The book starts off pretty strong, but drops in writing quality when our MC starts sharing scientific information with others. A good hour or two of the book should have been removed because it’s all overly detailed descriptions of fairly advanced scientific knowledge. It’s basically completely pointless. I’m struggling to understand the rationale behind adding it.
Does it advance the plot? No. Is it interesting? No. Does it make me want to gouge my eardrums out, out of boredom? Yes.
I’d love to have read this book without the science lessons. It would have been a much better product.
“The insight was improved by teaching xyz” There. Done. No gratuitous internal dialogues from our MC of what college level math and science knowledge to drop on the ignorant other worlders. Its a bit meta but, including a character’s internal debate on how to convey, completely pointless to the story, technical information was an extreme example of sloppy storytelling. It’s very cringe and only serves to pad the length of the book. I took a lot of those classes in college it wasn’t fun learning about then and it wasn’t fun revisiting them in a progression fantasy of all things.
I also find the execution flawed. Is electromagnetism and light better described by math? Yes. Can you describe them without mind numbing descriptions of math? Also yes. So why do so in a fantasy book? Why add so much detail? 30% of Americans have a college degree. A small percentage of those have a STEM background enough to understand what the author is even talking about. It’s very puzzling and again very boring!
I liked the author’s writing in general and if they can clean up this particularly bad habit, I’d be very interested in whatever else they publish! Maybe they’ll get some feedback and fix it in the next book.
I really enjoyed the first half of the book. And I love the concept of using science in a fantasy setting but it should have been kept conceptual. This book could have been pretty exceptional if the author would have kept their focus on execution of good storytelling!