This review is filled to the brim with spoilers.
Perhaps I’m biased towards Jason. Perhaps I’m jaded by dead wife depressed widower. Perhaps the message that the story seems to be alluding to (live in the past, maybe the dead can come back to life?) bugs me?
Either way, this story didn’t impress me. Actually each new Awaken Online Story has grown less and less good for me. I mean. It was still worth reading. Still ‘good.’ But no longer amazing like the original two books were.
Finn is boringly indecisive, especially for someone apparently expected to be the incarnation of Passion. He has no passion at all. Literally any other character in this story makes more sense for an incarnation of passion. The whole story is about his… distressingly dull attempts to care about shit.
Worst of all, his abilities don’t reflect a master of passion and creation. He comes up with a grand total of one spell and it’s fucking Enchant Item. Six hours talking about what channelling does to spells (which anyone listening to a litRPG already knows) and we get floating blades. That’s it. THAT. IS. ALL.
We didn’t get an aura of flame. We didn’t get creative fire spells that turn the ground to lava. Didn’t even get so much as an inferno.
The ending, the thing that finally gives Finn the resolve to embrace Awaken Online and believe that it could be real, simultaneously causes him to murder the beings he JUST came to accept as real?
It’s not a good story. It’s wonky. Finn’s motivations are dull. Finn’s Daughter just being there feels awkward and is never explained. The librarian who is OBVIOUSLY the background leader of the whole guild is so OBVIOUSLY OBVIOUS its not even funny.
The entire framework of the story is a tourney among novices to inherit leadership of the city… which… what the fuck? Why would you choose a novice?
I just… was incredibly unimpressed with this story. All the other marked ones usurped or took over their respective cities in ways that felt organic. This one just feels contrived. From the very beginning you are presented with a city and a prison of mages, a tourney pitting pretty much all the main characters against each other, and a relatively interesting fire themed powerset. All of this SHOULD add up to something awesome, but instead just feels silly. All of the final characters happen to be in the NEWEST batch of novices despite the implication that hundreds and hundreds of novices are competing in this tournament. The freshest, newest magic users end up the top 4.
Also, the points you gain for winning a match are 10. Okay. At somewhere in the MIDDLE of this two week tourney Finn has over 2000 points! He has won 200 duels. He has killed roughly 200 students! And he’s STILL Angsting about killing players that revive in an hour in a realistic video game!
Yes yes it reminds him of his dead wife… *eyeroll*
Just. There are lots of inconsistencies that ruin this story. Any one wouldn’t have caused much but as they all stack up it becomes intolerable.
1) Letting Novices compete for rule of a city? Okay… maybe the Amir wants to train their successor rather than have someone already old. Sure. Okay.
2) Finn killing NPC’s AFTER accepting the possibility that NPC’s might actually just be real people? Oh….kay…. That’s… yeah that’s a thing…
3) The strongest Novices all being from the same starting class in a group of nearly or more than 1000? –___– Starting to get a tad skeptical here.
4)Finn never giving a flying fuck about his pet AI’s developing fucking PERSONALITY when his whole shtick is that he developed an AI that got his wife killed? At this point I have issues.
5)Finn having so much creativity that he creates literally the first spells you learn in EVERY FUCKING RPG on the face of the planet and having everyone be so amazed by his floating fucking daggers?
… Really? Just… REALLY?
Travis clearly should stick to Necro cuz mage ain’t his strong suit. The multi casting stuff was neat but underutilized. Also… did anyone else miss the dungeon crawling aspect that AO has had up till now? There was zero PVE involved in this story. Any true mage prison knows that the best way to keep your mages in line is endless fucking fetch quests through dangerous territory! Also, why don’t any of these mages run away? It’s never implied that this would be difficult. Hell the duels literally teleport the mages OUT of the Mage guild. What’s to stop these people from just… fuckin’ off to play AO like all the other players who didn’t start out with the same intro as Skyrim?
Despite all of these issues, the story it’s STILL worth reading. Still better than MOST litrpgs. That said, this wasn’t even close to Travis’s best story. In fact, with it coming out so closely after Frank’s story, I’m starting to suspect he just has publishers rushing the fuck out of him. This was disappointing.
That said. I still bought it, and have yet to buy Frank’s story. So. Y’know.
Weirdly, this was the first time I felt like the Narrator actually FIT the story though. David’s voice sounds much older than I feel makes sense for Jason or Riley or Frank, but fit’s Finn pretty perfectly. Not that the narration of earlier AO stories was bad at all. Just realizing that the voice fits Finn much better than the younger Protagonists.