Book 3 was entertaining and a great listen. As were the two books before it.
Book 4 on the other hand was an absolute train wreck. It was about 70% exposition dump after exposition dump. Most of which had relatively little to do with the story at hand. It seamed to be just filler and backstory.
Then we get to the plot of Book 4. Face palm. The plot just gutted every single thing they tried to set up before. Why are 12-15year old kids the only security for the most prestigious school on the continent? Even when royalty and the best of the best go there? Can they not afford protection other than the head of the school who doesn’t seam to spend any time at her school? Why does our MC do no training or anything to get more powerful in this book when he has been so dedicated to it in the previous ones? Why introduce a bunch of school age characters but then leave them as simple two dimensional caricatures? Wasn’t the point of the MC going to school to make friends, other than the one genius artificer every other friend he made he had before school? So I question what was the point of the school at all? Then we have the professors, the book keeps telling us how powerful and competent they are but every situation in the book seems to tell the opposite story? One professor is beaten by a twelve year old, another merely lets her kids die on more than one occasion, then in the finally all they do is run forward and die while the MC has to come to the rescue.
Book 4 was like a different story all together from the rest of the series. I hope the next books step back up to what made the first couple great.