Clara’s Verdict
A note upfront: Gunboat, Book 2 is the second entry in Dean Henegar’s Gunboat series, and this review assumes familiarity with the first volume. Jumping in here without that foundation would strip away most of the emotional and mechanical context that makes the sequel work. If you are new to this corner of LitRPG military science fiction, Book 1 is the right starting point – and the series’ rating of 4.6 out of 5 from 295 listeners on Audible UK suggests it has found a readership that knows exactly what it is looking for. For those already aboard, this second volume continues exactly where you would want it to, expanding the world and the fleet in the ways the first book made feel necessary.
About the Audiobook
Published by Royal Guard Publishing LLC on 25 March 2026, Gunboat, Book 2 runs for 11 hours and 20 minutes. Captain Watkins faces the necessity of expanding his fleet: the kobold pirates, cannibalistic halflings, and other threats of the void of space have made it clear that his current capacity is insufficient for the challenges ahead. The book covers the construction and management of a new, more powerful vessel for his core, the operation of an armed space station controlled by a friend, and the deployment of Verminkin crewmates, Drider MOBS, and upgraded weaponry across the range of adversarial situations the void presents. The narrative is structured around the tension between building capacity and managing immediate threats – a rhythm the first book established and this one maintains with consistency.
Henegar writes a particular flavour of LitRPG military science fiction that prioritises ship-building, resource management, and crew dynamics alongside and sometimes above combat. That emphasis gives the series its distinctive character and distinguishes it from the subset of LitRPG that is primarily about combat statistics and level-up mechanics. The non-human crew members – Verminkin, Driders, and others – provide both world-building texture and genuine character dynamics that develop across volumes. The challenge of keeping an unconventional crew functional under ongoing threat is one of the series’ recurring pleasures and contributes to a sense of stakes that goes beyond individual combat encounters.
The Narration
Alex Perone continues his work from the first volume with consistency and evident investment in the material. He handles the technical exposition that comes with any ship-building narrative – the equipment specifications, construction sequences, resource calculations – without allowing it to drag, which is a genuine achievement when the material could easily become a recitation of game mechanics without skilled performance. The ensemble cast of non-human crew members requires genuine vocal differentiation, and Perone manages it capably throughout eleven hours. His Captain Watkins remains grounded and commanding: a voice that holds the more fantastical elements of the setting in productive tension.
Series continuity in narrator matters greatly in LitRPG audio, where listeners develop a relationship with voice performances over extended commitments across multiple volumes. The retention of Perone across the series is a significant production decision and a genuine asset, and his performance here is consistent with the standard established in Book 1.
What Readers Say
Jeff Radtke (5 stars): « After the Derelict series I was very happy to plunge back into this universe. Looking forward to more stories to come. »
Scott Osmond (4 stars): « An enjoyable combination of ship building, research and resource gathering all wrapped up in exploration and several combat situations. Looking forward to the next adventure. »
A note for listeners who are fans of Henegar’s Derelict series specifically: the Gunboat series operates in a connected universe, and several reviewers have noted that the transition between the two series is smooth for established readers. The core pleasures are consistent – the resource management, the loyalty of an unconventional crew, the tension of building something durable in a dangerous environment – and the science fiction framing is used to give those pleasures genre-appropriate scale and spectacle. If you have exhausted the Derelict books, this is the obvious next destination.
The series title itself signals something important about Henegar’s approach: these are not capital-ship naval epics or empire-building fantasies. The Gunboat of the title is a relatively modest vessel, and Captain Watkins is not an admiral commanding fleets. The intimate scale of the operation – one ship, one core, one crew trying to survive and grow – is what gives the series its specific texture, and Book 2 expands that scale carefully rather than inflating it beyond what the tone can sustain.
Who Should Listen?
This is a book for LitRPG readers who enjoy the resource-management and ship-building sub-genre, and who have already committed to the first Gunboat volume. Fans of Dean Henegar’s Derelict series will likely find the universe familiar and the tone consistent with what they valued there. Those looking for a standalone entry point into military LitRPG science fiction should begin with Book 1. Readers who want pure combat without the construction, crew management, and resource-gathering elements may find the pacing more deliberate than they prefer – but that balance is the series’ identity rather than a failing, and it has clearly earned genuine affection from the readership it has found. The review count and rating accurately reflect a series with a loyal and satisfied audience.
