Jim

Hilarious!

Revisado: 03-20-25

This was a really fun read! Loved every minute! Great listen! Well written and really great humor.

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Story is Outpacing the Author's Skill

Revisado: 03-18-25

To me it feels like the scope of the book is growing too quickly for the author's skill to be able to handle it, resulting in an overwhelming number of instances that aren't satisfying.

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Fun but

Revisado: 02-28-25

This series is really interesting and fun. My only issue is that Nathan doesn’t really lose at anything in any meaningful way. There is a lot of “yes and” instead of “yes but”. I like that he wins a lot but it would be nice if he lost something important that changed the story dramatically. The transition with character conflict that lead him to the Accademy was a good example of this. I just hope the series doesn’t turn into “Nathan wins everything” with no drawbacks or meaningful consequences. I guess you could argue the ending with the questor bringing the premature ending could kinda be like that.

Apart from that, the magic is very interesting and the 2nd half of the book I couldn’t put down. It was nice when Nathan took the plot into his hands.

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Boring and woke

Revisado: 01-07-25

While the overall connection and info dump for the comers was interesting, I was bored by the book for the first 2/3. I found it slow, there was just too much character viewpoint switching that interrupted the interesting parts. I also really disliked all the woke stuff in it, really made me uncomfortable.

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Great ending!!

Revisado: 10-26-24

Really interesting! I thought it did get a little too heavy on history at times and wish that the story had been a little bit tighter.

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Really enjoyed it!

Revisado: 10-24-24

This was a really pleasant read! Loved how it ended and am super excited to start the next book.

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It was alright

Revisado: 10-20-24

Based on the writing it reads like this is a new author, which isn’t always bad thing. Sometimes the writing is poor others it’s rather good. The beginning was a bit jarring at times with its pacing. There was one joke I laughed out loud, and several gave me some chuckles.

The story was kinda bland in my opinion. There was a severe lack of consequences for the MC with all the stealing and killing he does. I did really like the injury he gets and I hoped for a moment the author was going to be gutsy and have it be permanent, to help raise the stakes and dangers in the world.

I think the biggest flaw in the plot was the knowledge skill. As the only lingering effect from that was the MC’s ability to remember his mother, it should have been changed to some sort of memory gift instead. As it is, I think that the MC’s lack of using the knowledge as a permanent gift to progress and excel in life was a waste. So either the knowledge gift really wasn’t that good (which it didn’t sound like it) or the MC is retarded to let such an amazing gift out of his hands. He literally could have used the knowledge gift to solve all his other problems. Or at least that was my impression of it based on him instantly knowing crazy things like stars and gravity.

I found the climax fight end a bit abruptly. The story’s coolest element of MC getting random gifts and adopting on the fly wasn’t used in the climax and it seemed like a missed opportunity. Also seems like it would have been a good idea to consider leveling up his shield instead, or at least test it.

The narrator wasn’t the best but not the worst. Didn’t have much range.

All in all, I listened to the whole thing and liked it enough to not return the title. Probably won’t get the next book in series.

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Gave up…

Revisado: 10-14-24

The series started great with a cool card magic system then completely changed directions and basically bade it all about things other than cards. Eventually the cards came back up but the story just dragged on and was boring.

It’s as if the story said: here is a really cool magic system, okay now let’s learn about something completely different; feel caught up? Well let’s change it again and send our character back in time and make most of what you just learned disappear, but don’t worry we will slowly add it in as we continue.

My theory, after giving up during chapter 23, is that Jake is ultimately responsible for everything: including the cards system, and that his illusions become other gods and that the shuffling of the worlds is like the shuffling of his life/personality. The painting he took from the angel will have changed to him and the knowledge dragon is involved in it somehow.

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Overall story structure is weak

Revisado: 03-24-24

I really struggle enjoying the main character’s Integrity, or I should say, Arthur’s lack of it. The lack of consequences it has on the story is a huge oversight. For example, the very beginning of the book Arthur is abusing his leadership power with a rider pair, and that would’ve been such a great connection to have later in the story be connected to the climax and have that rider be working with the mind singer to lure Arthur into a trap. He continues to lie, cheat, and steal and only benefits from it. It’s really unsatisfying.

It’s also idiotic for Arthur to finally possess a legendary attack card of immense power, and to not use it as an attack card in his heart deck, so he and bricks can use it to destroy scourglings. It just seems like a hole in the story as things are escalating so huge and getting so powerful you have to keep upping the ante and creating these artificial limits to keep things under control.

The climax battle for why the Minesinger fled was super unsatisfying because it was completely unrelated to anything Arthur really did. Would’ve been a great opportunity to have his past decisions to you and steel come back and haunt him. Or could have had the mind swap work and have Arthur become a scourging and take a twist of the story, where he goes into the courage world and learns things, and then figures out how to recover his body now then has the secrets to destroy them.

I’m really disappointed because I really love how this series started but the writing skill just doesn’t seem to be there in order to make the proper decisions to have bad things happen to the main character to actually create stakes that matter and have consequences. Thought I was surprised that he didn’t defeat the mind singer in this book, the way he defended his mind, seem to come out of nowhere, and was a convenient solution to the problem.

unfortunately, I’m probably gonna return this title and stop listening to future ones…

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No consequences

Revisado: 06-15-23

Spoilers:

I couldn’t put it down until the egg hatched. I’m not a fan of the dragon’s voice. I think it’s meant to be comical, but the way the narrator portrays, it is just more cringy and annoying. The author steals lines from other stories; for example: “I’m never late, I arrive precisely when I mean to” is from the lord of the rings. It pulled me right out of the story.

I really like the series, but there really are no consequences that directly hurt the MC. I’m not talking about consequences that affect everyone like releasing the scurglings from the scholar’s guild (which even that only ended up granting the MC with rewards). I’m talking about consequences for all of his lying and stealing. Apart from making an enemy of his cousin and uncle, lying and stealing has resulted in only positives: he has two legendary cards (both from theft); he gets money from Marian; he is given 3 rares; he manages to remain in the top 10 in the duels; he gets a legendary dragon; he becomes a hive leader; he gets seemingly unlimited free money in a stipend; he escapes death from the king (by literally becoming a traitor to the kingdom and exploiting the king’s dementia and easily manipulating him, why no one else is using the king as a puppet and exploding this is unknown); he frees his father from his oath.

The MC gets injured a lot but that’s not even a negative anymore b/c he instead just gets to level up body skills (which in the duels I thought was really cool because it’s kind of out of the box solution to the problem). They just aren’t any negative things happening to him. Instead of getting in trouble, he gets rewarded. And now that he’s a legendary dragon rider in the hive, if he’s mean to others or does something wrong, he has the authority to do so, so no consequences.

I would’ve found it much more satisfying to have the MC’s lies crumble down around him with serious consequences that he then has to overcome. Instead, he’ll probably end up leveling up to a mythic card and defeating the mythic scourgegods.

I will probably give the next book a shot.

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