I listened to the 1st 2 books and loved the Concept. The over all story and performance are definitely not pad and I do enjoy the characters but there are some major issues.
1) I usually experience and expect higher quality audio from this group however for this book many many times the ending of a word is cut off and I can only blame editing because I highly doubt the narrator would stop speaking in the middle of a word. It is very annoying and distracting and if you listen for it eventually it becomes all You do and could easily have been fixed if they listened to the audio before releasing.
2) I don’t mind that a main character needs to be very powerful but in books that are well done like the land you still believe that no matter how powerful this character is he just barely gets by or can still die at any time . Unfortunately mace makes the story almost unbearable because he is so overwhelmingly powerful and never struggles with anyone. He is a master Sorcerer and yet somehow has a rogue build as well with superhuman abilities. Can be invisible incredibly dexterous and it’s just too much. There’s no anxiety there is no struggle.
3) This flaw is so badd that it almost might be number 1. Mace is essentially evil and a bloodthirsty maniac. Every single time he speaks with anyone he is a bully and a jerk. I get that there are times when intimidation is necessary but he is so unnecessarily ignorant at times. Every single person he talks to he threatens to slit their throat. Not only that but what takes me completely out of the story is that someone as sweet as Sherry not 1 time in any of the books tells him to calm down or relax or is even shocked or outraged at how utterly violent he is. He slits people’s throat rips out their hearts and front of them and never does anyone even say anything. It’s simply not realistic. In every other book or story or movie or television show when a character acts this way someone would say something. I genuinely liked mace and in the 1st book. The explanation was that he had to pretend to be that way in order to act like a drow but it got so much worse to the point where I didn’t even like him anymore and it was never even addressed
4) This last flaw is for folks that love LITRPG like I do. I love regular fantasy books but ever since this new genre I have really been fascinated with it. This book has an overall lack of leveling skill trees or any sort of progression. They are at times mentioned but it is almost like they are in the way because although this is presented as a video game it really doesn’t act like it. In other books I got so incredibly excited when characters would level up and they would present a skill tree and almost like I was deciding with them what to get. There is none of that in this book and when it is mentioned it is so casually or the character has already gained 10 levels and they only decided to tell you about 1. Over all I was ready for this book to end and I’m not sure I would listen to the next out of anything other than obligation
I still enjoyed the zombie concepts and Griff as well as tex. This book is by no means terrible and there are a lot of areas that have pure potential. But this book definitely dropped the ball