Ok, I would like to start off by saying this book has a great concept and the characters are great, even the narrator is good, BUT let me tell you how much I despise the MC. Minor spoiler ahead
Issue 1:
is the unacceptable the amount of inner monologue/dialogue. I’m about 6 and a half hours in and I have changed the speed to 1.7 (which I’ve never done before) because I feel like about 4 hours of this book so far has been inner monologues and over explanations, to give an example, our MC can influence people with his words and can understand and communicate in any language, at one point (close to where I had to stop and give up on this book) our MC and another character are driving down a long driveway when our MC asks a question, and when the other character says “wait and see” the MC goes on a mini tangent about why this response was annoying and why he WONT use his powers on him to make him answer, like ok I get it you want us to know what he’s thinking but dear lord I don’t need to hear everything, we’re not dumb we can infer. I know this is small and normally I wouldn’t even notice something like this but it’s constant every little decision, action or thought is explained to us in excruciating detail.
Issue 2:
Our MC is a short tempered asshole. I swear every single word that’s come out of his mouth has been weirdly aggressive and angsty, like this dude is supposed to be an adult why does every thing he say sound like he’s an angsty teenager with the temper of a toddler. The ONLY person that he doesn’t randomly hate is his sister, in fairness all the other characters have made threats on his life, but contextually he definitely should have at least kept his anger to himself if just for information. He is detrimentally snappy with people and just doesn’t ask questions, which by the way he constantly complains about people not giving him answers TO QUESTIONS HE NEVER ASKS, it’s alway “there are a million questions running through my head” and instead of asking one of them, he just makes some half hearted unwitty remark.
Issue 3:
He’s completely driven by fear and he has almost zero curiosity. So many times does he tell someone to shut up and go away instead of asking questions, or when he has the opportunity to he either ignores it or decides the answer is to dangerous? Like how as listeners/reader are we supposed to learn about the world and people when our MC is just a wet rag.
Overall I would recommend this if you don’t mind over the top inner monologue and an infuriatingly boring and frustrating MC, but if the description of, an angsty overgrown coward with the wit of a toddler, turns you off then I’d suggest skipping this one.
I paid for this book… so you can be sure I’m being honest…