Shadow of Cthulhu

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??