I wanted to love this book. I really REALLY wanted to love it. Book 1 and book 2 were fun and amazing and when I saw this come out I snagged it up without even reading any of the reviews or preface. Now that I have binged on the book I went back and looked at the reviews……and…….I just don’t see it. Overall, this book is ok, just ok. Coming from a start like the first two I feel like this third installment is going a bit off the rails. There are so many things holding this book back that I’m going to break this up so its not just one wall of text that looks like a Rosetta stone
-Characters-
Almost all of the main characters are well fleshed out and 3 dimensional…..that said god almighty why dose every single character aside from the cat and the elf have to go in the “I’m so sad” or “I’m holding everyone else back” or “why cant I be as strong as x”. Sure one or two characters can have something like that in a book to give character development but when almost every scene has someone talking about how weak they are or how they aren’t suited to doing something and wish someone else was there to do it, to me at least, it got grating as all hell. This is made even more infuriating when Corvin makes every single character again with the exception of the elf and the cat god awful overpowered.
-Power level-
I pulled this aside to be its own little rant even if it is a bit of “character development” technically. For a book that is packed with fights and conflict……there is almost zero risk anywhere in the book. I have come to expect a bit of overpowered shinanigains from the two main characters, its kind of their thing to use weird combinations of magic and lateral thinking to make them way more dangerous than they should be. In the beginning of the book henry loses some of his magic and is told how hell be without it for a while. Awesome I thought, it will make him be even more creative, oh wait…..he gets it back like 1/4 the book later after it was made out to be a huge deal and now he has even more overpowered abilities. Jason oddly enough gets new powers……and they just kind of never come up aside from vaguely mentioning them twice right after getting them. As for the rest of the cast, I am far less understanding, I can understand if our main characters are going to be that powerful that the people around them need to gain strength too so they can stand with them. That said how A and Marina are done is much less growths in power and way more “Here have a you win button” and “You got power at a cost but not really” respectably. The main characters even talk a few times about how absurd some of the power is, which was somewhat funny but also a bit irking as it means Corvin is well aware of how broken he has written some of his characters. This kind of thing is highlighted the most with Tony’s new flame. A very highborne noble shows up half way through the book, has zero magic and is not orb bonded. Another half a book later and she is second level orb bonded and fighting along side the team holding her own. The only real character that isn’t absolutely broken in one way or another is the elf….and the only reason for that is that she is setting her sights on a weapon so powerful its probably going to end up being her own “I win” button.
-Plot-
This honestly wasn’t terrible. When the characters were interacting it was the book I wanted to see. The humor is there, the world is expanding, and that’s what kept me in the book. I do feel like a few times there were plot threads that could have been followed up on or scenes that got cut short when a bit more would have been fun…..perhaps even swap out some of that for the endless moping every character seems to do.