The weakest book in the series yet.

In regards to storytelling in the Chrysalis series so far, this is by far the weakest.

It’s obvious reading through the book that the author wants to either remove or severely limit the human side of the story. I don’t necessarily have a problem with that. However, the two human recruits of the legion (The main characters of the human side of the story.) are given ONE chapter near the beginning of the book, and we aren’t given anything ever again throughout the book. It’s so bizarre because they aren’t even doing anything relevant to the story. They are just resting in a tavern after having battled in the dungeon. There are some conversations, a little bit of foreshadowing and the chapter ends. There was no indicator that that was the last we would hear from the characters for the rest of the book! I can only assume that the author somehow got so wrapped up in the ant side of the story that he completely forgot about the literal other half of the story.

We are still given the lore dumps every once and a while at the beginning of new chapters, mostly from people we will probably never meet or care about. However, this time instead of being interesting little lore nuggets they are basically used as “Hey, what I am saying will be brought up later, possibly in the same chapter, for a conversation that other characters will be having.” What’s the point of even adding them in then?

I also won’t be letting the ant side off the hook for poor writing either. Despite the fact that there is a living natural disaster marching toward the colony, there was very little tension that was built up as the literal 100 THOUSAND monster swarm got closer to the colony. Did the fighting get tougher as they got closer? Yes, but the ant casualties or morale barely dropped. We spent almost 10 hours of the book following and slowly attacking the hoard. The story indicates that they barely made a scratch in their army, maybe 30-50k monsters were killed. I couldn’t believe it but with about 5-6 hours left to go in the story, the ant generals suddenly start talking about the battle as a guaranteed victory. What??? What happened to “Our very species is on a razor wire, we have a slim chance at survival, and if we are to survive it will be because of our intellect and strategy that got us to victory?” Why did the ants just start throwing their bodies into the hoard at the end with thousands of monsters left and still come out victorious with maybe a few hundred dead?

Also, a side note, the human colony was also completely forgotten during the whole 2+ hour last stand. Scratch that, there was a 3-minute chapter where, without prior explanation or reason, a few healer ants come to the human side to heal the injured. We were supposed to feel sad for some kid who was gonna die due to a gash he got during the fighting. I don’t think we were ever even introduced to this kid but whatever.

I could honestly go on and on about the story but I’ll just leave it at that. As a final note I will say this; RinoZ if you ever read this you gotta step up the writing dude. I’m giving this book as your last chance to fix this. If you don’t, then this will be my final purchase from you.