To anyone that reads my reviews, yes, this is a somewhat long one, which typically means I wasn’t a fan of the story, but in this case, I was!
My husband and I are fans of the narrator of this story, Travis Baldree. In this case, Mr. Baldree had suggested my husband give this story a listen-to as they’re friends in a Facebook group. Because he already had a long list of books, I got to listen to it first. I don’t know if this is considered LitRPG or not, I’m thinking yes, either way, this is maybe the third or fourth RPG story I’ve read/listened to and I’ve liked them all so far. This can be said the same for “Giantlands.” I found it to be a fast-paced, entertaining listen-to. My biggest problem with this story was all the repetition and it had the most I’ve ever seen/heard. How someone didn’t notice it all, although most readers probably wouldn’t, is beyond me because I did. I’m all about providing examples, so here some are. 1. “His BODY jerked, power running through his BODY.” 2. “Zundy knew that whatever was following him was literally right behind him NOW. The sun was at this back NOW.” 3. His BODY is extremely tall and lanky. His BODY covered in short green fur.” 4. I GENERALLY keep my senses in order with the ones that will keep me alive with those ones GENERALLY taking presidency over the others.” 5. “VISIONs danced at the corner of his VISION.” Stuff like this screams out to me.
A smaller problem I had was when Zundy looked at his stats and, the majority of the time, it seemed like all his basic (non-changing) information was brought up. I didn’t really understand that. Wouldn’t you just want to know the new changes, especially given this was supposed to be Zundy’s POV, so it’s not like he would be questioning what his name was.
This is the first book I’ve read/listened-to that involved multiple POVs in a single scene, like just going back and forth between characters revealing their inner thoughts/feelings. After a bit of looking around, I read that in doing a story this way, it means the story is more plot-driven as opposed to the typical one POV per scene which would be character-driven. Zundy is trying to get… I’m brainfarting what the item he’s looking for is? Either way, he is the protagonist, leaving the other characters as side ones. The story is based on or focused around Zundy and what he does and his experiences. While I can see switching from one character to another, at the same time, I can’t help feel that it should only be done to reveal to the reader important or new information they wouldn’t otherwise have found out from the main protagonist. With that in mind, I didn’t feel like the side character’s inner thoughts/feelings were important to the story, as in something they couldn’t have just verbalized.
Moving on… as I stated at the beginning of my review, I’m a big fan of Travis Baldree. He has a great narrating voice, provides a variety of voices for each character, and his accents are on point. My only complaint here is that I wish Mr. Baldree had tried (if he hadn’t already) to do younger-sounding voices. Finding out a character is sixteen but sounds like a forty-year-old threw me off.
Questions/Comments:
How had everyone in Zundy’s town known about his low/crappy stats? It would have been one thing for them to see him and guess based on his appearance that his stats would be different than those who normally absorbed rock, and given his father didn’t like him and was disappointed in everything he did, I couldn’t see him bragging or revealing to the townspeople (Zundy’s bully!) that his son had bad stats. So who revealed them?
One line that I found funny; I didn’t note the exact wording, but it involved Zundy wiping condensation from the corner of his eye. That’s not how that works. Had he been wearing glasses, he could have wiped the condensation from the lense….
What was with the author constantly having a character, specifically Zundy, speaking in an “undertone.” Was I the only one who picked up on that? I can’t say I’ve heard that used in a dialogue tag before, so upon the first hearing of it, I noticed it each and every additional time it was used, sometimes going from one character’s dialogue to the next. The funny thing was that there was a part when the narrative brings up using an undertone as opposed to a whisper. They’re essentially the same thing.
Lastly, I didn’t really understand the point of taking kids from parents/families and saying they’ll be in a better place because they’ll be training in a cooking school, unknowing to the families that they’ll later be used as slaves. The idea of a cooking school just seemed strange.
In the end, I would like to say that I’m all for listening to book 2, but I’m worried about all the repetition that is more than likely used in it. I know! I’m weird because I let simple things like simple repetition annoy me. But it does.