first, let me preface this by saying that I have absolutely no issues with the narrator. he’s doing an absolutely bang up job.
The story though? That’s a different problem. The first 25-30 minutes of the story sounds like an abbreviated summary of what would probably be the first 15 chapters of a story and those would be pretty chunky chapters, as well. I mean that quite literally. For the first 20 minutes you’re told about all these major events that have already happened.
The two main characters meet for the first time, the learn to communicate, the argue, they bond. they encounter a harrowing event and pull through with luck and determination. Yay! now they’re closer then ever! Learn anything from that? Yeah, neither did I.
the summary doesn’t go into any details, just gives you the highlights and proceeds with the rest of the story as if you had been there to experience it. The story casually mentions facts of the world as if there was already an explanation you were too dumb to notice.
The worst thing is that this makes me feel like I’m the third wheel. Here we are with these characters that have experiences with hard times that help them bond and build an important facet of their relationship, and the only way I can experience it is through a bland recitation like a war told by a history text book. I feel like I should have an emotional connection with these characters and the book is making fun of me when I don’t. it’s like I skipped season 1 of my favorite show and I see all these characters with such strong bonds in season 2 and I go “who is that guy? Why is he like that?” and everyone goes “How can you not know that Joe Shmoe is the hero for saving pocket town from the doom machine?! Are you stupid?”
It’s a very hard feeling to explain but to bake a long story short, I think the author legitimately made the story WORSE by including that first 25 minutes rather then just scrapping the whole thing and building the story around drip feeding the facts of that time throughout the plot. 10 minutes after I got through that part I already forgot almost everything except that he tied some guy’s shoes together with telekinesis and he tripped and broke his ankles or something. If I could have the chunk of story that seems to have been ripped out of the beginning, then I genuinely think this would’ve been an amazing story. as it stands though I’m dropping it after a bit over an hour or so. It’s a shame, really.