A fun sequel with good commentary on current events. It covers topics like exponential technology, late-stage capitalism, morality and human cruelty, and how to feel valuable. It takes off quickly from the cliffhanger of the last book and keeps a much quicker pace than the first.

Audiobook nitpicking:

In a recent interview, Hank promotes the audio version and how much effort went in to make it a good experience. But it was my least smooth experience. First, each character in the book has a different voice actor. But as the characters interact with each other throughout the story, they are each voiced by multiple different voice actors (changing with whoever's perspective you’re currently in). So most characters have 2–5 different voices.

Second, the author narrates for a character for the final chapter of the first book. In the sequel, that character is voiced by someone else, and the author is in it again as someone else.

Third, near the end of the book, a recording static effect is put over a passage, and a few lines are voiced by someone else in between another’s passage. This is the only time this happens. Why not go all-in with this like a BBC radio drama and have everyone’s character have one voice that comes in when needed? Either that, or a single narrator to do all the voices would have been preferable to having 2–5 different voices for each character.