Chris Gates

Female Fantasy - but the ending made it worth it

Revisado: 08-03-24

This book and the last one have pissed me off 1,000 times over for one reason: I’m a guy. You know, a lot of books and movies in this day and age are dubbed “male fantasies” because of how unrealistically & illogically catered to men’s innermost fantasies their plot and characters are (especially the protagonist, who’s a guy, naturally). This is the first “female fantasy” book series I’ve ever run into. Call it misogyny but it’s been so ridiculous that I constantly have been kicked out of the story:

The excessive amount of overly descriptive female sex scenes- as in from the female POV- are particularly notable. It was hard for me to even get through them. There’s a little bit of male POV but even THEY are clearly written for females. And they just Kept. Showing. Up. I was always like “Jesus, another one??”

The protagonist, Bryce, is a stupidly hot “chosen one” undercover princess who’s surrounded by hot jacked guys (each a species that are themselves a female fantasy: a star athlete that changes into a wolf, a literal fucking angel with the powers of Thor who’s broken after dark mysterious and can only be “fixed” by her, etc). All are in madly in love with her, constantly thinking about her, and have eyes for no other. Her brother is an badass Faye prince who is overly protective and enduringly loving (despite her telling him to fuck off ever since their childhood), thinks she’s better than him, and PUSHES her to take over his title and magic ex-caliber sword. There are a myriad of stereotypical asshole patriarchal male authority figures that literally try to control her body (literally saying they “own” her like property) only to be bested every time despite being literal gods. Her few friends are all hot badasses (one a top assassin who could have her own book, the other the best dancer in the world). She’s an arrogant, rebellious little shit-talking Mary Sue who always fails upward whose only faults are justifiable and virtuous. God, I can’t stop…

(One more: Bryce randomly fucks a guy in a club bathroom in the first chapter of the first book- and was letting herself get banged out by this rich guy for months who literally was using her for sex- but makes Hunt wait a fucking BOOK AND A HALF to have sex??? I get that some of that is for building up sexual tension but goddamn. I still hate her for doing him so dirty. Hunt even KNEW about the guy in the club after reading her texts from that night and STILL proposed waiting to have sex. And even if he didn’t know about the guy in the club bathroom, a GUY proposing to wait 6 MONTHS to have sex for the first time with a girl they were already dating so they could “get to know” a girl platonically??? No. No way in hell. That’s some shit that’s never happened. Pure female fantasy.)

Anyway, despite all this, I do like the books. When I manage to numb myself from the female fantasy aspects, they’re fun, unique, and engaging.

This particular book was rife with the female fantasy, more than the first one even. Hell, half of it was a romance novel. However, it was unpredictable, did a great job of continuing from the first book, and kept me relatively hooked throughout.

She also really stuck the landing. What a great big reveal, twist, and cliffhanger.

Overall, if you’re a girl, and haven’t started reading this series, stop what you’re doing and read them right now. This was written for you. If you’re a guy? Even if you managed to get through the first one, prepare yourself for female fantasy.

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WAY better than Shera’s series

Revisado: 07-23-24

Honestly, if I had to do it again, I wouldn’t even bother with reading Shera’s trilogy. It was good but nowhere near as fulfilling. And she was so much less likable. Calder’s hit all the right notes.

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It was alright.

Revisado: 07-18-24

The problem is Shera (sp?). She’s just not as likable of a character as Calder. I don’t NOT like her, I just can’t get myself up for her story. Besides being an orphan who had to kill her “best friend” in the bootleg assassin cult she was abducted into as a child, I don’t find anything sympathetic about her. OP characters are already inherently uninteresting, but on top of that, she’s an overwhelmingly static character. I’m unclear on what her character arc even is. If there is one. If I had to guess, it would be something like… part learning-how-not-to-be-a-sociopath, part finding-something-to-live-for, and part overcoming-her-dark-side. But if that’s it then there’s was little to no character growth in this 2nd book.

It doesn’t help that Shera’s story is predictable (how can it not be when you already go in knowing the major plot points ahead of time from reading Calder’s book). Then the whole flipping from flashback to present day dynamic every chapter also pissed me off. It made good pacing and momentum impossible. Not to mention most of what we learn in the flashbacks either we already could have guessed or was (I thought) both uninteresting and unnecessary.

Overall though, it wasn’t a bad book. It felt more like filler than anything else. A game DLC. The slow episode you need to get through before the action-packed climax (hopefully). And I hear reading her third book before Calder’s third book is the way to go, so maybe that’s it. Here’s to hoping. I’ll dive into her third book here in a second and report back.

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So much fun!

Revisado: 07-01-24

Loved the Volton/Power Rangers angle. It was the perfect amount of satirical. Enough to let you in on the gag, but not enough to ruin the seriousness of the story/turn things into a joke. Had a lot of fun with this one. I wish it was longer.

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Love it man.

Revisado: 06-29-24

The story’s still got that same Will Wight charisma as The Cradle series- just in space, and with a protagonist that’s (almost) overpowered from the start. It’s great. This first book’s sort of like a “Getting the Crew Back Together” scene in an 80’s action flick, except none of them have met the protagonist yet in this timeline.

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Serviceable

Revisado: 06-01-24

This book is like a ham sandwich. It’ll get the job done and tastes well enough to get through eating it (even enjoy in a dull mindless sort of way). But, as a meal, it’s bland and underwhelming. This book has all the right parts, and is written serviceably, but, except for a spark or two at the end, it’s got no charisma. Also, the logo is misleading. Technically “jade” rocks are magic in that they grant superhuman physical abilities, but they really just serve as a plot device for the book’s two mafia families to fight over. And that’s what this book is: a gangster/mafia family story. Jade in this world is like alcohol in the prohibition. There was also nothing Asian in the story now that I think about it. Not the culture or the characters, despite their names. That really threw me off. It’s clearly an honor based culture but it could have just as easily been Italy.

Anyway, I’m not sure I’d recommend Jade City to myself if I could go back in time, I don’t really like ham sandwiches, but I’m going to read the next one because reviews are higher and I feel like there’s a small chance the story will rise above mediocrity.

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It picks up, I promise

Revisado: 03-02-24

Overall the book is solid. Servicable. Not noticeably good or bad. The first half, especially the beginning chapters, really drags. But at that 50% mark the author catches his groove and the story picks up. The first half isn’t unbearable or anything, it just that nothing really grabs you. The second half is significantly better.

The Narrator was a big contributing factor to that. He’s got a great natural voice for reading books from this era, but he is nearly devoid of any ability to do unique voices or show emotion. Most of the time it’s hard to even catch when the narrator’s switched into dialogue.

The book’s worth giving a shit though. I can already tell it’s going to really get going in the next book.

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If I hear “jape” one more time I swear to God

Revisado: 01-10-24

I’d rate this addition to the series a hard “Okay”- it’ll get you there- but it really tested my patience. The overuse of “jape”, “jest”, and “quip” is just a microcosm of my biggest issue with the book. It reads like a first draft. All of the annoying quirks in Estes’s writing (annoying to me anyway) are having a field day here.

There were a boatload of plot inconsistencies too. Characters would do things that didn’t fit in at all with their personality on the regular. And don’t even get me started on the number of contrived plot points that came out of absolutely nowhere but were presented as if they were payoffs or “big reveals” that had always been foreshadowed:

(***SPOILERS*
Rhea is randomly pregnant? Huh? Ellis was in love with her?? Since when?? Gwen realizes she’s in love with Roan??? What?? Anise’s blood was corrupted by Terran’s in the battle in the last book???? What is this??? What the hell is going on?! Stop introducing new fantasy elements this late in the game Estes!
*SPOILERS OVER***)

Back to the headline though: I’ve always hated Estes’s use of the word “jape” in his books, but it was so bad here that it would kick me out of my listening flow every time I heard it . It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why it’s so disruptive. “Jape” just doesn’t fit in with the fantasy style of prose. At least not the way he uses it. You can’t just write the first draft of your book using the word “joke” like normal and then Autoreplace All with “jape”. It doesn’t sound natural.

Anyway, I’m still invested enough to finish the book out but it’s mostly due to momentum. If this was the first book in the series I think I would have called it by now.

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Favorite Ending ever

Revisado: 10-22-23

Pretty strong entry to the series as a whole. That ending though, that ending was the best ending for a book that I’ve read in a long time. Almost made up for my frustration with Age of Empyre’s.


As an aside, I wish Robin didn’t immediately jump in and start talking after it was over in the Afterword instead of letting the moment breathe.

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Great job Will

Revisado: 09-15-23

Fantastic book series. That ending was nice and sturdy. And, more importantly, cathartic. So relieved there wasn’t any attempt to subvert expectations. With 10+ previous books there was inevitably going to be too much momentum to not have a mostly predictable ending. It SHOULD have a predictable ending after 10+ books. Will gives you every payoff the other books promised.

I’ve read some other reviews and I don’t disagree that it COULD have been broken up, maybe fleshed out into another book or two, but I was very satisfied with just this one. Instead, if anything, I would have loved to get an entire book’s worth of epilogue. Like a video game DLC. It’s always nice to marinate in a well-earned happily ever after. But that would have been an indulgence, not a necessity. This was a Goldie Lox ending: had just the right amount of substance to give closure to the whole journey. You’ll leave feeling content.

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