Sean
I have to give credit where credit is due.
I hated the first book of his that I ever read, The Path of Flames. It was so bad that I intended to never read anything more by him. By accident I read Bastion (the first in this series) without realizing it was the same author because I'm a sucker for anything Hell/demon related. It was good enough to forgive him and continue the series.
Now I've finished the third book, and I'm sad that there aren't more to read yet. He went from me actively not caring about any characters, main or side, in Path of Flames, (and legitimately hating several of them) to really really liking many of the characters in this series and being actually sad when some of them died.
So, bravo to Phil Tucker for vastly improving as an author and writing a series that I would recommend to friends, and here's hoping that he writes the next novel(s) in the series very quickly!
It's a good thing that I didn't realize this is the same author that wrote The Path of Flames. You can see how much I hated that book in my review, and why, but I'll admit that Tucker has improved as an author since then. In this one I actually cared about many of the side characters, even liking a couple of them much more than the main character, and strong female characters were given real reasons for being strong, not just “because I said so, girl power!” like in Path.
The main character, Scorio, is pretty annoying most of the book, but it is at least reasonably understandable, and he does actually achieve a decent level of growth by the end. I would have preferred he earn that growth while being less annoying, but it wasn't enough to make me stop reading at least.
Usually I'm a sucker for school stories, you know like Harry Potter etc., but the school stuff was way less interesting than the rest of the book, and I really wasn't a fan of the flip-flopping from school/not school/school/etc. Sure, mixing things up is always better than just becoming another clone of a popular series, so I can let that go, but the school stuff was really just not that interesting at all so it felt like a huge step backward whenever it came up.
Speaking of school stories. These are adults that are reborn countless times into adult bodies, just without memories. You mean to tell me they forgot about hooking up too? There is only one pair that even vaguely talks about liking each other...in a past life.
One rather large knock I have is that the book seemed waaaaay longer than it needed to be. Way too much repetition of thought and action, at least for me. I know plenty of people love that, but less is more in my eyes. And while I'm not one that cares about book length in particular, or authors milking readers for money, it felt like a wasted opportunity for the author not to cut the book in half at the massively obvious cut point almost exactly halfway through. There's a hugely significant moment at like 48-52% or so that could have easily been the end of book one. I was kind of shocked when I got there and it didn't end.
Finally, I will be upset if Nox doesn't make a return in later books.
I feel like I'm being Punk'd.
Does anyone actually enjoy the endless infodumps of cultivation, “solidifying gains,” endowing his axe with the dao, unleashing his skills and domains, etc? I get that Zac has moved past simply swinging his axe really hard at stuff, but I find absolutely zero enjoyment from reading laborious descriptions of every single little cultivation thing that happens. If you removed all of the core forming and dao braiding and skill upgrading and solidifying gains from this book, there would be about 14 total pages of interesting stuff. Unfortunately, those parts are there, and they are an endless slog to get through. I can't imagine how listening to this in audio version would be. I suppose it would help put me to sleep if nothing else.
I feel like the author is just sniffing his own farts, reveling in the endless descriptions like he's some anime superhero growing in power with every obscure power description and cultivation session that no one but he cares about. Or maybe I'm just an outlier and people actually like this stuff. I'm nearing the point where I can't bear to pick up the next book, but I keep going because each one seems like it will be more exciting like the first few were. I thought entering the Perennial Vastness would be one huge adventure like Abyssal Shores, but it was absolutely horrible and I hated almost every word of it. Now I'm still hoping that the next book will involve more adventure with the Ultom thing, but if it turns into yet another cultivation-fest, I think that will be it.
Give me a full book of Ogras and Catheya and Iz and LITERALLY ANYONE THAT ISN'T ZAC. Except the author would ruin that too and make their stories nothing but endless cultivation too, so I guess don't ruin those characters for me.
Someone that has read the chapters ahead, please give me hope that it gets better! I can't take more books like this one, I just can't!
Revised my original 4* down to 3* after trying to articulate to a friend what I thought of this book.
I liked it, and will read more. The main character and his dog are appealing and fun to follow, although highly reminiscent of Carl and Donut (the author at least admits to picking that author's brain, so I'm not going to fault him for it either). The game world is completely lame at this point, to the point that it is almost annoying how bland it is. Aside from the seemingly required snarky “system” there is no life to it except for the guide, Fortune. I really like her, and it is clear there is going to be more content involving her in the future, but if I take just what is present in this book...meh.
I like Brad. I like Slash. I like the fact that Judas Priest was a foundational part of Slash growing up. I like the Easter eggs in the chapter titles. But I am bored with the game world and mechanics, and Brad railing against them to no effect. I feel his despair and his anger at being told almost nothing about what to expect, because I feel despair about not knowing anything either. It is fine to keep the reader and characters in the dark, but something has to be exciting, otherwise it is just boring and why would I keep reading? So far, my reason to keep reading are the characters, but eventually I'll give up on them too if nothing interesting happens. And when I say interesting, I don't mean completing quests and building shelters and such. I mean learning about the world and the reason for it. The inspiration, Dungeon Crawler Carl, at least has a pretty solid bit of world-building to back everything up. This is sort of like someone never played a computer rpg and was just told how it works and made up literally the most generic system ever.
And finally, the tipping point for me deducting a point is the lack of consistency in Brad's backstory (was he a pitcher and a quarterback in school, or was he bullied until senior year?? usually it isn't both) and the author's need to use him to pontificate upon societal “problems”. I don't care. Keep your politics to yourself. I read books like this to escape, not hear about things that I see every day in the real world and that you think somehow your litrpg book is going to suddenly make a difference. It isn't. The only difference would be that I stop reading because eventually I can't stand the injection of opinions where they are unwanted and unnecessary.
Amazing series. Once again I am blown away by the fact that every one of the different characters and their respective magic systems could have been an entire series unto themselves. I'm glad they weren't, so that I got to read the whole story in a relatively short time, but this could have been 5-10 stand alone books (or even trilogies) that then culminated into what we have here. We could have had several books about Arak'Jur and his people, more about Tigai and that entire side of the world (and more if he felt like it), each with completely distinct magic systems as well. I wouldn't be alive by the time Mealing finished it I think, but there is so much history in these three books.
I want to give credit as well for not going with the easy ending that I expected when starting the first book. Or the second. Or third, etc. So many times in this final book I thought we had to be nearing the end of the story, but my Kindle said I still had a long ways to go! And even with all that blue-balling, the eventual ending was perfect. Well done, it was refreshing to see something different for a change, yet something that also made sense.
I really have nothing negative to say about this series at all. There was literally ONE paragraph that I didn't care for in the entire series, which got a tiny tiny tiny bit into politics, but that was it. And of course that paragraph was still no big deal even if it hadn't been about one-one millionth of the total words.
I cannot recommend this series enough. I wish there were more like it; great and memorable characters, great world mechanics, and a great ending...all without making me wait through endless padding books to get there because the author/publisher decided they could milk some more money if they stretched it out. Nothing in this series felt like it wasn't needed for the story, and I appreciate that.
I'd love to see something like an Amazon Prime series made from these, but the budget would be monstrous I think. I mean, I don't think Arak'Jur pooped without mareh'et's blessing :p
After reading the first book, I purposely never read the second book because I knew I would forget everything by the time the third one came out. Now that the time is here, I'm so glad that I finally get to read everything straight through.
Without getting into spoilers, after my initial read of the first book, I assumed the series would conclude at a particular point, but to my surprise that point came at the end of the second book, so I have a whole entire book beyond what I expected! And I don't feel like anything was missing getting to this point either.
Having read countless fantasy/sci-fi novels over the years, normally getting a really fleshed out “magic system” is a huge plus for myself and a lot of other readers. There are what, at least four distinct ones in the first two books already?? Leylines, kaas, animal spirits (let's lump nature spirits and shaman foresight spirits in here too, but you could easily separate those as well), and then whatever you want to call Dragon, Fox, Heron, Ox, etc. And again, each of those are really completely different from each other. It is crazy to me that any ONE of those systems could easily have been the basis for a series, yet we get all of them, and we get quite a bit of information about them too.
I can't wait to get started on the third book and see where this all ends up.
P.S. Arak'Jur is my boy.
This is literally one of the best books I've ever read. I had forgotten almost all of it, but now I am reminded of just how amazing it is.
It also has one of the best commentaries ever on the subject of slavery, racism, etc. Delivered by a black woman over 100 years old in the 60s.
“You want the people of Bruton to remember their ancestors were slaves?” Mom asked.
“Yes, I do. I want 'em to remember it not to feel pity for themselves, or to feel put-upon and deservin' of what they don't have, but to say to themselves, ‘Look where I have come from, and look what I have become.' ”
The Lady turned to face us. “Ain't no way out but up,” she said. “Readin'. Writin'. Thinkin'. Those are the rungs on the ladder that lead up and out. Not whinin' and takin' and bein' a mind-chained slave. That's the used-to-be world. It ought to be a new world now.” She moved around the room, and stopped at a picture of a fiery cross. “I want my people,” she said quietly, “to cherish where they've come from. Not sweep it under a rug. Not to dwell on it either, because that's nothin' but givin' up the future. But to say, ‘My great-granddaddy pulled a plow by the strength of his back. He worked from sunup to sundown, heat and cold. Worked for no wages but a master's food and a roof over his head. Worked hard, and was sometimes whipped hard. Sweated blood and kept goin', when he wanted to drop. Took the brand and answered Yes, massa, when his heart was breakin' and his pride was belly-down. Did all this when he knew his wife and children might go up on the auction block and be torn away from him in the blink of an eye. Sang in the fields, and wept at night. He did all this and more, and by God ... by God, because he suffered this I can at least finish school.' ” She lifted her chin in defiance of the flames. “That's what I want 'em to think, and to say. This is my dream.”
Ok, I think 6 of these (thankfully short) books is more than enough. The main character is great at everything, he's super fit and attractive, he's sweet and attentive, and he's also a prodigious yet accommodating lover. We get it. We're also super-bored with it. I held on through 5 because we had a big bad to beat, but I just can't go on after this one.
I'm also pretty concerned that the author appears to be obsessed with women's clothing. Literally every time a new day starts (which is sometimes quite often) we are greeted with several paragraphs describing exactly what each girl is wearing. I feel like these books are mainly read by horny prepubescent teens, not women, so who are those descriptions for? Maybe I'm wrong and women totally dig this harem pr0n genre, but if I'm not wrong, those numerous descriptions are just weird.
Oh, and I'm no prude, but when the height of your descriptive storytelling is some variation of “I shot the fucker” countless times on the same page in a fight scene, you might need help. Maybe save some of those brain cells you expended on describing women's clothing for more ways to describe the bad guy in a fight than “the fucker”?
More of the side characters please. Zac is almost completely uninteresting at this point. Endless pages of him “consolidating his gains” which is just another term for booooooring. The few times he got into fights he just completely dominated, so who cares?
I realize a couple more books have probably already been written on Patreon so I'm wasting my breath, but maybe one day in the future something will change. I would literally rather follow anyone else but Zac now, and that's pretty sad. The most exciting Zac-related thing is Alea, and well, that's barely even a thing so far.
Oh, and does everyone brought into the System universe suddenly develop nasal problems? That's the only explanation I can come up with for why everyone snorts so much. I get that there are only so many ways to describe things over and over in books, but snorting? Really?
I do it to myself, I know. Reading these is so painful it hurts. I kept reading all the various series for the Runner-verse tie-ins, hoping something cool would happen. It happened in the beginning of this book, and it wasn't cool. It was confusing, made no sense, and was essentially just an exercise in throwing as many characters from the different series into a pile as possible. And then it was over, and I had 80% of the book left.
This has always been my favorite of the series because of the extremely thin superhero theme and the main character's powers, but none of that matters anymore, and instead I'm left with what passes for dialogue now from this author. It used to be somewhat ok, with my only big gripe being that thing he does where someone is talking and the MC literally just zones them out and we only get to hear the tail end of it because if it wasn't important to him, it isn't important to us I guess. Then the books got overloaded with “I mean...” every page or two, which was absolutely horrible and made me feel that physical violence might be the only remedy, and now I get this crap, an actual line of dialogue copied verbatim:
“I-you-yeah! Sure! Yes!”
That might be tolerable if it only happened a couple of times to show being flustered, embarrassed, caught by surprise, etc. Except it happens approximately 400 times in just this one book. Every single female character, which is everyone but the MC in this book in case you weren't aware, is SO flustered and unable to hide their feelings and emotions and lust and ga-ga over the MC that they are constantly speaking just like that snippet above. It becomes exhausting having it forced upon us that they are breathless and surprised and overcome with emotions for this literal god of a man. While I am thankful that Kindle Unlimited must get the sanitized versions now (maybe people pay for the adolescent fantasy versions on Patreon or something?), it makes me think of the number of panties that would be ruined if this world really existed, because every single female that meets the MC immediately gets flustered and can't speak in complete sentences.
You know, it used to frustrate me that stuff like Twilight sold so well with female audiences. I read those books to see why they were so popular, and I crapped all over them at the time. I take it all back. I can't imagine these books do very well with the female crowd, so there must be a subset of males that just eat them up and give them 5* reviews. Yes, I'm guilty for reading them too, and giving the author whatever KU money my reading generates, but at least I realize they are trash. Twilight is mf'ing War and Peace compared to these books. I'm sorry for saying anything bad about Twilight. If I were strapped down Clockwork Orange style and forced to listen to an audiobook over and over, I'd choose Twilight over anything this author has written any day. May God have mercy on my soul.
DNF at 43%.
This is what happens when an author apparently cares more about forcing his message down your throat than writing an actually good story. But before we get to that, here are my “technical” opinions.
Ellipses. You...don't...have...to...use...them...every...time...your...characters...have...a...thought...or...conversation. Seriously, you don't. It is incredibly annoying when every page is littered with them. I was constantly thinking that all it did was show that the characters (particularly the main one) are mouth-drooling idiots that can't even string one continuous thought together without getting hung up somehow. And this is mainly coming from a character that actually ponders how his increased mental faculties are affecting him; are they making him smarter, faster thinking, etc? No, because apparently they just make him a moron.
The characters used to moderately interest me. In the related series where Keras was the main character, I was pretty invested. Now we're stuck with an unlikable “people are icky” antisocial protagonist. That would be ok, I suppose, if it weren't pretty obvious that the author wants to shove it in our face that he's writing someone with autistm or aspergers, without actually using those words. Same with all the lgbtq leanings, and the blatant “they/them” character that is somehow super interesting and mysterious, despite literally doing nothing except saying dumb shit, along the lines of character says, “Wow, you're really smart,” and THEY reply something like “Am I?” with a smirk. I don't care if those characters are in the books I read, and I've read and finished the previous in this series where it was all there, so whether you believe me or not this isn't me not wanting them in my books. I don't want stupid characters and their stupid actions shoved in my face in such a way that I'm supposed to think it is awesome, when it isn't. Straight, bi, autistic, whatever, I just want a good character. Nobody in this book qualifies as such.
Add onto all of that the fact that I'm literally 43% of the way through and NOTHING has happened. Nothing. Endless descriptions of routing school stuff, which even the character telling us about it seems to find boring. Endless philosophical ramblings that go nowhere. Endless “Eww, this thing I want to do is going to require me to interact with people. I'm not sure if I'm up to that kind of icky today.” Endless musings about how powers work which COULD be interesting if not for the fact that they are most definitely NOT interesting, and so far not a single thing has come of it in this book. Just endless boring boring boring.
And now I just got a lecture (via the other characters crapping on the main character) about privilege. No thanks. So I'm going to exercise my privilege and stop giving the author any of that sweet sweet Kindle Unlimited money and not read another word of anything he/she/they/xhe writes.
Am I the only one that notices the amount of snorting being done in these books? “Blah blah blah,” a character snorted. Over and over again. Women, men, aliens, beasts, babies, everyone snorts. I'm not sure that word means what he thinks it means. Once I counted something like 5 snorts in one chapter. That's a lot of snorting, and it drives me insane, just like another particular series that uses, “I mean...” as a crutch endlessly.
Aside from the snorting, this series is going downhill, but apparently he's already written something like another 3 books (300 chapters) on RR and Patreon, so hopefully that means it picks up a little in the future.
I've rated all of these at 3, but they are honestly more like 2.5 and I just round up to give the benefit of the doubt. This one, however, gets the 2 because I'm actually starting book 9, and in book 8 the translator STILL doesn't know that it is “chock full” instead of “chalk full.” This book in particular had 2 instances of it if I remember correctly, and was sort of boring, thus the 2* here. Sure, maybe that isn't the author's fault for the translations, but I'm rating the English versions so I have to reflect that experience.
Overall the books are fine, nothing really special but entertaining enough. Hardly anything permanently negative ever happens to the main character though. Short-term negatives happen all the time, but he just picks a path and miraculously everything becomes super easy, barely an inconvenience. Technically something bad happens in a later book, but I'm skeptical that it will remain bad at all. I could be wrong.
Also, the fact that the native tongue is Russian is VERY obvious even with the translations. Mindsets and demeanors are pretty different than the standard Western ones, and idioms are a little different. Like how everyone “bats their eyelashes” which to us is more of a seductive thing, but I'm pretty sure to them it is similar to being stunned or agape. Or everyone being so close together you can't “swing a cat.” First of all, I need a lot of room to swing a cat, so clearly they aren't very close together. And most of us prefer to swing dead cats per the English phrase “can't swing a dead cat without hitting” whatever it is that is plentiful. Still, nothing too jarring, but it is sometimes amusing to see the differences even with a translator that I would assume is fairly familiar with English.
Read any of the other 1* reviews for my thoughts. I should have listened, so let me be your warning and steer you away from this book. It is terrible. I actually stopped a little before 50% and have no intention of ever finishing it, particularly after seeing from the reviews that it never gets any better, nor is there any actual resolution.
Furthermore, except for the actual pic of the author, I would have almost bet real money that this was yet another pseudonym for William Arand/Randi Darren, as I can't fathom the possibility that there are TWO authors in the same genre that litter their books with sentences starting with “I mean”. This guy once did it FOUR TIMES in the span of ONE PAGE! That might beat Arand's record. That's also where I finally called it quits for this book. My sanity is worth more than this.
If I were king, I'd have someone round up every author guilty of this and sentence them to life in prison listening to a recording of those two words over and over, forever. It rustles my jimmies so hard now that I can't help but notice it any time someone does it. Please, for the love of God, any new authors out there looking to self publish...search for that phrase and delete every single instance of it starting a sentence. A good editor would have done it for you, but I'm giving you this advice completely free of charge.
More of exactly the same. We could write these books by now. Except if I were writing it, before publishing it I'd hit ctrl-f, search for “I mean” and just outright delete every instance of it where it starts a line of dialogue. I'm pretty sure every single sentence would have been just fine after removing it. I should start highlighting them so maybe other Kindle Unlimited readers will start seeing them too.
One was enough, not going to bother with the rest of the series.
Too many POVs, first of all. Many of the events really didn't need to be told from so many different perspectives. On top of that, I honestly just didn't care about any of the characters, so seeing the next chapter's character left me uninspired and not really enthused about pressing on.
Many of the characters were downright pathetic even. Except the women of course! Before you think I'm a misogynist or whatever, I love a good strong female character. I have no problem with a woman being a badass. Every single woman in the King Henry Tapes (Richard Raley) is a legitimately authentic and believable “strong woman” and I love all of them (Annie B most!). Multiple females in Malazan come to mind, as well as some Abercrombie ladies, and most of the women in Soul of the World (Mealing). Hell, The Lady from The Black Company is one of my favorite characters of all time.
The difference is, you feel that they are all deserving of being a badass. They aren't just handed it like the girl in this book that I cared so little about I can't even remember her name. She was feeling angsty and rebellious so secretly trained behind her mother's back “for two and a half years, about once a week” and is suddenly besting veteran knights who not only have vastly more experience than her and were likely groomed from freaking birth to actually BE knights, but also have an undeniable physical advantage from the actual descriptions given in the book. If a transgender can dominate women's swimming or track and field, then men taller and heavier and stronger and faster and better trained than this wannabe-knight would absolutely destroy her. Or at least the second or third one of them in a row would after she got tired, assuming she's somehow just THAT naturally gifted.
The book became yet another showcase of how girls are just better without showing us how they can actually be better. Women can obviously be better than men at many things. So show us how they are, don't just say, “Because I said so.” Even the pale guy you think is going to be the main character (Asho maybe?) trained for like 5 times the amount she did, and she shows him up their very first showing. Half the time she trained against a TREE! Not the Groot kind either. Give me a break.
More of the same that I complained about from the first book.
Main character breezes through every challenge without even breathing hard (literally). Absolutely no sense of tension or suspense because he simply cannot lose.
Completely meaningless death at the end, likely to make us think that there are actual stakes to everything happening. Spoiler alert: there aren't. That character had like 3 minutes of total lines throughout two books. Could have never existed and it would be practically the same.
I gave it two books. Don't care enough to read the rest of them. The “mystery” isn't enough to keep me slogging through.
I'm being generous with two stars for each. Could have easily been 1*, but I don't want to be too big of a jerk.
I don't enjoy crapping all over an author's work, particularly since I might not ever be able to do any better myself. Furthermore, it is an incredibly difficult thing to put yourself out there by showing what you write to the world, so having people hate it is probably very disheartening. Clearly I'm in the minority since this currently has a 4.24 rating somehow, but even still, negative reviews probably sting no matter what.
Ok, to get right to it: this is essentially what you would get if you told the Twilight author to write a fantasy book from Edward's perspective. Rezkin (this story's Edward) is literally perfect in every way except for his sheltered upbringing. Men want to be him and women want to be with him. ALL of them. Every single situation he finds himself in, he utterly dominates. And he does it with style and panache. He fights off overwhelming odds or performs feats of astounding strength and we are expressly told that he isn't even breathing hard. He manipulates situations expertly despite never actually dealing with anyone but his trainers for his entire life. He has memorized the floorplans of obscure buildings hundreds of miles away, because he was trained to do so for some reason. I could go on and on.
And yet, we are to believe that in all those years of training, the concept of “friends” was never once raised, let alone explained in passing. Someone says, “We're friends, right?” and he literally assumes that there is some list of his friends somewhere that he's not aware of, but these people apparently know who is on it, so he will be their friend.
Oh, and the use of italics for multiple words all throughout the book was about to drive me insane. To me, italics is either used to indicate some foreign word or concept (maybe magical terms, for instance), or in casual conversation it is used to put a stress on a particular word. As in, “That guy is weird.” So every time I encountered an italicized word (often many, many times per page) that wasn't some obscure word, I kept wanting to stress it in my mind, but it wasn't meant to be so it kept annoying me. Perhaps that nitpick is all me, but I'm not the one that italicized hundreds, maybe thousands, of words over the course of the book.
To go along with the fact that the main character is literally perfect, and all of the other characters are boring and worthless other than to show how awesome he is or to fawn over him, there is zero tension in anything that happens. We know before he even starts that he's going to succeed at every single thing. Kill 15 master warriors all at once? Super easy, barely an inconvenience. Infiltrate and take over every thieves guild in the city? Super easy, barely an inconvenience. Like, not even an hour to do it kind of easy. Not breathing hard either, I'm sure.
Without any thought whatsoever that he might fail at something, all we are doing is following along and seeing events being told to us. Aside from slowly (way more slowly than someone supposedly this intelligent should be, but it is 100% so the author can keep up the ridiculousness) picking up on some of the social cues he lacks, he is never going to get better at anything, because he has mastered everything. I mean, unless he ascends to godhood or something. Which, given how it started, might not be out of the realm of possibility.
I know what a Mary Sue and a Harry Stu are, but what do you call it when the (female) author creates a character that embodies everything the author wants in an ideal male? Lacking a better term, I'm going to call it an Edward.
I have convinced myself to read the next book. If this continues I won't be finishing the series. I have no idea why people love this so much, unless it somehow came to the attention of all the people that loved Twilight. That's the only way I can justify it in my head.
Excellent book, good enough to overcome my natural hatred for the author using the old “everyone the main character meets knows this super-important thing about him but I'm going to keep it from the reader for reasons” trope. It wasn't the worst example of that ever, but it literally colored every single thing the main character did throughout the book, so it was referenced constantly. And thus the fact that we have zero idea what it is.
Still worth a read though. I just wish it had been structured differently so I wasn't slightly annoyed throughout the entire book.
All I can say is thank God this series is over. I used to look forward to each new release.
For the final book of a 12 book series, this was just terrible. I thought nothing could be worse than the pronoun bullsht in the last book, but I was wrong; not only did he double down on that, but he added mask bullsht as well. That's just what I wanted to read, a bunch of supernatural-ish beings Karen'ing each other to put their stupid masks on.
Janet is one of the worst characters ever as well. It was bad enough introducing her last book, but in this one she completely ruins everything that ever made me care even a little bit about Stark. Oh sorry, THEY not she!
Interestingly enough, the only character I even remotely cared about was F*ck Hollywood, except she turned out to be entirely worthless. She could have been erased from the book completely and it wouldn't have mattered one bit. So great job on that.
Ignoring all the things I hated about it, the story itself was less exciting than most of the previous novels, so for this to be the culmination of the entire series, I feel incredibly let down.
Like I said, at this point I'm just glad it is over and I can never read another Kadrey book ever again.
FFS.
Let's forget the fact that this book and the last one were sorta boring and just paint by numbers art. They are still about subject matter that appeals to me. But of course we spend a large portion of the penultimate book in the series being concerned about pronouns instead.
And spoiler alert, I peeked ahead to the beginning of the next book due to how this one ended, and I was immediately confronted with a Trigger Warning. Really? Eleven previous books about a guy that literally lived in Hell for years, ruled it for a time, has murdered probably hundreds (thousands?) of sentient beings, dealt with every kind of foul individual you can think of, has even died a couple of times himself...and someone needs a goddamn trigger warning on the final book??
So glad the series will be over with after the next one. I realize I'm living the “sunken cost” fallacy by saying I have too much invested not to finish the series, but man, this is one of the last series I ever thought I'd have to deal with this. At least I'll know to avoid any of his/her/their future works.
Raley returns with yet another amazing installment. I don't want to spoil anything that isn't already said in the cover blurb, but wow! The ramifications of this book are going to be huge going forward into future books. You wouldn't think too much can happen given the premise, but you would be just as wrong as I was. I hate to be the guy that says this is a must-read, but it really is. You'll be sorry if you miss out on this one.
Before I trash this series, I want to say that the author (Arand) is actually a skilled writer. I enjoy the way he writes for the most part (the thinking followed by mid-conversation thing makes me rage after having seen it a hundred times though), and some of his characters are particularly well-done and noteworthy. He has skill and talent.
That being said, this was one of the singularly worst series I've ever read. The main character is so unlikable that I wanted him to die and let someone else take over the narrative. 95% of all the supporting characters were bland and indistinguishable. The last two books were little more than the same plot repeated over and over, just with variations in scale. At the resolution, there was zero tension or concern.
I only kept reading because it was part of the bigger Runner story. Do yourself a favor and find a summary of the perhaps 5 minutes worth of tie-in. Or click the spoiler below I guess.
I will say that, at the time of this review I've already read the next series, Fostering Faust, and it is much better. Not amazing, but after this turd it seemed like that ray of sunshine bursting through the clouds.
The unknown voice that is "testing" Steve is Zeus, the AI that is fighting against Runner. He was testing to see if Steve could destabilize the entire place, and since he did (via making the whole place depend upon him, and then Zeus taking him away), he passed the test and got sent on to do the same in world after world. He also got to take one person with him, Nancy the wight. And of course, after being an absolute shit of a human being, Steve finally started to think like the "Are we the bad guys?" meme. Too late, dumbass. But maybe he'll try to turn on Zeus later, no idea. Hopefully he never shows up again, because I hate him.
I know it is unlikely the author will read this, let alone respond, but I have to ask if this book was written with the express intent of making me dislike literally every single character? And absolutely loathe the main character, Steve?
As I said in my review of book 1, I have no one to blame but myself. If book 3 doesn't improve dramatically, I'm just going to skip all these Darren penname books and find a wiki that tells me if there is anything worth knowing about the overall Runner universe or not, without having to read this trash.
I know from reading Super-Sales out of order that at some point the author decides to have his characters say more than “Dunno, don't care” followed by Steve Smash, so there's a little hope, but I am definitely becoming dumber on my journey to get there. If there were a drinking game that made me drink every time Steve said he doesn't care, I'd be dead long ago.
Oh, and having your character think, and then having dialogue from another character start up halfway through what they were saying, as if Steve wasn't paying attention (because...he doesn't care enough to pa attention! get it??) was “ok” the first time or two. Now it is super annoying, and is almost as common as Steve not caring. Stahp! 30 or 40 times of any “quirk” is way too many, and I still have another book to go!
Dammit, I wonder if this is what abused spouses feel like. Or most of the people Steve meets, now that I think about it.