past.  

With new information on his lost sister’s whereabouts, the stakes to ascend the mysterious tower couldn’t be greater. 

But warring clans and an evil organization of rogue climbers stand in the way of Max’s goals. 

Will Max be able to gain enough power to break through those who wish to stop him?

Review

After reading the first book in this series, I was interested to see where the author would take the series, hoping he would take it in some interesting directions. I was glad to see he did, taking what worked in the first book, and expanding in some really interesting directions. While cultivation type books can result in OP characters, the author tries to keep even the most powerful characters as grounded as possible.

The world building is definitely solid. With the tower at the center of the city being the focus, we get to see the vast variety of worlds that are contained on each floor. Its interesting to see the various factions that populate each of the different floors, and the vast differences in the size, climate and technology of each of the floors really draws the reader in. Seeing the real variety of worlds, and realizing just what skills and work would have to go in to surviving as the climber's progress up the tower levels really makes you think about just how difficult it would be for the characters, even with their abilities.

Those characters again really shine. The main character Max is now a full tower climber, meaning he can finally try and start solving the mystery of his lost sister. Still, even with his unique power he is only a low level climber, needing to make a living, so there's a lot of hilarity with some of the tasks Max takes on to make that living. It makes you realize there still is a real world under all the tower magic. Max is a great sympathetic character, as he has not only a family mystery he is trying to solve, but is fighting the overall conspiracy that is slowly making itself know, that those in power are trying to deny.

The secondary characters, such as Max's friend Casey and his mentor Sakura, who is now Climber Guild president, are fully realized characters in their own right. They both have interesting story arcs, both with and apart from Max. These aren't just cardboard cutouts handing the weapon to Max to get the job done. Casey and Sakura are both smart, strong women who are powerful in their own right. They really help advance the story. There are also some new characters introduced that add a whole new element of danger and intrigue to Max and his friend's lives, and point to the much bigger danger facing their world.

The antagonist leaders are mostly behind the scenes, but the henchmen are an interesting bunch. A new character's kingdom has been suborned from within, and the people responsible are part of the cabal that Max and crew are facing, and are a threat to the larger tower world, not just that floor. These are some well written characters, really upping the level of menace and existential threat to the wider population.  There is some excellent character development here too.

The narration is again ably performed by the talented Steve Campbell. He brings such great warmth and life to each of the characters, really differentiating the characters from each other through tone, accent and inflection. His narrative pacing is really some of the best in the business, and you never find yourself drifting while he's speaking. He is also super consistent between books, so the characters sound the same between books. You're never going to hear a character with a higher pitched scottish accent all of a sudden speaking with a baritone Midwest accent in the next book. This is an excellent version of the book.

This is not one of those books that suffers a sophomore slump. It really expands on what worked in book 1, and with the mysteries being discovered on each new tower level, there is an almost limitless amount of potential stories to tell. I'm excited to see what other stories are coming in future volumes. This is a series I highly recommend to fans of cultivation, LitRPG and fantasy stories.