The author draws out over an entire book the sort of character growth you might see in a few chapters of a faster-paced book. Even by the end, our MC still isn’t very spunky and remains oblivious to some of his hidden gifts that he’s been told about several times.
The tediousness is compounded by the narrator, who speaks in a monotone and imbues almost none of his characters with distinctive voices.
The synopses of the future books suggest our character becomes more admirable, so I’ll probably buy them.