Perhaps several lists, one for each of the typical, over-used phrases, such as “His eyes turned an obsidian black”, “His smile not reaching his eyes” would relieve the sense of “over-and-over repetition of phrases”. Injecting realism into fantasy works however, injecting fantasy into realism does not. The romance aspect, in my opinion, either should have been inclusive, making Frank gay or, more correctly, left out entirely. Jason is too socially retarded to understand the concept of soft romantic love. Jason’s character, completely lacking in masculinity, having the NPCs call him “boy” only reinforcing the point, can’t come off as a cosmic stud to a wealthy, well-equipped Riley. The author never eludes to Jason’s thumb length or shoe size so, there’s no compulsion whatsoever for Riley to want to engage him, other than she’s stupid. I’d just leave the fantasy out of the reality in this arena.

This all stated, I’m a huge fan of David Stifel’s narration and, the creative constructs of Travis Bagwell. I’ll follow them both and be predisposed to purchasing their work. I did greatly enjoy this series, criticisms aside and, hopefully, they’ll be considered by the author. “A boy and his dog” is an understood construct. Men generally do NOT like cats. Introducing the AI as a cat is odd at best. Why not a dog? My best friend. Because we all know, cats don’t have friends. They only use people. That’s more injection of fantasy into reality and, it doesn’t work as well.