Wow, 4.7 average review at time of writing this. Simply amazing that this garbled series of super hero action fights is coming up with such a high rating equaling other books like ‘Name of the Wind’ & bettering ‘Dune’.
I tried listening to the first two books of this series because of the great reviews. Wanting to make sure I wasn’t missing something. I don’t think I am.
Faults of the book:
No character building. Yes, the main character ‘Lindon’ is growing his abilities, but the character himself is not growing. And the secondary supporting cast is as 2 dimensional as can be.
Dumb plot. First, I like plots that meander all over the place with no direction. That is kind of what ‘Name of the Wind’ does. SoulSmith does meander. And it could have been interesting if better written. But due to the world building & focus on non stop fighting, the plot becomes nothing more than a vessel to take the characters from one god level fight to the next. Boring.
Horrible World Building. So this main character Lindon grows up in a valley where no one has ever seen a gold level before. Lindon has no level & the copper and iron levels make his life a misery. Once he gets out of the valley, he finds that in the Wastelands, gold is pretty much average, that high gold is where its at. Then he gets a new master to teach him who says ‘eh… gold is average, here is where its at’. The thing is copper and iron levels at first would be like gods on earth. Then you have super gods. Then you have super super gods… And all they do is fight each other and act like petty lords in a bad Chinese martial arts melodrama.
There is really nothing to redeem this book. Its a vapid dumb story. I even like Lit RPG books which this series sort of takes after. If you want something better try (Aleron Kong’s ‘Chaos Seed’ series, Rothfus’s ‘Name of the Wind’, Sanderson’s ‘Way of Kings’, or Renshaws ‘Dawn of Wonder’)