Blaze Enderman

Insufferably boring and sometimes cringworthy

Revisado: 04-24-22

I was pretty excited for this book when it came out. The magic system was really neat, and it was cool enough that i kept listening, even though the characters were bland and not great all the time. And, at the time i listened to the first two books, i was really excited about having a gay MC, since i was just going through some stuff as well. However, as i read through this book, i became increasingly sure the author has ever talked to a gay person older than 19 before. I have never met a gay person that was nearly as annoying as Jason. The suspicious lack of other LGBT characters other than gay men was also disheartening. I can only imagine that trans people would face unique problems that would be interesting to see solved with magic. There were also no lesbians, and the one maybe bisexual character was a side character who shows up two or three times and then is never mentioned again.

Occasionally, Jason addresses the reader, and it feels out of place. The author then proceeds to tell us how funny the pun or joke that Jason made was. It felt forced and I never laughed at any of them because it felt like I was being told to laugh. While this is probably nit-picky, I would think giving a hug to someone you just met would be a significantly more unwelcome than it was. Jason was really the only one that had anything happen to them, and I never felt there were any real stakes. Jason is so overpowered, that its hard to believe that anything bad could happen to him.

In the overall story, I think the author forgot one of the most important rules of writing; show, don't tell. instead of telling us how sad someone is, describe it and let us infer how sad the man is, or how happy, or how sad. its much more impactful. For the plot, you can smell a hint of one wafting through the text, but its conclusion was obvious and its premise was boring. it boils down to "This man is bad and misogynistic and hates the MC" and resolved in a completely unsatisfactory way.
Here are a few other things I found to be insufferable:
- The power comparisons were inconstant and vague. Don't just tell us that Jason is different than other young mages, give us an example so we can compare the two.
- I don't think that anyone is so horny they ignore all their other friends to go have sex. At least not any good people
- The author tells us that the centaurs are treated terribly, but everyone Jason meets are incredibly kind and respectful to them.
- The only person of consequence who wasn't kind to Jason and Sandy was the main antagonist, who wasn't introduced until like half way through the book.
- Half of the sentences started with the same pronoun did or pronoun looked like and it made the narrator's job hard, since it doesn't matter how you read writing. if the flow is choppy, then its hard to make it sound interesting.

Overall, I'm deeply disappointed with this book. I think the editor should have taken a much harder look at it before it was published. Maybe then, it wouldn't sound like a 3rd grader's writing homework.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Excellent magic and worldbuilding

Revisado: 12-30-20

a lot of books like this seem to have the problem where the magic systems are not well explained and things seem to happen for no reason. in this series, everything seems to have a cause and effect, and the magic is more well explained in a believable system then I have seen in a while. well worth the read, and very very fun. Joe is a very interesting character who has a set of morals that is easy to understand in his situation. hes not a "good" character in terms of morals, but he at least sticks too it.

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