Jasmine Wahlberg

I finished it just so...

Revisado: 01-29-19

I finished it just so no one could call me out for not giving a fair review.

The premise sounded interesting enough, or I wouldn't have picked up the book. It also has tons of good reviews.

The narrator was passable. Not a lot of range. Very, very slow, with a lot of weird pauses.

I hate giving bad reviews but I cannot possibly give a good one for this absolute mess of a book. I am so sorry.

Tl;dr: Beyond-abysmal female characterization, weirdly-lateral plot for as much as it jumps around, and overpowered junk that makes no sense whatsoever means I gutted out eighteen-plus hours for really no return on investment except actual anger.

Spoilers ahead.

From the very beginning, I was pretty much irritated by every female character in the story. Their every single thought centers around having babies. I was willing to put my irritation aside in favor of the plot: the world is different, they're obsessed with having large families to be able to outdo this plague of demons that comes in the night, maybe I just don't understand.

The writing is repetitive and padded out. I seriously feel this could have been hours shorter if the writing was tighter and the narration was better. The plot was not so much "predictable," but "inevitable." Books with prophecies (or the equivalent, which is what this one has) often end up being pretty obvious from the hop. I think all that could be forgivable with some good characters.

There are three characters that go through woefully predictable arcs to, inevitably, meet later on.

Arlen is a punchable face almost from the first chapter. Everything is incredibly black and white to him, and it's grating. Everyone's a coward for not fighting enough, for not doing this how he'd do it, for...whatever. He's also apparently good at literally everything he touches. He draws the best demon wards. He fights better than everyone else. He discovers crap that people haven't managed to find in three hundred years by the sheer power of being a whiny narcissist.

Rojer is...eh. He's a minstrel. He's the least irritating one of the bunch. (Ok, he's a jongleur. Except he can hardly juggle, and he plays the violin. Also for some reason -- and *no one* has apparently discovered this up to this point -- his violin makes the demons dance/space out/get angry. Random superpower, ok.

Leesha starts as a young girl who can't wait to "flower" so she can get married and start pumping out kids! Until the boy she's promised to betrays her and makes her look like the town harlot. Until until the old crone healer saves her from it by forcing the boy to admit he lied. Then she proceeds with this whole, "I don't need no man!" attitude that isn't even refreshing. She's so *beautiful* and men throw themselves at her, but she stays a virgin until she's 27, just turning herself into "omg the bestest" healer ever. Then she's gang-raped on the road and basically left to die with Rojer.

Of course Arlen comes along to save them from the darkness. Then *about two days later* she's begging him to *seed her.* That's right. Gang-raped virgin to falling for the dark hero with problems. (Because "she/he is the one." Quoted.) Cue the most gut-wrenchingly bad "what if I can't please him/her?" half-contrived sex scene this side of fanfiction. I was almost cheering when the demons attacked them in the middle of it.

Now I'm not made squeamish by sensitive topics in fiction. I'm not going to tell anyone how they're supposed to react to a situation. I just honestly am left to wonder what the author was thinking with this mess. I have a lot of terrible adjectives I feel like using about it, but out of respect for the author's effort and humanity, I'm not going to say them.

I'm not going to say the people who like this book are wrong. I just need characters I can get behind, ones I can understand. I didn't find that in this book. This also just felt like a big set-up for another book -- which would be fine, if this book made me want to read another in the same hand whatsoever. It didn't.

I'm sorry. For a lot of reasons.

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A gathering of frustrations.

Revisado: 01-28-19

You know, I really liked the first book, enough that as I was finishing it, I recommended my husband listen to it next. I did find Delilah rather grating, but I figured hey, I still have Kell, and I seemed to take kindly to him.

In this book, we pretty much abandon all of the build-up of the first one and launch into the same world a few months later, where basically the Magic Olympics are set to happen and all the characters are, inevitably, going to be drawn together once more.

Kell has, *almost* understandably, become a bit insufferable, given that he's tied to his brother's every bodily function. I mean, that could get on anyone's nerves. Rhy has become almost equally insufferable. They're miserable because the other is miserable. For...yeah. The entire book.

Delilah has become beyond insufferable. Ok. We get it. You hate being a girl. Except you don't when it's convenient. I got weary of hearing about how her hair is too long for her liking or "thank God" she hadn't developed large breasts or how wearing a dress will be unbearable or any one of a hundred things she repeated over and over and over. Delilah just comes across as a sort of trope here. She's your typical rebel/tomboy/savant nonsense. Didn't know what magic was five months ago. Now, apparently, better than literally everyone at it. (I don't feel like that's a spoiler. That's been telegraphed from page flippin' one.)

This book pretty much didn't let Kell be Kell at all. He uses his real, actual magic approximately twice. Everyone was pretty much a complete jerk. By the end, I was only finding one character likeable, and that was Alucard who...I guess is maybe a jerk for spoilery reasons? I'll let you decide.

The narration was done by two people who are pretty good at it, given how many stories I've heard in the genre from them. Anyone complaining about how their characterization changed wasn't listening. When they're speaking the common tongue, they use American accents. When they're speaking English, they use a more British RP accent. It's not inconsistent; in fact they did a pretty good job separating it. Disclaimer, though: make sure you can tolerate their voices. Kate Reading has a sing-song quality to her diction. And Michael Kramer, though his voice is deep and soothing, makes weird mountains out of his sentences, rising up to the middle~and falling to the end.

Also, Michael Kramer narrated Mistborn, who has a main character named Kel (Kelsier), and that threw me. Beware if that bothers you.

All in all...I was so frustrated by this book that I'm honestly not sure I'll go back for the third, and that feels like a terrible shame. I'll give it some time to settle. When we finally DID get back to what I felt like was the main plot (you know, that worlds-ending stuff that happened in the first book that was interesting?), I got back into it -- but that was only in about the last half-hour of the book.

I'm really sorry I can't give a more positive review of this book! I really wanted to love it. I just...didn't.

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Little Twilight Zone-like stories...

Revisado: 09-04-18

Being a big fan of The Twilight Zone and authors like the inimitable Ray Bradbury, I like this book of short, creep-inducing tales. This book has humor and just a tiny bit of the eerie, and I scarfed it down like a bowl of ice cream.

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A little extra crunchy...kolo?

Revisado: 09-04-18

tl;dr: Too much politicking and filler, too little character development for me

I both liked and felt indifferent to this book. It's definitely a "listen at 1.5x" kind of book (the narrator tends to drag). The story has a lot of clever ideas. It suffers a bit from repetition and wordiness. I found that the characters were a little one-dimensional, to be frank -- no one really goes through any personal development; the closest you get is one of the "villains," who never really was one in the first place. Every character is pretty much exactly as advertised. The princess is headstrong and intelligent, so much so that "no man wants her" in her spinster age of 25. The prince is smart and kind and everyone loved him, and of course he turns around and does in two months what no one thought to do in a level decade in Elantris because he's automatically awesome (and to this moment, I still can't really think of a reason why). It's that sort of thing all the way down. If you're in it for a tale about characters, I don't think this is your book. If you like tales of politics and intrigue, with an interesting take on a magic system thrown in, this will do it for you. I mean this as no criticism for people who adore this book; it just wasn't my favorite. It was worth a listen, but I won't be going back.

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Ridiculous, but so is the source, to be fair

Revisado: 07-13-18

What you see is what you get: it is a patently, blatantly ridiculous send-up of Star Trek -- mostly original series, but there seemed to be a few nods to TNG as well. I'm not familiar with this writer's other work, but this seemed like an indulgence for him. There is an uncomfortable amount of trope lobbed at you in this book, but I suspect that's the entire point and I should not judge it too harshly on that. If you're relaxed about that, it is pretty funny in most places.

The narrator was total gold for this, though. I thought he nailed the voice of the doctor, and his rendition of the slobbery aliens must have been exhausting.

All in all, worth a listen. Despite being a big ST fan, though, I think I've had my fill of this and probably won't be interested in the follow-ups.

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Somehow unsatisfying...

Revisado: 07-13-18

First, the good: The three narrators are top-notch and do a very good job with their respective parts to play. The concept is interesting and the writing itself is fine. The writer seemed to use this book as an excuse to construct a litany of crass insults, and it's (unintentionally?) hilarious to hear them. The writer also had a lot of interesting ideas about how the Hell Ship worked and the biologies of the races within it.

The not-so-good: It takes an excruciating amount of time to draw one of the characters into the story involving the other two, and just when you do...it sort of immediately becomes irrelevant. I get that life isn't fair and everything, but I feel like Tim Gerard Reynold's part was superfluous in the end. The ending also felt rushed and even though it's probably a happy ending, it felt deeply unsatisfying on a lot of levels.

Prose was fine, actors were fine, story was a bit of a hot mess in places.

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A little too ridiculous

Revisado: 07-13-18

My impression of this book was that the author had a lot of interesting ideas for Disney movie-style fight scenes and needed a way to tie them all together, so he looked to nab the primary storyline of The Three Musketeers. I went in expecting a little of that, given the reviews, but I came away still a bit disappointed.

I'm fine with some ridiculousness in my fantasy -- weird fighting styles, trashy magic gimmicks, whatever -- but this had me cringing in places. All the good guys are supremely virtuous; all the bad guys are puppy-kicking evil. There's really no doubt or mystery. The story played out like a boss fight corridor, to the point where I lost my attention span when half of the new threats came into play out of nowhere. (Really, I didn't even go back to figure out when or how the fear poison assassins showed up. I just sort of accepted they were going to suddenly be a thing. And I know that's a sign that I've disconnected with the story.)

I did enjoy some things about this book. I mean, I did finish it, so there was some merit. I'm not really inspired to continue with the series, though.

All that said, I thought the narrator did a good job, so at least there's that.

I don't like giving mediocre reviews, but I have to be honest. This series just doesn't speak to me in the way I hoped it would. Good luck!

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Cool premise, craves some editing

Revisado: 05-31-18

I thought this book had an interesting burden placed on the main character, in trying to live up to his "legendary hero" status that the beleaguered navy around him is clinging to. In that, I think the main character sort of worked -- although I do wonder exactly how someone who wasn't even a captain previously is suddenly ace at playing fleet admiral.

I even found it far-fetched, but somewhat believable, that a century of war has decayed the chain of command in this navy and made basic strategy "lost lore," so the old commander's tactics look like voodoo magic to these young pups.

What really got to me was honestly the writing for anything that wasn't a battle scene. So much repetitive phrasing (I get it, heat == angry!), so much telling exactly what a character must be thinking that sort of belittles the audience's intelligence, so much wasted exposition. I cringed a bit more than I wanted to, let me put it that way.

The narrator was very appropriate for the story; he gave a believable voice to the main character.

I picked this up because it had a very Mass Effect sort of feel to the description (people who have played that series know what I'm talking about). I think this just sort of missed the mark for me. Good concept, and the plot was ok, but the writing needed a heavier hand in the editor's position. I think that would have made this a lot tighter. Sorry I can't be more positive!

The positive thing I can say is that, even having said all this, I'd still listen to the next one if I found it on sale. I do find myself interested in how it all turns out (though I hope some other fundamental concepts, like "So what if the fleet does make it home? Then what?" get explained better).

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Come on back to Arth. You know you wanna.

Revisado: 05-22-18

So I was fortunate enough to get my hands on an advanced reader copy of this book, so I've already had the pleasure of reading it. But I did want to wait until I'd finished the audiobook version to give an opinion on it independently as well. So, here's what I've already said about the book:

If you've read Orconomics (if you haven't, *go do that*), you left it all laughed out and satisfied, yet with some questions. Where do we go from here? What's going to happen to all these characters I've fallen in love with? How can the Path of the Aggressive Seller lead *me* to greatness?

I'm very happy to say that Son of a Liche delivers on this. We rejoin the beloved company from the first book as they quest forth to make things right once more. The author is once again adept at making us laugh as well as making us care in completely unexpected ways. If you appreciated the humor in Orconomics, you'll find this a fine continuation.

My favorite books all have one thing in common: they have characters that I can't help but care very deeply about. It's not enough to tell me I should care about them. It takes a deft hand to reel me in and invest me in their fates. This series has done that for me. It's not your stock "Bored of the Rings" style farce; it deals with heavier matters -- like the price of friendship, the nature of addiction, the meaning of faith. It's well beyond a few well-placed D&D jokes.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that this series is one of my very favorites, and this second volume is just as worthy as the first.

To add on about the audiobook version: it's every bit as entertaining as you'd expect it to be. The narrator is on point with his voices and candor. You'll still recognize all your favorite characters and be swept right back in to Arth where you left it. Loved it, loved it all around.

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Come on back to Arth. You know you wanna.

Revisado: 05-22-18

So I was fortunate enough to get my hands on an advanced reader copy of this book, so I've already had the pleasure of reading it. But I did want to wait until I'd finished the audiobook version to give an opinion on it independently as well. So, here's what I've already said about the book:

If you've read Orconomics (if you haven't, *go do that*), you left it all laughed out and satisfied, yet with some questions. Where do we go from here? What's going to happen to all these characters I've fallen in love with? How can the Path of the Aggressive Seller lead *me* to greatness?

I'm very happy to say that Son of a Liche delivers on this. We rejoin the beloved company from the first book as they quest forth to make things right once more. The author is once again adept at making us laugh as well as making us care in completely unexpected ways. If you appreciated the humor in Orconomics, you'll find this a fine continuation.

My favorite books all have one thing in common: they have characters that I can't help but care very deeply about. It's not enough to tell me I should care about them. It takes a deft hand to reel me in and invest me in their fates. This series has done that for me. It's not your stock "Bored of the Rings" style farce; it deals with heavier matters -- like the price of friendship, the nature of addiction, the meaning of faith. It's well beyond a few well-placed D&D jokes.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that this series is one of my very favorites, and this second volume is just as worthy as the first.

To add on about the audiobook version: it's every bit as entertaining as you'd expect it to be. The narrator is on point with his voices and candor. You'll still recognize all your favorite characters and be swept right back in to Arth where you left it. Loved it, loved it all around.

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