Ominous Tidings

Every character is a raging narcissist or viewed from the perspective of a character who is a raging narcissist

Revisado: 05-01-24

I have something called the eye roll quotient: how many words between events or descriptions that make me roll my eyes. In a good book it would be hundreds to thousands to infinite. An iffy book would be dozens. Here we're talking an eye roll quotient of around 10. It has been so hard for me to push through this series. It's not just that every character feels sorry for themselves. Every hardship and even every mistake and regret for those mistakes is heroic and heroically overcome and built on as an internal narrative of suffering. The first several hours of this book feature the main characters competing for who can feel more sorry for themselves, or who can be more indignant, or who can be more self-sacrificial in self-imposed dilemmas generated from the need to decide for, manipulate, or protect other people who might otherwise demonstrate agency.

It's really some of the worst literature I've ever forced myself to continue with, but it's been like this multi-thousand page train wreck - I can't stop watching. It's filler material for my commute but honestly the eye rolls have become a safety issue. I need to keep my eyes on the road.

I'm guessing raging narcissists will love this material.

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Really hard to get through

Revisado: 11-06-23

So much unnecessary text. Get to a town. Find an inn/home. Talk about money, horses, food. Get rooms. Meet an old acquaintance/save someone/ mild faux risk, retell them the story. Leave, gaining nothing, accomplishing nothing. At least 50% of the book could be cut losing nothing. The percentage of cuttable material has gone up and up over the books it seems.

And such thin plotting. The party gets back to Easthaven on the same evening that Adara leaves? Give me a break. The entire Jonas thread was terrible. Let's put a useless unprofessional captain in charge who hates him and disobeys Adara constantly. Hilarity ensues. over and over.

I've listened to so many hours of Michael Wiseheart's stories and generally enjoyed them, but the lack of incisive editing is really getting to me, especially when I've had such a connection to the characters established over all of these books. I'm left wanting more care in the storytelling.

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I enjoyed the theme, but key parts were rough

Revisado: 03-26-23

Overall I found the story engaging, the world building entertaining and occasionally novel, and I really appreciated the themes: connecting to people who may be very different from yourself, giving chances and working to understand them. That said it gets a little clunky at times and unfortunately in some very important places the plotting was very thinly built and key characters became fairly unbelievable/inconsistent/weakly written. This and other unevenness builds throughout the three books and by the end I was having trouble setting aside the problems I was having with the writing to just enjoy the story, which was too bad. You really don't want to undermine the payoff.

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Rough unfortunate ending to an enjoyable series

Revisado: 02-27-23

There was just too much to wrap up in one book. Many many threads were left fraying. You don't get to choose when you stop being a player and can no longer weave the tapestry. I have to leave the prospective reader with a warning about diving into the whole series because of how it ends, regardless of the reasons why.

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a bit deus ex machina but lovely

Revisado: 06-03-21

the characters are painfully naive but slowly waking up in this book, and the overall effect is charming and engaging if a little frustrating at times. I'm excited to continue my journey with Robert Jordan in this series.

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good story, abrupt, stunted ending

Revisado: 08-01-20

A bit mechanical, relying heavily on no one every talking to anyone or successfully communicating via letter, etc. That was ultimately a tad frustrating.

but the ending... wow. we finally actually meet the characters beginning to come into their own, and then the book is over.

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lack of imagination is frustrating

Revisado: 05-14-19

Given such a rich premise the Atlantean "action" was amazingly dull and the supposedly smart characters were inconsistent, hard to believe, and mostly unlikeable. The Jimmy thread was nerve-wracking, creepy, sociopathic but not very enjoyable. It's two different types of frustrating.

The villains' motivations are flimsy and poorly explained.

Pulp fiction.

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cruel cheap ending.

Revisado: 04-25-19

A chintzy cliffhanger is no way to end a book. I'll not be coerced into buying the third book of this series, nor any other books from this author after such a gross violation of the reader's trust.

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paper thin plot, high eyeroll ratio

Revisado: 01-28-19

So internally inconsistent. So many unbelievable mistakes, there's no way the human race had survived for 250 years with such incompetent boobs running the show. Constant massive tactical errors. let's constantly dive through storms where half the divers die from lightning strikes. No tactical debrief after crucial new information. Really intolerable, lazy editing. ~"x landed and ran to a stop in minutes." wat. wooden, flat characters. "There was too much blood, an impossible amount that left no question: (random character) was dead." - internal dialogue of a sky diver of the blood around another's helmet while in air.

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obsession with game mechanics occludes story

Revisado: 12-05-18

"Sufficiently Advanced Magic" has some promising world building and ideas but ultimately it spends so much time on the magic system it reads like a play-through of the first act of a video game.

I wanted to like the characters but I kept feeling the author intrude to give the characters just what they needed, in skills, insight, resources, loyalty, etc. to move the plot forward.

If you wished magic in MMOs was more simulator-like, maybe this story would catch you.

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