This part three of the main series, following Jason and his friends, is still great. But overall I feel this novel was too long. Less time could have been spent on endlessly detailed quests that didn’t always seem to add a lot to the story. Eliza and the hippy god unfortunately are pretty weak additions as characters, but fortunately several of the minor side characters are awesome and often funny. I’m thinking Pint, Jerry, and of course the inimitable Fluffy. Also, the quest notifications and status updates are getting even snarkier, which is great.
Credits to the narrator for saving the hippy god at least somewhat – the hippy plot is pretty bad I feel, but the narrator voices him in a manner that made me smile anyway, which is a great feat given what he had to work with.
This series has some overall flaws. Practically all adults consistently act unrealistically, irresponsibly and borderline crazy, the real life world thereby requiring most of the suspension of disbelief in this series – which makes the plot feel very YA. There’s a lot of plot mechanisms that seem to me to only be there out of convenience. Characters are pretty two-dimensional accept Jason and sometimes his two friends. All of which again make the series feel YA.
But, if you can get over that and if you’re willing to give yourself over to a nice adventure with some young people, then this series is entertaining enough for me to still give it four stars. And also to purchase the next novel in this series.
Performance is great. The narrator is able to hold my attention, and he distinguishes enough between character voices. His females do sound too whiny overall however, I think the narrator tries too hard with his affectations. Personally I prefer the way a narrator like John Lee voices female characters (narrating the Commonwealth Saga): in his own voice, no affect, only subtly changing some of his intonations. Brilliant.
A tip: avoid the sidequest books, they are not on the same level of story telling. Stick to the main novels, then you’ll be fine.
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