Douglas Lilley

The cover, like cake, is a lie.

Revisado: 12-30-24

1. The MC is a country boy who sounds like Forrest Gump and only resembles a gumshoe due to how much he gets stomped on.
2. I understand the term “Hard Magic” to mean a magic system with clear and understandable rules. The magic system used in this book is about a half-step down from being as soft as Harry Potter.
3. The girl in the red dress isn’t the MC’s partner. She’s barely even a love interest.

I’m generally not a fan of alternate histories or stories that are split into multiple POVs, so I’m adding a star to compensate for the writing style being so antagonistic to my personal preferences.

If you like fast paced action, fake quotes from real people, and a lot of context switching, then this book’s probably worth a read.

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This Book Kills It!

Revisado: 11-15-24

Apologies for the pun, but it’s been a while since I read a book so good that I can’t really point out any issues.

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Less would have been more

Revisado: 06-28-24

I got to chapter 30 purely based on the author’s ability to evoke curiosity and a couple of the characters. I stopped reading at chapter 30 because I didn’t care about the outcome.

Basically, the author accidentally created an anthology rather than a cohesive story with multiple points of view. I came away without being invested in the outcome of any of the stories so that when some aspects of the stories eventually coalesced, it didn’t matter to me.

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Felt Like Filler

Revisado: 03-27-24

There was retcon shenanigans; A new MC that took up most of the book; and not a lot of progress made. IMHO this is a filler book ( or maybe 2 filler short stories rammed together.

Alright, here’s a spoiler alert. You’ve been warned!

The new MC is an atheist who gets power that he thinks resembles those of the Christian God (they don’t, btw). This leads to him and others philosophizing as well as him going insane. The insanity part isn’t so bad, but there’s nothing even remotely interesting about the junior apologetics course. Also, this is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, but if God is as powerful as the Bible portrays,why on earth would the apparent age of the universe prove anything? The MC literally starts off as an archeologist who’s researching ruins put there at the start of the game and he can’t put that together?
On to the retconning. Remember that sign over everybody’s head that lets everyone else know what bad things they did? Poof, never happened. The eradication of all the baddies? Poof, just a bit of population control so some are still around. I’m not even going to get started on Morgan’s new “wife”.

All in all, this book was about the author wanting to write a one-off MC story in the same universe, with a much different tone and a little set up for Morgan’s eventual return. If he’d just done that as a start to a new series, I wouldn’t have minded, but doing it when I was expecting station silliness or at least a fun team-up against a kraken (as depicted on the cover). Instead I got an atheist’s guide to being an agnostic.

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Favorite story in the series

Revisado: 06-11-23

The title says it all. The battle scenes were great, the plot resolutions were satisfying. Dross was Dross! What’s not to love?

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Predictable

Revisado: 11-21-22

I usually am a fan of Grisham novels, but I guessed the twist to this one about an hour in. Apart from the predictability, the main character’s a little too sanctimonious for my liking, and you can definitely hear Grisham’s opinions clearly, through a Marty Stu who lectures the government he also undermines.

All in all, it wasn’t really a winner for me.

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Can’t wait for the next one!

Revisado: 03-16-22

The less-than perfect:
Narration:
I think John Lee might have confused the voices of the MC and his fellows a few times.

Story (mild spoiler alert)
1. Not paying a mercenary group what they are owed seems like a bad idea for royalty that’s in a tight spot. The reputation also damage alone could cause a change in government. Said mercenary group continuing to work with said royalty seems equally unbelievable, especially when they are taking on so much extra danger. Not describing the negotiation between the two is the absolute worst though. Not wanting to say no to royalty couldn’t have been the gist of it. I want to know what they get out of this.
2. Manfreid’s dad should have had the documents translated. It doesn’t make sense that he didn’t.

That’s pretty much it for the negatives. Everything else from the fantastic voices to the compelling storyline has left me wanting more. I cannot wait till the next book is out.

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boring, predictable, unsatisfying

Revisado: 07-30-20

This was a pretty mediocre book.

The main protagonist was a pretty unsympathetic idiot. He's basically compelled into each conflict by force for the most part, complains the whole time, overestimates his abilities constantly, and swoons for his ex the rest of the book. He also pretty much goes through every confrontation without any real plan, and doesn't seem to ever learn his lesson. After one failure, the main character reflects on his mistake, then makes the exact same mistake again in the next fight. Literally the only reason he's not dead many times over is because of his substantial plot armor.

The antagonist is worse. His actual reasons for killing people are both shallow and undefined. He wants to get strong, has a sense of loyalty to his master, sort of wants revenge, is working towards some sort of utopian future for the masses... take your pick. He pretty much switches reasons every time he does an internal monologue. Basically he's the protagonist without a love interest (he even has an annoying person ordering him around and showing up randomly).

The plot twists were all painfully obvious (I was actually getting frustrated that the reveal was taking so long because I was expecting it to lead to a meaningful change in the plot. It didn't.) The

The magic system is pretty annoying. It's meant to be a mystery, but it is never really defined enough to be all that mysterious. It changes when the plot requires and acts like a deus ex machina when convenient. I'm sure there will be further discoveries in the subsequent books, but the author failed to make the magic system interesting enough to warrant the effort.

Finally, the narration was fairly monotone. I ended up turning up the speed to 2.5x then finally 3x to get through aspects of the book that should have been fun but just didn't sound interesting.

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Not bad but not great.

Revisado: 04-13-19

The concept is pretty good and the world building is decent, but Simon is annoying and unrealistic. He's trying to save his people without killing his enemies. His internal musings don't match the scenes. He whines constantly about choices he should have made long ago. In short, he's basically braindead.

Simon aside, there's not much character building of any kind. Characters are briefly introduced and that's it.

Finally, there are too many mysteries at the same time. It's hard to focus on the story with all the hint dropping and mystery building going on. I get it, Simon rushed through training with a crazy guy so he doesn't really understand what's happening. Put it on the back burner and maybe bring up one thing (the chains?) once every few chapters to remind the reader. If you don't keep a clear storyline, it's going to be hard to notice the twists.

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Not bad but not great.

Revisado: 04-13-19

The concept is pretty good and the world building is decent, but Simon is annoying and unrealistic. He's trying to save his people without killing his enemies. His internal musings don't match the scenes. He whines constantly about choices he should have made long ago. In short, he's basically braindead.

Simon aside, there's not much character building of any kind. Characters are briefly introduced and that's it.

Finally, there are too many mysteries at the same time. It's hard to focus on the story with all the hint dropping and mystery building going on. I get it, Simon rushed through training with a crazy guy so he doesn't really understand what's happening. Put it on the back burner and maybe bring up one thing (the chains?) once every few chapters to remind the reader. If you don't keep a clear storyline, it's going to be hard to notice the twists.

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