Sean

Amazing series. Once again I am blown away by the fact that every one of the different characters and their respective magic systems could have been an entire series unto themselves. I'm glad they weren't, so that I got to read the whole story in a relatively short time, but this could have been 5-10 stand alone books (or even trilogies) that then culminated into what we have here. We could have had several books about Arak'Jur and his people, more about Tigai and that entire side of the world (and more if he felt like it), each with completely distinct magic systems as well. I wouldn't be alive by the time Mealing finished it I think, but there is so much history in these three books.

I want to give credit as well for not going with the easy ending that I expected when starting the first book. Or the second. Or third, etc. So many times in this final book I thought we had to be nearing the end of the story, but my Kindle said I still had a long ways to go! And even with all that blue-balling, the eventual ending was perfect. Well done, it was refreshing to see something different for a change, yet something that also made sense.

I really have nothing negative to say about this series at all. There was literally ONE paragraph that I didn't care for in the entire series, which got a tiny tiny tiny bit into politics, but that was it. And of course that paragraph was still no big deal even if it hadn't been about one-one millionth of the total words.

I cannot recommend this series enough. I wish there were more like it; great and memorable characters, great world mechanics, and a great ending...all without making me wait through endless padding books to get there because the author/publisher decided they could milk some more money if they stretched it out. Nothing in this series felt like it wasn't needed for the story, and I appreciate that.

I'd love to see something like an Amazon Prime series made from these, but the budget would be monstrous I think. I mean, I don't think Arak'Jur pooped without mareh'et's blessing :p

Raley returns with yet another amazing installment. I don't want to spoil anything that isn't already said in the cover blurb, but wow! The ramifications of this book are going to be huge going forward into future books. You wouldn't think too much can happen given the premise, but you would be just as wrong as I was. I hate to be the guy that says this is a must-read, but it really is. You'll be sorry if you miss out on this one.

No spoilers since I got to read an advanced copy, but I cannot begin to express how much I needed this book. Not only was this one the most well-written of the series, showing Raley's continued growth as an author, but it was also my favorite.

So many protagonists I've read in the past few years seem to be complete unlikable assholes. King Henry is the likable one, and it makes all the difference. I actively find myself hating all the other ones after I'm several books into the series because they just become insufferable, and who wants to root for a character that you wouldn't give the time of day to in real life? King Henry is abrasive and an acquired taste, but he has a heart of gold, and this book seems like it was literally made to showcase all of those facets together.

Hell, there is even a new character that is literally the epitome of what I hate in pretty much every other situation I've ever encountered this type of character, but I love her. She was almost my pick for favorite new character, just lost by a smidgen. And barely beat out another by a smidgen. So 3 new characters that I absolutely loved, and plenty more that I greatly enjoyed, they just couldn't be given as much screen time because then the book would be 5000 pages long. Which would have been ok with me.

The biggest compliment I can give this book, besides just the utter joy I felt when finally getting it my grubby little hands, is the sadness I felt when it was all over. Not because the book was sad, but because it was done and now I will have to wait any amount of time until reading more. More about these new characters, more about old characters, more about the world of King Henry. Even if that time was only to be a week, I'd still be a little sad. Since it will be longer than that, you see where my despair comes from. Perhaps it is time to do another total series re-read just to keep my spirits up.

If you love King Henry, you will love this book. You already know it, I shouldn't have to tell you!

I'm even more convinced now that Jez Cajiao is also Logan Jacobs, author of Backyard Dungeon and about a billion other copy/paste series. Between referring to every enemy as “fuckers” ad nauseum to now apparently forgetting which series he is writing and adding a completely unnecessary and god-awfully awkward sex scene into this book, the evidence is pretty conclusive in my mind. I'm tempted to do one of those writing analysis comparisons, I'm that convinced, but I'm also super lazy.

But as for this book/series, nothing annoys me more in these “System” universes than a freaking moron main character that purposely avoids reading his notifications when they have proven to be immensely useful more times than I can count. Sure, plenty of them are probably a nuisance, but countless times they could have made the difference in a battle, or a prep phase, or whatever. But nooooo, Matt actively suppresses them, and tells us about it like we should agree with how annoying he thinks they are. Of course, they are nothing more than plot devices to make certain things happen when the author wants them to, which gets tiresome. I also feel like the author is doing it on purpose just to annoy me, personally, because at this point it is just stupid.

Still, I want to like the series more than I do, hence the 2.5 stars rounding up to 3. I look forward to Book 43 when Matt finally remembers to do all of the things he keeps putting aside.

I'm told that the early chapters of this series are rough and the later ones get a lot better, the main character gets more tolerable, etc.

I don't care. This was literally one of the worst books I have ever read, of any genre. Maybe I'll miss out on some amazing storytelling in Book 20, but there is no way I'm struggling through more books like this one just to get there. If I hadn't heard how much better things got I never would have made it past 10% in this one.

I am willing to believe that some of the problem is the translation from Korean, and cultural differences not being familiar to me. But if so, that stuff is never going to change. And just to make sure, I went and read snippets of much, MUCH later chapters on the site it comes from, and while they might be a little better, everything is still stilted and awkward and badly written. It did NOT get so much better that I can force myself to get there. I hated this book, I hated the game system, I hated the endless stat dumps that the author copy/pasted over and over again so that we were forced to skip 2-3 pages every time we saw the SAME item repeated, and I hated the cringy dialogue.

But most of all I hated the main character. He deserves every bad thing that happens to him, and doesn't deserve any of the good things that do. It is debatable if I'd rather read the life story of a vegan crossfit bicyclist that sells essential oils or more about this character.

All I can say is, if you like slamming your testicles/ovaries in a car door, then give this book a shot. Otherwise, save yourself a lot of pain. And don't listen to everyone that tells you how awesome the series gets. It can't be that awesome to justify going through who knows how many books of this crap.

Avoid at all costs.

For those looking to start this series, don't waste your time.

While I didn't hate each individual book, the plot quite literally gets wrapped up in like 20 pages at the end. It honestly felt like there was supposed to be a 4th book, and at the last minute the author said, “Nah, F it, I'm done,” and then just wrote a couple of pages to skip over months and months of conclusion.

If you never read this series, you will not have missed anything, trust me.

Over the three books of this series, more time was spent describing breakfasts and “gaudy but tasteful” mansions than the actual resolution to the conflict. It is like the author planned on more books, but then suddenly decided nope, I'm done, and concluded it in less than 20 pages. Dumb.

Not that anyone expected a book like this to be Shakespeare, but come on, put a little effort into it. With how dumb and terrible the ending was, I would recommend not even starting this series, if by some chance you are reading these reviews ahead of time. You are literally missing nothing by skipping this one.

Easily the best of the series to this point. If you're reading these you need to get this book immediately, and if you aren't reading them, you should be.

Not only do we get to finally meet the legendary Boomworm, but the story really opens up into much, much more than any of us probably ever expected. The future of this series is looking fantastic if this installment is any indication.

I could go on and on about how great this is, but without spoiling anything all I'd be doing is pretty much saying, “Read this book!”

Do it!

Admittedly I'm a huge fan of Raley's King Henry series, but this is a great book in its own right. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just say that this is much more than it first appears. Not only does it do a great job of making you feel the camaraderie of a group of soldiers, it also forces you to evaluate your own preconceived notions of right and wrong. All of the characters were vividly portrayed and instantly recognizable, not to mention much more complex than first impressions.

This book will have you thinking after you're done, that's for sure. Highly recommended if you're in the mood for a compelling read that draws you in very quickly.

There are many things I like about this series, and many I don't.

In the “don't like” category, how absolutely stupid do you have to be to find yourself in a “System” universe and constantly, intentionally, ignore your notifications?? Matt does that all the time, and it is often something really important or really helpful. After a couple of times you'd think he might get a bit better at it, right?

I won't get into more details about some of the stupidity of the main character, because I want to talk about something that I feel must be true, as crazy as it may sound. You see, a couple of years ago I read a few of these terrible harem books called Backyard Dungeon, and aside from the vast amounts of cringe inherent in harem books, the biggest thing that annoyed me was how EVERY fight scene was essentially this: “The fucker came at me. I dodged, and shot the fucker in the face, then spun and kicked the next fucker in line.” Basically fucker fucker fucker. Completely unoriginal and lazy, and while I am certainly no stranger to that kind of language, it just got to be so obvious and annoying that I couldn't take it anymore. In my mind, even if your protagonist is callous and rough and uses language like that, it is still incredibly lazy of the author to write like that.

These books do the EXACT same thing. All the time. To the point where I am now convinced that both authors are the same person. The Backyard Dungeon guy has apparently written over 200 books in like 5 years, somehow, so it wouldn't be a stretch for him to have tossed in the books this author has done as well. I don't know how someone could write 200+ books in such a short time without it being obvious AI, but it is uncanny how similar the fight descriptions are in both series, and I have a hard time believing two different authors are inept in the exact same way. Like, I'm positive you could swap fight scenes between the books and no one would notice a change.

That being said, I still like this series, whereas BD sucked, so I'm not trying to crap all over this series or say not to read it. But as more and more fight scenes stack up with exactly the same wording, over and over and over, I couldn't help but make the connection. Is it true, or am I just seeing things? Who knows. But I'd like to know if anyone has ever seen the two of them in the same room together!

I enjoyed Spiral X quite a bit, which was surprising because I've read my fill of female vampire hunters over the past few years. It is obvious that there is more intended for the main character, Cheryl, so some things are left unexplained as is typical with a continuing series. The story itself is self-contained and resolves itself nicely, so the larger mysteries are the “hook” to get people to read more books. Even without that, however, I'd say that the world created is interesting enough that I would want to keep reading.

In particular, the author's take on vampires is one I've never seen anywhere, and actually makes complete sense. If he came up with that all on his own, I have to say that I'm impressed. Vampires have been done to death recently, so anything both new and non-sparkly is a welcome surprise. The hunters and the larger “organization” that becomes involved was also handled quite nicely and believably. Well, as believably as anything that involves hunting down vampires, obviously.

One thing that stood out to me is that, except for one or two moments, it made virtually no difference that the main character was female. I'm wondering then what prompted the author to decide she was going to be female. It isn't a bad thing that she is, but as I noted there are a plethora of female vampire hunters nowadays. It was certainly refreshing to read one that didn't include all sorts of kinky, erotic sex, that's for sure, but almost everything about her was asexual, so there must have been something behind his decision. Also, one of her overtly “feminine” traits (the “pouty face”) seemed unnecessary. Believe me, I've seen such a face and fallen victim to it far too many times to count, so I understand what the intent behind it was, but it seemed sort of tacked on. It wasn't bad, but just didn't need to be there I felt.

I won't get into any specific plot details, but the writing was well done and conveyed the story in an easy to digest manner. There was just the right amount of exposition and figuring things out to balance out the action, which there was quite a bit of. The characters were instantly distinct and recognizable, which is often a pet peeve of mine. There is nothing I hate more than a book where I need to keep notes to tell characters apart. While I realize that people in real life often have names, looks, or traits very similar to each other, in a fictional novel there's no need for that and only serves to confuse the reader. That was simply not an issue here. Every character was introduced and became immediately recognizable, all without extensive exposition describing them. Same with the locations and settings. Just enough detail was given to let me imagine it in my head, and that's it. That's exactly how I want my books to read, and this book was perfect in that regard.

As mentioned earlier, there are some mysteries that are left unsolved, on purpose I have to imagine. Ignoring those, the main storyline was interesting enough to keep me reading, but not so complex that it somehow gets resolved before I'm even aware of it or without really knowing why, which happens more often than it should. Like a good detective story, the plot proceeded from one clue to another, and the surprises were believable and well-implemented. Besides the purposely unexplained elements, the ending was realistic and believable, with no deus ex machina swooping in to save the day. It could have been deeper and more involved, with lots of subplots and distractions, but it didn't need to be and didn't suffer due to their lack. And the first person perspective, which doesn't bother me at all, helps limit the aforementioned distractions.

I would read a second novel immediately, and anticipate that one will be even better as the author's writing talent increases. Get this book, it's a steal at the normal price, let alone discounted prices.

DNF at 43%.

This is what happens when an author apparently cares more about forcing his message down your throat than writing an actually good story. But before we get to that, here are my “technical” opinions.

Ellipses. You...don't...have...to...use...them...every...time...your...characters...have...a...thought...or...conversation. Seriously, you don't. It is incredibly annoying when every page is littered with them. I was constantly thinking that all it did was show that the characters (particularly the main one) are mouth-drooling idiots that can't even string one continuous thought together without getting hung up somehow. And this is mainly coming from a character that actually ponders how his increased mental faculties are affecting him; are they making him smarter, faster thinking, etc? No, because apparently they just make him a moron.

The characters used to moderately interest me. In the related series where Keras was the main character, I was pretty invested. Now we're stuck with an unlikable “people are icky” antisocial protagonist. That would be ok, I suppose, if it weren't pretty obvious that the author wants to shove it in our face that he's writing someone with autistm or aspergers, without actually using those words. Same with all the lgbtq leanings, and the blatant “they/them” character that is somehow super interesting and mysterious, despite literally doing nothing except saying dumb shit, along the lines of character says, “Wow, you're really smart,” and THEY reply something like “Am I?” with a smirk. I don't care if those characters are in the books I read, and I've read and finished the previous in this series where it was all there, so whether you believe me or not this isn't me not wanting them in my books. I don't want stupid characters and their stupid actions shoved in my face in such a way that I'm supposed to think it is awesome, when it isn't. Straight, bi, autistic, whatever, I just want a good character. Nobody in this book qualifies as such.

Add onto all of that the fact that I'm literally 43% of the way through and NOTHING has happened. Nothing. Endless descriptions of routing school stuff, which even the character telling us about it seems to find boring. Endless philosophical ramblings that go nowhere. Endless “Eww, this thing I want to do is going to require me to interact with people. I'm not sure if I'm up to that kind of icky today.” Endless musings about how powers work which COULD be interesting if not for the fact that they are most definitely NOT interesting, and so far not a single thing has come of it in this book. Just endless boring boring boring.

And now I just got a lecture (via the other characters crapping on the main character) about privilege. No thanks. So I'm going to exercise my privilege and stop giving the author any of that sweet sweet Kindle Unlimited money and not read another word of anything he/she/they/xhe writes.

Loved the first book, liked the second one quite a bit once I got past my initial displeasure at back-tracking through history I already mostly knew about...and pretty much killed any desire I have to read further by slogging through this one. If I had realized there was going to be another book (or more perhaps) I would have stopped halfway through this one and just read a wikipedia summary to find out what happens.

I can only imagine which character will be the focus of the next book, but since I have come to loathe almost every character the end result would probably be the same no matter who it is. Of course, if it is Leesha or Renna the chance of my reading it will plummet from slim to none.

Taken in parts the book isn't horrible, but combined with reading stuff I've read twice already in the previous books, the main story really not advancing too much, the demons becoming mostly irrelevant, particularly to the two Supermen in the book, and the ridiculous cliffhanger (haha, that's even funnier after you read it) ending, killed any desire to read on for me. Sorry Mr. Brett, I really liked it at first, but I'm done with this series. Hopefully if you write another one it will catch my interest again like the first two books did.

Excellent book, good enough to overcome my natural hatred for the author using the old “everyone the main character meets knows this super-important thing about him but I'm going to keep it from the reader for reasons” trope. It wasn't the worst example of that ever, but it literally colored every single thing the main character did throughout the book, so it was referenced constantly. And thus the fact that we have zero idea what it is.

Still worth a read though. I just wish it had been structured differently so I wasn't slightly annoyed throughout the entire book.

Ok, I think 6 of these (thankfully short) books is more than enough. The main character is great at everything, he's super fit and attractive, he's sweet and attentive, and he's also a prodigious yet accommodating lover. We get it. We're also super-bored with it. I held on through 5 because we had a big bad to beat, but I just can't go on after this one.

I'm also pretty concerned that the author appears to be obsessed with women's clothing. Literally every time a new day starts (which is sometimes quite often) we are greeted with several paragraphs describing exactly what each girl is wearing. I feel like these books are mainly read by horny prepubescent teens, not women, so who are those descriptions for? Maybe I'm wrong and women totally dig this harem pr0n genre, but if I'm not wrong, those numerous descriptions are just weird.

Oh, and I'm no prude, but when the height of your descriptive storytelling is some variation of “I shot the fucker” countless times on the same page in a fight scene, you might need help. Maybe save some of those brain cells you expended on describing women's clothing for more ways to describe the bad guy in a fight than “the fucker”?

Mediocre

As Immortan Joe once wisely pronounced, “Mediocre.”

2.5 stars, but I am kind-hearted and generous to a fault. Trust me.

Am I the only one that notices the amount of snorting being done in these books? “Blah blah blah,” a character snorted. Over and over again. Women, men, aliens, beasts, babies, everyone snorts. I'm not sure that word means what he thinks it means. Once I counted something like 5 snorts in one chapter. That's a lot of snorting, and it drives me insane, just like another particular series that uses, “I mean...” as a crutch endlessly.

Aside from the snorting, this series is going downhill, but apparently he's already written something like another 3 books (300 chapters) on RR and Patreon, so hopefully that means it picks up a little in the future.

More of exactly the same. We could write these books by now. Except if I were writing it, before publishing it I'd hit ctrl-f, search for “I mean” and just outright delete every instance of it where it starts a line of dialogue. I'm pretty sure every single sentence would have been just fine after removing it. I should start highlighting them so maybe other Kindle Unlimited readers will start seeing them too.

It's a good thing that I didn't realize this is the same author that wrote The Path of Flames. You can see how much I hated that book in my review, and why, but I'll admit that Tucker has improved as an author since then. In this one I actually cared about many of the side characters, even liking a couple of them much more than the main character, and strong female characters were given real reasons for being strong, not just “because I said so, girl power!” like in Path.

The main character, Scorio, is pretty annoying most of the book, but it is at least reasonably understandable, and he does actually achieve a decent level of growth by the end. I would have preferred he earn that growth while being less annoying, but it wasn't enough to make me stop reading at least.

Usually I'm a sucker for school stories, you know like Harry Potter etc., but the school stuff was way less interesting than the rest of the book, and I really wasn't a fan of the flip-flopping from school/not school/school/etc. Sure, mixing things up is always better than just becoming another clone of a popular series, so I can let that go, but the school stuff was really just not that interesting at all so it felt like a huge step backward whenever it came up.

Speaking of school stories. These are adults that are reborn countless times into adult bodies, just without memories. You mean to tell me they forgot about hooking up too? There is only one pair that even vaguely talks about liking each other...in a past life.

One rather large knock I have is that the book seemed waaaaay longer than it needed to be. Way too much repetition of thought and action, at least for me. I know plenty of people love that, but less is more in my eyes. And while I'm not one that cares about book length in particular, or authors milking readers for money, it felt like a wasted opportunity for the author not to cut the book in half at the massively obvious cut point almost exactly halfway through. There's a hugely significant moment at like 48-52% or so that could have easily been the end of book one. I was kind of shocked when I got there and it didn't end.

Finally, I will be upset if Nox doesn't make a return in later books.

Well, it had to happen I guess. My blinders forgiving a lot of the BS in this series have finally come off. I guess I should be happy that he didn't blatantly steal from any other IPs (except the entire Cthulhu mythos, of course) in this one, but the number of silly pop culture references certainly made up for it. Seriously, life and death scenarios, but you make time to quip movie quotes? GTFO.

But worse than that, the first half of the book we have Cain and Hannah being absolute assholes to Aura. I swear, the author should just replace her with a doormat and be done with it. Hannah is turning into a snotty little bitch, and it is pissing me off. I used to root for her, now I just want to see her get smacked by someone bigger and badder and unforgiving of her bullshit.

Cain, for some reason, has the emotional range of a cardboard cutout. If the cutout were of a dick.
This seems to have become a thing lately, as I've found myself complaining about it a lot across many series lately. Why do authors think that making their main character an asshole is cool? We get it, he's a rough and tough assassin, and he had to rein his emotions in to stay alive, and blah blah. Shut up. Then you try to make us think he's growing some emotions via his interactions with the new “family” around him. That would be cool if he actually were, but he only is when you say he is, otherwise he's just a dick. There are even times when he thinks to himself that he could soften his words or not sound so dickish, but then he says nah, I'm getting soft, screw them, let them deal with it. I'm Cain, big meany-head, and I will not be deterred in my quest to...oh damn, drink girly drinks and moon over his car. So emotion, much wow. Give me a break. Manufactured “humanizing” traits that are just dumb. And done many times over by other authors.

This honestly should have been a 2*, but I'll give it another try with the next book before I totally give up. I mean, at least it hasn't turned to complete shit like Iron Druid and Sandman Slim, so there's still hope, right? Right??

I am teetering on the edge between “this is cool” and “this is blatantly stealing other characters to sound cool.”

First we had the casual mention of other series, Dresden, Iron Druid, a couple others I'm not familiar with. Then we had an actual character from Iron Druid, just with the name changed. Then we had LITERALLY the Lucifer from the TV show, down to the “What is it you most desire?” Sure, Lucifer is public domain, but I doubt anyone could even muster a defense that it was obviously the tv version. Now in this book, not only do we have him meet “Henry and Murray” (Harry and Murphy) from Chicago, replete with “Hell's Bells” and duster references, but we have essentially Death from On a Pale Horse by Piers Anthony, with guest appearances by the rest of the Incarnations of Immortality. Again, public domain characters, but come on, you even stole the horse's name, Mortis!

Is this whole series going to be nothing but taking ideas that others have created and then twisting them slightly to encompass the Cthulhu mythos as well? (Yet another public domain series of stories that have been co-opted, of course.) Is this even legal? I feel like it would not be difficult at all to prove correlation here if a lawyer chose to, but maybe it is fair use or something? Can someone enlighten me? Because yeah it is cool at first to think, “Oh, he's talking about Dresden!” but then not as cool to think, “Huh, he literally stole the entire Lucifer character wholesale.”

Complete filler. Could be summarized in one paragraph and there would be very little difference between the reading experiences.

Coming back to this after having read all 7 books that are currently available in this series.

They are enjoyable, solid 3/5 stars. Not amazing, but certainly worth reading, and the protagonist is a normal dude instead of an autistic introvert that thinks other people are icky. Yes, I'm looking at multiple other litrpg series right now. I've quit several otherwise “ok” series simply because I hate the main character far more than any villain the author can dream up. coughRandidlycough

But the reason I'm backtracking and reviewing this book, and boosting the star rating by one as well, is because there is NO CULTIVATION in the entire series! Thank you baby Jesus. It was ok for a bit when I first started getting into litrpg, but it has become the focus of far too many series. I can't even bring myself to read the latest Defiance of the Fall book because the last one was literally 700 pages of navel gazing by the main character, contemplating his core and his dao and whatever bullshit the author thinks people want. Maybe they do, but I don't, and I am ECSTATIC that this book has absolutely zero. And if you are like me, maybe you'll read my review and feel that refreshing breath of fresh air wafting over you as you contemplate an entire series without that crap.

So yeah. Not the most amazing series ever, but solid, and none of the annoying stuff I hate. Maybe a bit too much game messages early on, but it gets a lot better. If I have one complaint it is one that is shared by most litrpg; side characters often get left behind for multiple books/thousands of pages while the main character gets trapped in a dungeon or mentally masturbates to their core or whatever. That happens here a lot, and it kind of bugs me, but what can you do? I still really enjoyed this series, although I should warn you that it is written in that typical Royal Road style where every chapter is about 5 minutes long, so you end up thinking you'll just read one more, and suddenly it is 3am and you need to be up for work in a few hours. Yeah, that happened to me pretty much constantly with this series, which shows that I did in fact enjoy it and want to read more.

Another of my all-time favorites.

All I can say is thank God this series is over. I used to look forward to each new release.

For the final book of a 12 book series, this was just terrible. I thought nothing could be worse than the pronoun bullsht in the last book, but I was wrong; not only did he double down on that, but he added mask bullsht as well. That's just what I wanted to read, a bunch of supernatural-ish beings Karen'ing each other to put their stupid masks on.

Janet is one of the worst characters ever as well. It was bad enough introducing her last book, but in this one she completely ruins everything that ever made me care even a little bit about Stark. Oh sorry, THEY not she!

Interestingly enough, the only character I even remotely cared about was F*ck Hollywood, except she turned out to be entirely worthless. She could have been erased from the book completely and it wouldn't have mattered one bit. So great job on that.

Ignoring all the things I hated about it, the story itself was less exciting than most of the previous novels, so for this to be the culmination of the entire series, I feel incredibly let down.

Like I said, at this point I'm just glad it is over and I can never read another Kadrey book ever again.