A Big Transition…with Filling.

This series continues to be enjoyable, but the pacing of the story was glaringly slow and the overall development felt lacking. It’s as if book 4 is a placeholder before starting the grand epic quest to expand the kingdom, at best, or simply a filler focusing on several interesting side characters, at worse.

There is a lot of insight that’s gained on several of the heroes from the MC’s kingdom. Seeing how the townsfolk interact with each other and growing as they’re becoming more aware of the world is heartening. Unfortunately, nothing really comes from their development. Even though progress due to the NPCs enlightenment will likely appear in the future, the lack of any meaningful results to be found in this book made it feel empty.

The final challenges in the book was desperately welcomed, but pretty obvious. The action was great and seeing the heroes overcome their obstacles was still very fun, but didn’t have as big an impact as the previous books.

Overall, the book was fine and the series is still great. This sequel has grounded me, however, and I’m hoping the best moments this series has to offer haven’t already passed.