Somehow, I finished two and a half volumes between my obsession with POE2.
Hell Mode: Volume 8 - Dropped the volume halfway through. I grew terribly bored by the series. While I liked it in the early volumes well enough it has turned into an uninterrupted deluge of barely coherent exposition. In this volume for example there is a setup for a big fight against a big baddy and a few sentences into the fight the author rather starts to ramble about the setup of the pantheon and the number of followers each god has. It’s like it’s written by the “Oh, Squirrel” dog from Pixar’s Up just with “Oh, tangent” instead.
Ascendance of a Bookworm: Short Story Collection Volume 2 - I really like those short story collections. While reading the main story I always get the feeling that there is more to it. The characters in it aren’t just entities that stop existing the moment MC stops looking at them like the LOD system in a video game. Stuff only hinted at when you read between the lines, like how two side characters interact with each other as if something happened off-page that changed their relationship. And those short stories show that there is indeed more to the story than is shown in the main volumes. Noteworthy this time are the short story of Tuuli that made me go “WTF!” and an unpublished short story of Justus that Miya Kazuki hinted at would include foreshadowing for a continuation of the series. Thinking about what in this short this foreshadowing could be or what it might imply is driving me crazy.
Magic Stone Gourmet: Eating Magical Power Made Me the Strongest Volume 7 - From all the possible scenes to choose from it’s another bathing scene they picked for an illustration. It’s like clockwork. Plot-wise there is a war breaking out and tensions grow but somehow I don’t get the feeling of dread that should come with this plot development while reading it. The prose is missing the needed impact somehow so this entire subplot falls flat for me. It’s not a complete disconnect and I’m not expecting the gritty memoirs of a seasoned war veteran here, but also not the “please let me go pluck some flowers in the park” attitude of MC when his harem is playing it up as if he’s walking into certain death.
The characters in it aren’t just entities that stop existing the moment MC stops looking at them like the LOD system in a video game.
lol. Yeah, sometimes it’s fun to see things from a different character’s perspective. I remember John Scalzi did it really well with part of the Old Man’s War series. One book follows events from the MC’s perspective with his adopted daughter showing up at opportune times. Then another is from the daughter’s perspective and all the deus ex machina from the first book is explained. The interweave can be nuts.
Somehow, I finished two and a half volumes between my obsession with POE2.
Hell Mode: Volume 8 - Dropped the volume halfway through. I grew terribly bored by the series. While I liked it in the early volumes well enough it has turned into an uninterrupted deluge of barely coherent exposition. In this volume for example there is a setup for a big fight against a big baddy and a few sentences into the fight the author rather starts to ramble about the setup of the pantheon and the number of followers each god has. It’s like it’s written by the “Oh, Squirrel” dog from Pixar’s Up just with “Oh, tangent” instead.
Ascendance of a Bookworm: Short Story Collection Volume 2 - I really like those short story collections. While reading the main story I always get the feeling that there is more to it. The characters in it aren’t just entities that stop existing the moment MC stops looking at them like the LOD system in a video game. Stuff only hinted at when you read between the lines, like how two side characters interact with each other as if something happened off-page that changed their relationship. And those short stories show that there is indeed more to the story than is shown in the main volumes. Noteworthy this time are the short story of Tuuli that made me go “WTF!” and an unpublished short story of Justus that Miya Kazuki hinted at would include foreshadowing for a continuation of the series. Thinking about what in this short this foreshadowing could be or what it might imply is driving me crazy.
Magic Stone Gourmet: Eating Magical Power Made Me the Strongest Volume 7 - From all the possible scenes to choose from it’s another bathing scene they picked for an illustration. It’s like clockwork. Plot-wise there is a war breaking out and tensions grow but somehow I don’t get the feeling of dread that should come with this plot development while reading it. The prose is missing the needed impact somehow so this entire subplot falls flat for me. It’s not a complete disconnect and I’m not expecting the gritty memoirs of a seasoned war veteran here, but also not the “please let me go pluck some flowers in the park” attitude of MC when his harem is playing it up as if he’s walking into certain death.
lol. Yeah, sometimes it’s fun to see things from a different character’s perspective. I remember John Scalzi did it really well with part of the Old Man’s War series. One book follows events from the MC’s perspective with his adopted daughter showing up at opportune times. Then another is from the daughter’s perspective and all the deus ex machina from the first book is explained. The interweave can be nuts.
I really love it when this is executed good. Completely breaks a story though more than anything else if done badly.