Aaron
The original cyber-punk. A little 80's for my taste, but much more enjoyable than I thought it would be.
I'm trying not to be so hard on the books I read and let little things go. Like poorly formed sentences and misused and misquoted expressions. So, this book gets 4 stars for the energy of the story, the interesting characters, the creative world-building, and the touches of humor.
I really like a lot of things about this series, enough that I tracked down fan translations for all the rest of the volumes, but 2 things made me stop reading. The first is the main character's constant sexual harassment of almost every single female he meets. The playful pervert is pretty common in Japanese stories like this, and it mostly doesn't bother me, but this didn't feel playful. The other, the thing that really made me stop reading, was the infidelity that kept popping up with several of the characters. Some of it was just because the character couldn't keep it in their pants, even though they were in a supposedly happy relationship. Some of it was from a ridiculous plot device. Without spoilers, it eventually went too far and ruined my enjoyment of the characters and story.
Well that escalated quickly. In the last third of the book all the characters start unleashing a level of power that was never hinted at them having, it comes out of nowhere. To be fair, it's sort of, kinda, barely hinted, but not really.
Other than that, I liked it.
The sex scenes weren't really my thing, but fortunately they were short. Overall an interesting story.
Towards the middle the melodrama and romance got to be too much for me and I had to put it down for a couple of days, but overall I liked it. An interesting world and characters.
The climax felt rushed and didn't have the impact of the previous books, but this was still a fun read.
While not bad, I just wasn't as interested in the back stories, especially the ones that were just extended versions of ones that have already been told.
Listened to the audio book as part of the Unfettered anthology. I'm definitely going to check out the series.
This has a bit of spoiler, but I wish I had found something like this before I read this book.
I picked this up because of reviews talking about how sweet, charming, and funny it is. The first two-thirds of the book did have a quiet humor that I liked, with only a hint of darkness. But it wound up being very bittersweet, which I don't care for at all.
Edit Jan. 24, 2016:
On re-reading with an idea of what to expect, I like it better. You just have to accept that 2,100 year old druids have god-like powers and will be able to take care of anything that comes at them. Easily.
Several of my friends really love this series, but I just couldn't get into it. I've blocked most of the details from my mind in order to maintain my sanity, but I remember thinking the plot was rather ridiculous and just got worse.
Not quite as good as the first, but it still has that quiet appeal. The huge moments of obvious wish fulfillment for the author are not enough to disturb my appreciation of the story.
Surprisingly good. It doesn't quite rise to the level of Don Quixote in skewering it's target, but it definitely looks at fantasy adventuring in a different light.
This is a little better, more in line with the first book. We still have some ridiculous romance and our hero is an unredeemable Mary Sue, but it can not harsh my out-of-character-for-me mellow.
After reading up on the next two books in the series, I think I'll quit while I'm ahead.
Almost didn't finish it. I just couldn't get into the heroine's big problem being she was just too beautiful. Slightly less melodrama in the romance, but it was still unappealing. Not sure that I want to read the last one. In fact, I just talked myself out of it.
The guy reading the audio book is awesome and makes me want to keep going with this series, but the repetition of.. well, everything, is really starting to wear me down.
It's been a while since I've read this and, from reading the reviews, I don't remember it as well as I thought. I remember liking it overall, but not being interested enough to continue the series. I'll probably re-read this at some point.
