Wrath

Finally trudged my way through all the fighting and running and made it to the end. Truth and courage.

I've never done a most disappointing series list but consider this the top of that list. I don't think Wrath is the worst of the series, I just think it was the boiling point for all my annoyances in this series and it got to the point where it became a hate read where I didn't care about anything that happened because I thought almost everything happening was stupid. The inner monologues in this series are atrocious, especially in battle. They take me out of it every time. They are like little cartoon thought bubbles that pop up and tell us every asinine thought a character has. Someone tried to stab a character? You won't be stabbing me today, thinks character. Character lunges with sword. I will stab you, thinks character. It's absurd.

This book has nearly 130 chapters and most of them are extremely short and I didn't like this at all. The whole series has too many POVs personally because a whole host of them didn't bring anything of value by being a POV. A lot of them didn't have character arcs or anything in particular to do or witness besides killing whatever people are stopping them from running in whatever direction they happen to be running to or from. This series clearly takes a lot of inspiration from things such as ASOIAF but let's think about that. Tywin Lannister. Sandor Clegane. Cersei Lannister, for the first three books. Littlefinger. These characters are all richly defined and they don't get two page POVs every 50 pages just to remind us that they hate some of the other characters. I think Gwynne could have done more with less by just letting us be in people's POVs for longer instead of the constant whiplash.

The fighting is extremely repetitive. This is a major criticism I have of this series, perhaps my chief complaint. I read four large books and I can tell you a handful of cool, specific moments that stick out because most scenes are exactly the same. Shield wall, yelling, characters mowing down red shirts because despite these red shirts being giants or ancient creatures of lore or literal demigods, it doesn't matter because our characters are teenagers who have tried really hard to pass the trial in their little village or whatever so they are now expert killers of anything that comes near them. Anything except, of course, a named character who is evil. Beware a named evil character. That evil character will slime their way out of every trap and every situation and kill 103 supporting characters by stabbing them in the back WHEN THEY DONT EXPECT IT, BECAUSE WHO WOULD EXPECT THE EVIL GUY TO BE SLIMY, even if these evil guys are canonically less strong than demigods, none of this matters. We must be constantly reminded of the evil, by constant backstabs. If I took a shot for every time a character surprise stabs another character in the back in this series, I would be drunk enough to like this book.

But back to the repetitiveness. This is the most repetitive series of all time. It is truly revolutionary in how repetitive it is. There is absolutely no reason this should have been four books. Explain to me in graph form the exact things that happened in these four books that required four books. Cut out 75% of the unnecessary battles and you could have a fantastic duology or a good trilogy. Because it's not like I don't like action scenes, I just want them to mean something. They should be progressing the story somehow. There are endless skirmishes that just don't matter in these books. I will say, Wrath's climactic battle is pretty good. But by that point I didn't care, and a bunch of characters were doing dumb, movie star shit that belongs in Fast and the Furious movies, so I kept rolling my eyes. I kept expecting Vin Diesel to run over some demigods and giants with a car and then say, “I don't have friends. I have truth and courage” or some shit.


Speaking of the giants, what use is introducing giants as a major part of your series when all they are is just slightly bigger men and women who get killed just as easily as regular people (if you're being killed by a Main Character, because they have Main Character Power-Ups, of course) and are just all gruff, angry large folk. Might as well have just been Vikings, or lumberjacks, or Vin Diesel clones.

I didn't realize I had this much pent up rage about this. It feels unfair to unload all of this on Wrath but dammit, it's named Wrath so it shall feel my wrath.

Also the beginning of this book has the worst fake-out nonsense of all time. I genuinely cannot believe people are okay with this blatant emotional manipulation.

3/10