Book 3 major let down

I believe this is a trilogy that will definitely appeal to the male audience. Didn't realise it was centred around a harem style as I avoid these and the reverse ones like the plague, it feels like an excuse to pad out a book with sex.
So the first two books were interesting and was looking forward to the last one. Well for an invasion of millions the battle seemed to last but a moment. They were meant to be hidden away for such a long time, we are talking years, but it seems that after 4 months they were heading back to the city they abandoned.
I am being vague as I don't want to spoil if for anyone still reading or about to start the series. Not a series for me!

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great performance, stilted story

A great setting, interesting characters, but this is not as good as some of the others from this author. the pacing of the book is off, with loads happening at first, threads raised that get abandoned, a fair bit of padding and then characters we're told will be important only to have them be disregarded or ignored a chapter later. it's like the inversion of Chekovs Gun.

the MC gains power but everything he does feels reactive, and the idea of an RPG tower defence gets abandoned and shown to be fairly useless early on. plans are made then discarded, and a lot of the wording and early dialogue feels very pondering and overly formal at times. characters elaborate and expound on things. later on there are some clear editing issues (Arachne becomes arcane, where words were missed, and the narrators mispronounce some words)

the scale of the threat feels crazy but there is a good plot reason for that. the sudden pivot in book 3 threw me a bit

what is consistently good are the romances and spice, the characters feel defined and interesting though there were some who felt like they were being set up that then didn't get followed through on, which was disappointing.

overall a pretty entertaining book that the author has used to improve their style. you can see the groundwork of ideas that get used in other stories and how they have expanded and refined their plots. worth a listen, but be ready to handle a lot of exposition and rapidly shifting plot points!

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Misappropriation Much?

I'm a big Danirl Wisniewski fan, so hearing him perform anything that isn't atonal (yes, even Big D has phoned it in on occasion. I guess he was going for dramatic, but it didn't work). He does a great job breathing life into the multitude of male characters.
Rebecca Woods is pretty accomplished too, but still hasn't quite managed to get me to like any of her characters. She should ABSOLUTELY say away from the cockney accent. She simply cannot master it, and it's painful to hear. As for the likeability of her characters, the fault lies partly with the author's construction, and presentation, partly with the director and partly with her. It's hidden within her tone and pronunciation, I believe - both fixable, of course. Her talents do not match Wisniewski's, however, and it was possible to become confused as to who was speaking at times.
The story was enjoyable, but needlessly complicated in the name of the author David Burke presumably trying to distinguish his litRPG world from all the others. It just came over as downright stupid and needlessly harsh at times. And I wouldn't call the ending a twist in the tale so much as a screeching U-turn so big as to ask yourself, so what was it all for then? If I'd been reading instead of listening, I'd have felt my time had been wasted,despite the many enjoyable segnents. Some of the grammar and terminology is atrocious. For example, the past tense of "lay" is "laid" or "lay", NOT "LIED" ! That's a whole other word!
And tall. buildings are not generally "floored" but "storied", from the singular "storey". "Floored" is to be amazed or awed, for goodness' sake!
Now, to the misappropriation. As I was listening, I don't know how Mr Burke is choosing to spell the race of the Dark Pantheon, but from Wisniewski's pronunciation, it sounds like Orishi. As a Londoner of Jamaican heritage, my roots are in West Africa, so I am DEEPLY offended that David Burke would take a very real African religion, twist and use it in this way.
The Orisha (òrìṣà, orixá, orisa, oricha, orichá or orixá) are deities in the religion of West African peoples.of Yoruba, Bantu, Igbo people and Gbe, and several religions of the African diaspora that derive from it, such as Cuban, Dominican and Puerto Rican Santería and Brazilian Candomblé (which has influences from the Roman Catholic form of Christianity). Like the Japanese Shinto religion, worship of the Orisha means obeisance to ancestors and nature, beings and objects of power.
So, it's incredibly disappointing to have an author use a close approximation to name his "fictional" dark religion of dark, ugly ogres, orcs, trolls, goblins, centaurs, and bad guys creatires. It's bad enough that my own ancestors endonym has been lost to time and globally replaced by the European's invasive, oppressive and supremely inaccurate mononyn of "black", when the uber-mixed diaspora is so very far from it. But we also have to endure the western association of black being inherently bad, evil, depressing or dirty, and only very occasionally, chic.
A little more due diligence in future please.

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Sexist and dumb

I’d like to like this but maaan, this book is basically very blatant male wish fulfilment for 17 year olds. The protagonist is slimy AF and the author’s male gaze rests over everything heavily. Ugh, not a good look.

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1 person found this helpful