Rob

This book is hard for me to review. This series has gotten it's hooks into me like no other series has for quite some time. I've been sitting on this review for a bit trying to figure out my thoughts. I came to DCC fairly late compared to some, and binged books 1-6 all at once. Book 7 came out in audio only a month or two later. The Butcher's Masquerade still remains my favorite, but This Inevitable Ruin is a close second.

This was the longest I had gone between books and it was tough to follow a book I enjoyed so much.

I liked the racing theme of this book. Gave me a bit of a Twisted Metal vibe. There was some really good development and it ended strong, but there were a few parts where I felt like the pacing just wasn't at the same level as some of the better books. That said, I tore through the book and found things to do so I could keep listening, which is typically a 5 star read, but just compared to other books in the series, this was good but not as good. I still can't wait for book 9.

If you're not doing the audiobook, you're really doing yourself a disservice. The story is really good and stands on it's own, but the audiobook takes things to a new level. There is a chapter in this book that is just so incredibly performed that reading it yourself can't do it justice. These audio books also spoil me for all other audiobooks I do after.

This one felt like a bit of a throwback to the early books. Low stakes mostly detective story. The baddies were a bit suped up compared to those books given it's set around Twelve Months.

I'm generally not a fan of shorter works, but the story felt like the right length

There were parts of this book I enjoyed and held my interest, but other parts were just slow and I'd go a few days without picking it back up.

The audiobook was fine. I like Mary Robinette Kowal as a narrator, but listening to this book directly after Dungeon Crawler Carl, kind of made it feel a bit flat for me. Not really a fair comparison, but certainly not a must listen

I didn't read the whole thing, so I'm not going to rate the collection. I only read the Dresden story: Mister Petty, which is actually a Goodman Grey story. It was fine, but nothing special and likely easily skippable. 3 stars.

Some of the subplots in this started slow for me, but things picked up as the book went along. I'm not really sure how they are going to wrap this series up in 3 books, but I'm excited to find out.

Jefferson Mays does his usual excellent job. He doesn't really do a variety of voices, but after 9 expanse books (plus the first in this series) I've just gotten used to him being the voice of James SA Corey books.

I thought this one started slow but picked up as it went along. It's probably my age but the teenage angst from both Olive and Darin got annoying at times, but not so much as to turn me off the book.

Overall I'm not enjoying this series as much as original one, but I am enjoying being back in the world again.

The audio books are good. I think both narrators work well for their character POVs.

It's been a while since I finished The Core and my memories of how that wrapped up are a bit fuzzy. I found the start of this book a bit slow, but once things got going it really picked up. I had picked up the this and the second book on deals but never got around to reading them. Now I've jumped straight into The Hidden Queen.

I'm generally not a huge fan of multiple narrators but for the 2 main POVs it made sense to do so and I thought both did a great job with their respective chapters.

I enjoyed this one more than the previous entry. Probably because it refocused on the elements of the series (the towers and magic progression) that have kept me continuing with the series. I don't recall as many infodumps (though they are present as always) and we got some really interesting plot developments that seemed to move the story forward.

The narration is excellent as always, and this series will remain an audio-only thing for me.

This felt a bit like DCC lite. Not as good, but it had some of the same plot points. It was different enough that I though it was worth reading though and found myself interested to listen whenever I had time.

I've really enjoyed Travis Baldree's narration of other series, and this book was no different. He always adds that little extra that makes doing the audio worthwhile.