Jen

Very interesting concept

Revisado: 05-04-25

I loved it! He concepts were amazing and the way everything fed together was awesome.

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Excellent Pacing

Revisado: 04-30-25

Author really know how to escalate and maintain the tension throughout the book. All of the characters are complex and layered.

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Hard to review without mild spoilers

Revisado: 01-22-25

Spoiler-Free Review:

The cast does a great job with what they had. Juliet Landau reprises her role to deliver dialogue that truly feels like her old character. Amber Benson is just a great narrator. Her other narrations are also worth a listen. Sadly, while the rest of the cast does a good job of returning to their roles, the dialogue often feels contrived to advance the plot more than to stay true to the characters, regardless of the story justification for those changes. It all still comes across as forced. The plot is fairly predictable, and I found myself finishing the book just to provide a comprehensive review than out of enjoyment or interest. The fight scenes felt off with the excessive dialogue that was all out of place because this is a collection of podcasts stitched together. I get we can't see what's going on, but we don't need you to force description in clumsily. "Impact Winter," another vampire tale, handles fight sequences with much more fluidity. They are short and characters review what happened by comment on one another's injuries. It's much efficient than two minutes of grunting mixed up with "Did you just hit me in the head with a chair leg? Well, how about I hit you with the rest of the table." I'm being hyperbolic to make a point, that wasn't in the book.

Spoiler Review:

Let's cut to the biggest problem, the multiverse. I was eager to see how the story would return some fan favorites for an interesting and exciting tall set in the Buffy-verse, sans Buffy. Instead, I got "Rick and Morty". Even "South Park" has critiqued the use of the multiverse as lazy writing and this story unfortunately falls into that trap, coming across as fan fiction at best.

The introduction of the new Slayer was also poorly executed. The idea that she could become a Slayer at breakfast and be battling Spike by dinner is unrealistic, making her one of the most obvious Mary Sues I've seen in a while. Kendra, who was specifically trained to be a Slayer from a young age, had an intense and focused upbringing. She meets her demise within a year of being active. Faith's survival was due to her alignment with the mayor, then a coma, and later imprisonment. The idea that a Slayer, with only childhood karate lessons and some online forum knowledge, could suddenly become formidable within is an affront to the legacy of Nikki, Buffy, Kendra, and Faith. It's as if to say there was a better way than a lifetime of training and some baptism by fire.

The use of this "Baby Slayer" is mostly for exposition. Introducing "Alternate Cordy" and explaining her original universe background through Indira felt unnecessary. I could tell the play was to keep the story in the alternate world, so this fan service only slowed down the narrative. Longtime fans knew what would matter by the end, and new fans now had to listen to someone talk about a show they've never seen. A more effective approach would have been to set up Spike as her mentor, giving backstory when it felt appropriate.

I have no idea why Mr. Pickles, the monkey, is in this at all. His presence serves no purpose other than providing Tara with a conversation partner. At least depict Tara engaging in an internal struggle with herself, like Gollum from the "LotR" movie. As it was, I never found a real significance to the monkey, as much as I tried to find one.

It's clear from the start this story was intended as the first installment of a potential franchise. There are several threads open for a continuation, but just because a story can continue doesn't mean it should, which is disappointing for a devoted Buffy fan.

Overall, the story is slowed with unnecessary plot points, missed opportunities for improvement, and feels like it was pulled together with a focus on speed. It felt disconnected from the Buffyverse, both literally and figuratively. I find myself hesitant to continue with the series if it moves forward, which is a regretful conclusion for a long-time fan.

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Getting less interesting

Revisado: 01-03-25

I liked the very original and creative concept when I read the first book, but the subsequent novels have somewhat diminished over time.

First, the protagonist's repeated resurrections in the same city to encounter the same FBI agent feels very forced. In the first book she felt more like she started as an NYPD officer and even acted like one. I hoped her being an FBI agent would mean she could appear on other locations, but that never happened because he never returns in a different country or even a different state, which raises some question, are there more of him in other parts of the world?

By the second book, the presence of Cortez has already become tiresome, and her return in the third book stretches the credibility. It's like James Bond running into the same woman in every movie. It would start to feel too forced. The introduction of the newest character in this one only exacerbates the issue. To me, she was irritating to the point I was hoping for her demise to elevate the stakes.

This brings me to the series' fundamental flaw.

The main character feels like he's straight from 80's action movies, and that's a good thing to me. I can't help but envision Eddie McClintock as the story progresses. Since this feels like the goal is a visual adaptation I think a more mature Tom Holland would work, but he changes bodies. Not that the voice actor changes the character voice, so I keep picturing the same person and forgetting he's in a different body. His near-immortality also kills and tension. The countdown element feels pointless. At first it was a great device, but there doesn't seem to be a penalty for his failure and he never fails. These things kind of remove all the risk and make them moot.

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The main character is awesome

Revisado: 12-15-24

I enjoyed this book. The main character has overcome a lot of obstacles in her life and I like that.

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Another great one

Revisado: 12-09-24

As always Mercedes entertains. The storyline is great and the characters are like my friends. Lorelei King also delivered to her expected level. This was an awesome listen!

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Very Original!

Revisado: 06-13-24

It's almost as if this the story set out to just break tropes left and right.

The acting is great, everyone does an amazing job. The dialog is snappy, the plot is interesting, the plot has some clever twists, and the jokes land so well I'd laugh out loud in the middle of the grocery store. I enjoyed various guest voices and even stopped sometimes saying things like "That has to be ___" or "I bet that's ___ doing an accent" only to confirm.

Once again Neil Gaiman proves he should be reading as well as writing.

I think this story is done, but I would like to see more like this from Felicia Day. I don't think we need a sequel so much as just another book that takes all the over used tropes, calls them out, turns them on their head, and then uses that to weave an interesting story.

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Finished just to see how it ends

Revisado: 06-13-24

I have to say, I was a little disappointed with this one. I loved "Artifact" (the first book) but this one just had too many things in it that, I hate to say, felt like lazy writing. It's not a bad book, It was still entertaining and worth a read if you like adventure and mysteries. Once again Pandian's research, details, history, and lore are excellent. I just think the execution of the story itself had flaws I couldn't get past.

For starters, there is no reason for Lane to even be in this book. You can remove him entirely, and it would change nothing. Every chapter he appears in, he says his "final goodbye" and leaves, just to do it all over again a few chapters later. It started to annoy me when he'd show up again because it felt like nothing but a filler moment to remind us, he was in the first book and nothing else.

Next, every time Jaya gets a clue to the mystery it's taken away from or it's unavailable to her so she can't review or learn anything new. This just seems like an attempt to keep her from learning what she needs to know, because if she knew it, the story would end. When this happened for the third time, almost in a row, I said aloud "Didn't see THAT coming."

In contrast, when she's stuck because all the clues keep being taken away, someone at random, wanders into the chapter and gives her a new bit of information. On the one hand, it's nice to read about a character who doesn't always know everything. On the other hand, it gets annoying when the Russian points out details about an Indian map that has nothing to do with Russa. So, the story is constantly keeping her from advancing the story, only to turn around and deus ex machina a reason to advance the story. It takes all the agency away from Jaya so she's not really doing anything but reacting to what people give or take from her.

And finally, there are little things that just seem to have been missed or overlooked. I can only assume there were things changed in the second draft and stuff carried over. I won't go into spoilers but multiple times I had to go back and listen to parts again saying "Wait... that doesn't make sense. If [redacted] and [redacted], then she should be fine. Why..." I'm not saying this ruins the book, but it's one of the many things that pull me out of the story. Often the first part was so far back I didn't even bother checking. Other times just have to go back to the start of a chapter two or three times thinking I missed something only to find I didn't - it just doesn't make sense but at least I'm not crazy.

Overall, the story isn't bad, and the pacing is still good. Every chapter is a kind of cliff hanger. I like the little flash back scenes. The addition of these interludes helps to keep things interesting. It gave me two stories to follow, and it helped when we got to the end. We didn't need a huge info dump to explain how everything fit together. We still got a huge info dump at the end, but it could have been worse were it not for the flash backs.

But after the halfway point, I was more interested in how the story ends and the history it was tied to than the characters or their actions. We were all just along for the ride.

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A great intro to a new series

Revisado: 06-13-24

Having read Book 1 of a different series by this author I wanted to give a new storyline a chance.

I have to say, Pandian does her research. Everything from the history and even lore of another country are detailed and engaging. The characters are interesting, though it's always clear there is something going on that Jay misses until later on. But, it's never a cheap surprise. It's more that she didn't realize how important a detail was until after the fact. I may have gone "Wait... that's not normal." Only to have it confirmed, it wasn't normal but there was a story reason for it.

I like that Jaya makes mistakes and needs others. The different characters all add to the story and there was even a point when I wondered if we weren't about to experience a genre shift. But the book stays true and during the "Who Done it" parts, I was guess and guessing wrong right along with the main characters.

Every chapter ends with something that makes me want to keep going. Overall, this is my favorite book from this author so far and I'll be getting the second one for sure.

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Not sure who this book is for

Revisado: 05-24-24

Let me start by saying I'm a huge fan of the show and I'll be watching the new one when it comes out. I've watched all the movies and I'm to the point I'll watch anything Dean Devlin is willing to put Christian Kane in. I started this hoping to return to the world I followed in the show with characters I enjoyed watching, but I ended up just wondering how this whole thing was just going to end through cognitive bias more than anything else. I get that writing other people's characters is difficult, but if someone is going to take on a project like this, the focus can't be just on an interesting story propped up with attempts at catch phrases.

We'll start with the voice acting. Half the time I was convinced Plummer watched the show. She nailed the female leads. I felt Jone's accent wasn't very smooth, Stone had a stronger accent than one would expect, and Jenkins was almost too formal. I think the Cassie and Baird voices, were more like happy accidents at this point. I did think Carsen was pretty good. And I get that no one can sound like the main characters every time - it's just nice when they do or get close, but I was willing to let it slide if it wasn't for the dialog on top of it to really remind me these aren't the same.

What doesn't help the voice actress is that the characters don't "sound" like themselves. There were many times that I found myself yelling at Carsen because he's doing something outright dumb. Yes, he's funny but his humor is usually a defense or to throw people off the track - I don't think I'd ever really figured out something faster than Carsen or seen someone figure it out for him. At best he over thinks a situation and need a simpler perspective. In this he flat out needed people to explain something that was obvious even to me. Cassie too should have figured out some things LONG before she did but I DID like how they used her math skills in very impressive ways. I kind of feel she's the author's favorite character.

Next, I had a hard time trying to figure out when this was supposed to happen in the timeline of show because Jones was so over the top and narcissistic I thought it would have almost been pre-Season 1. I didn't like the character in Season 1 and really enjoyed his arc in Season 2. He quickly grew on me after mid-season. So, this really felt like Season 1 Jones, so I didn't like him very much.

While I did like the focus on Scheherazade, we are constantly being hit with the same word for word references. Example: There is a reference to a magic carpet from the Scheherazade story about the lamp. The problem is, they almost ALWAYS refer to it as the magic carpet from Scheherazade's stories. As if we're going to forget, in the same chapter, that in the original stories by Scheherazade there was the carpet with magical properties... It gets old quick. I started to worry I was too old for this book - and maybe it was supposed to be for kids who don't know about any of this stuff and might forget who Scheherazade was when the put the book down to scroll social media for nine days straight. So, all these things combined already felt like this wasn't really a "The Librarians" book at all to begin with.

But wait, there's more.

The Bait-and-switch. The Librarians take up less than half the book. This whole book is really following Carsen, the Librarian, to give you the back story for the Librarians who wrap the whole thing up in about a day. We could have cut out all the Librarians stuff and just had "the Librarian and the Lost Lamp" and I think it would have been fine. As dumb as Carsen was made out to be on more than on occasion, at least it wouldn't have been as obvious as almost everyone doing things out of character. To top it off there were a bunch of moments that clearly happened just so the story could still keep going leading me to ignore it and focus on getting to the end. Most of the character motives were less about being smart, and more like failing up a lot while showing how much history and math they know along the way.

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