SpidersWeb

May have hit that impasse

Revisado: 09-18-24

Please save my sanity and either stop reading the character sheet, or make that its own skippable chapter. It's getting way too long. Other than that it's a cutesy ride; with a few nit-picks.

The small ones are like that we're 50+ hours in and still haven't been told how the class levels actually work and how much other people know about them, or even what the max level is.

Big issues are like factions keep getting built up and forgotten about. Same for side characters and their problems. The small things that made book 1 feel good and like there were stakes involved with the towns and nations have been ignored in favor of universe-sweeping revelations.

imo, the Fortune Teller is confusing and would have been better as just being a form change where Sammy could remember the past instead of a separate incarnation.

Guess we'll see in book 4.

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Feeling a little lost?

Revisado: 12-16-22

If, like me, you got on to this because it's "book 1" in a series, then you were fooled too. This is only the first book with Theren as the lead character, in an expansive world that has multiple smaller series of books set in it. The actual "murder at the academy" backstory briefly recapped here happens in one of those others.

I'll update my review as I finish the book, but I felt very confused very quickly because these "book 1" characters clearly had a whole adventure before this story and it seemed kinda important to connecting with them; which really took away from the experience. Small perk, though, the narrator is actually the author for many of those other books.

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Vagueness makes anger

Revisado: 10-12-22

Another cute virtuous adventure, with a few flaws in the vagueness of how things are defined. A main criticism I see people have is that the knights beat the soldiers. Avalon isn't the modern Army or Marines. They're pretenders. Their guns fire lead pellets not modern armor piercing rounds. I was upset about Laney pulling bullets from the air until I realized that. But it's never said just what the guns are, so it's easy to mistake.

The power of magic is frustratingly ill-defined, though. We're constantly told one thing, but shown another. Laney creates a magic sword and recharges several batteries after catching bullets and squishing gun barrels one day, but says plucking guns out of people's hands the next is a taxing deed. "Mother Luna!"

And yeah, the constant anti-politics/anti-war thing is annoying. Like, I agree with you, stop beating me over the head with it.

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Can't catch a break

Revisado: 08-19-22

At around halfway, I couldn't get over the tremendous trouble with the plot and characterizations. Some go from estranged lovers to old married couple with no in-between and others are in deep denial. Their reactions to the various situations are no better.

For example, the ex-soldier/doomsday prepper makes stupid decisions and takes no precautions even after being assaulted several times. She even thinks to herself "I should have seen that coming" and then never tries to see anything coming.

What broke me was the highway scene. Up til that point no outside contact has gone well for them and when multiple characters get freaked out that passersby were eyeing them suspiciously, literally none of them take any defensive measures. Like "surely we won't be robbed this time... Oh no they're trying to rob us."

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A great ride awaits: Get past your "need to know"!

Revisado: 08-15-22

Most reviews seem to slam the lack of details revealed about the series' setting. And I just wanna say "it feels like that's the point." The origin of the status quo feels like the series-long mystery that we get to unravel alongside the characters as they're thrown into a myriad's old chain of secrets. There's magic and there's some technology. Other magic than necromancy? Not said. People making new tech? Not said. But just go with it; even the characters are blind to these gaps this early on. A great ride awaits in this story if you can just take the premise as it comes.

The main duo of Gideon and Harrow are wonderfully done and by the end, it feels like you really know both of them. I will say the wild queer hype the book has is both accurate and more subtle than claimed. Temper your expectations; it's not a romance story, but characters are out and proud.

The narrator also does an excellent job; which is no surprise as Quirk has an amazing voice acting history on shows you'd know. Seriously. Look her up.

I'm just trying to say the series has loads of positive selling points and no one should be turned away by readers who expected everything to be laid bare all right away.

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Real story in the last 2 hours

Revisado: 06-14-22

Seriously, the last 2 hours should have been the whole story. What even was that middle part?

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Probably not done yet

Revisado: 08-12-21

At the time of writing, it's still just a trilogy.

After reading book 1, I thought "that was really cute and everything wrapped up pretty well" and then there was a book 2 and I said "How do you continue that? You'd have to introduce brand new problems book 1 never mentioned"... Which is what happened and it was cool. We got more lore, world building and things became more like D&D, with Oona as a Cleric, Kit as a Geokineticist and soldiers. At the climax, they even fought a Lich!

It also began the "Sorry-my-kingdom-ruined-everything Clean Up Tour", which book 3 wraps up (hopefully). Again, book 3 brought more of the world into light with a gauntlet of small quests, but also wrapped up fairly neatly at the end. All of the author's other series are 5+ books, so with Ulffon at large, my guess is we're still not done.

So, the Good: as always, Kit and Oona are adorable. It never feels like you're hearing about Mary Sues, just having an adventure with Mary and Sue. They struggle, fight, learn and grow. Yeah, there's actual combat and it was great. The world feels thought out enough you probably could play D&D in it!

The Bad: Their sexuality, personal history and drama are brought up multiple times. It'd be fine if it were done to talk to a new character, but each time is in soliloquy. So it comes off as reminding the reader, who already knows. It felt like: "Kit, Oona, you're gay, you were a servant, the king was a terrible person, I know. I read that book. Why are you telling me and not this new character? You already won me over." I've also heard the word "fidgeted" more times in this series than all my years alive.

The Great: Tamsin the Wizard. For a character introduced so late in the book, she felt really "alive" and I was sad she got benched for the last leg of the quest. Kit and Oona or course feel very familiar now with more mature personalities. I can only hope book 4 and beyond let Evie, Pym and Tamsin grow up to have a party of 5 characters. The world seems very built up with much of it left to actually go and see.

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Leans too heavily on adultery

Revisado: 08-03-21

Basically the second most common element in the collection is adultery. If that's a big turn off for you (it was for me), you'll be skipping a bunch of these stories. Way too many also have the woman get into anal very quickly, but i doubt realism was expected.

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Super cute, but don't think too hard about it

Revisado: 06-30-21

The Good: The lead characters are very cute and easy to invest yourself in. Their relationship is played coy til the very end while their attraction is obvious and even noted by other characters. The world building is interesting and it was fun to try and nail down where they are. "Sparo" is probably Spokane, Washington, the Author's hometown. The in-universe commentary on tech is funny, as in "you're giving us in the past way too much credit".

The Neutral: It was probably a decision from the director of the audiobook, but why do characters in what's clearly the ruins of the American-Canadian border have British accents? Was the Capitol of Sparo a Rennfaire or Medieval Times restaurant or something?

The Bad: The Author has Laney fall into the pitfall of "social inequality is bad and I'll keep reminding you every few chapters" but also "Go establishment! Cause you have the girl I like and made a special exception for me so I'll fight the Rogues who suffer from the very social injustice I would've experienced."

The Rogues definitely feel like wasted potential. They're commoners who have magic and rebel in fear of execution, but they're painted as generically evil bad guys. We never explore any Rogue characters or ever explore the point of view of the current Rogues and why these ones in particular are the way they are. The flaws in Sparo's continued demonization of them isn't discussed. They're just irredeemable murderous bad guys and they get defeated. End of story. At least for this book.

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Way better than some reviews

Revisado: 02-19-21

"I am not human and do not have human emotion", then continues to clearly demonstrate having exactly human emotion and just being an augmented human. Also you'll end up saying "Shut up, Ultron!" about Venus a lot.

But for real, the story was really engaging and the romance felt organic. I've been really bored of the many romance novels just being all about the meet-cute and not really giving us the couple being a couple and I was glad to see the meet-cute slip right into coupledom without me noticing in the moment.

Also don't buy the reviews saying the narration is bad. She doesn't really do "voices", but she does have her own way of making each character distinct once you know to listen for it. And her narration outside of dialogue is just fine.

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