Another banger

Score, score, score, my complements to the Author. You just keep nailing it. Just take my money.

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1 person found this helpful

Probably a really decent book

I used to really like this series, I liked the theme of a totally OP character hiding away for a simple life, while he’s all powerful he’s not powerful enough to stop himself from destroying the world.

I liked Ellie, a human element to ground the main character who is an almost godlike character, I liked the rest of the supporting characters, I liked the pace, the overall story arc that he can’t hide from his destiny.

But somewhere along the way, I feel from the last book and into this one it’s all just got a bit much, the power creep is effecting everybody and it’s losing its tension.
In regard to tension it wasn’t that John can’t do it, it was could he do it without dooming the world. While John has always lived life in easy mode his issues had real ramifications for the rest of the world, but now Ellie is all powerful, he’s got a 45ft bull and all the characters around him can also achieve the impossible, that for me just removes all tension, nothing is a threat and thus the story stagnated for me.

I guess the issue is having an all powerful main character is that the villains also have to be OP but I don’t believe that should be the case, they should be smart, they are many while he is but one man, Johns enemies should have been a hydra, he can easily crush them one at a time but can he stop a cabal of normal people who operate in the shadows and while they can’t target him they could target those around him.
His enemies don’t actually need to be people they can be the fallout of his decisions and how it affects everybody else.

I think that would have made a more interesting story instead of John being slave princess Leah for a bit, that was just pure cringe and felt like nothing but filler, it was if that Seth needed to pad out the book in the middle before the big final fight and had run out of ideas, same as John going to school, yes it give him some new powers it was just filler really.

Then right at the end where I thought the author was going to pull the book out of the fire, bring back tension, loss, the battle of John trying to keep his humanity against a world that almost wants him to loose his cool at every opportunity, nope Seth chickens out….. Bluey flames eyes removed from everybody and all is well.

Could you imagine the next book starting with John trying to come to terms with the loss, trying to save the family he’s built, the grief, the anger, the resentment, part of him wanting to let the world burn and having the power to do so, but he knows it’s not what she would have wanted.

That’s a truly gripping story, the very real ramifications of hundreds of people who believed in him dying and the consequences of that, the feelings of those who lost family due to that belief, the tension, hatred and how they and he react to that.
How would John who’s full of anger and grief react to some old man throwing a mushy tomato off his head cos he lost his adult children to the blue eyes, would John turn him to ash or splat him and start to lose his humanity, would he take it on the chin and he feels at fault and drop into despair, would others feel emboldened to take a shot at him, what’s his breaking point.

But no, let’s just make the monsters big and punchy and that’s good for another 6 books until the audience dwindles.
Part of me wants to grab the author by the ears and give him a shake and ask why is writing these books, is to tell a interesting story or is it now a cash cow so he’s seeing how many books he can get out of it, I feel it started off the first one and has turned into the latter.

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