This book made me sad. I love Dakota Krout’s books and they are an insta-buy for me. I actually just kept buying the books in this series as they came out, figuring though I didn’t have time to read them then, I would eventually. Admittedly this is one of the books he co-authored with someone else, and it shows. Underneath hours and hours of nothingness there is a decent plot, but you have to sit through many boring hours.
The first half of the book is annoying because you can tell the village is going to be destroyed soon and you don’t need 10 chapters worth of village life to see Artorian loves the children. Those 10 chapters could have been condensed to…maybe 3. Then we finally get to cultivating and I thought Oh good, now we get to the real story. But no…thus commences several hours of Artorian learning about essence over the course of 3 years. Meanwhile his beloved children have been kidnapped and who knows what evil is befalling them while he trains. i get that the old man at death’s door that he starts as couldn’t have helped them on his own, but three years and he doesn’t even ask his cultivator buddies to look for his kids?
Again, this period drags on for hours as Artorian drones on about his breakthroughs in his unique cultivation style. Finally in the last maybe hour and half of the book he finally sets off to rescue his kids. With his quest really only just beginning at the end of the book I will continue with the next in the series but I sincerely hope it improves. This could have seriously benefited from more editing.