The Silence of Unworthy Gods

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.

This one kind of frustrated me. It's overly long at times, and there are sections where I feel like Andrew Rowe wants to express his personal opinions, but for me it just pulled me out of the story. I don't have any issue with authors who want to use fiction to discuss real world issues, but when it ruins the immersion like that, it just doesn't work for me. But the good parts are really good and keeps me invested in the series.I've long felt that Mr. Rowe is better on ideas than writing and maybe that is starting to overwhelm me more in this series than it has in the past. I still like the characters and world building and I'm still interested in knowing what comes next. However I feel like the pacing and writing could still be better. It's one of the main reasons I didn't continue on with the related stories. While I'd like to know the details of those books, I just struggled with [b:Six Sacred Swords 43902687 Six Sacred Swords (Weapons and Wielders, #1) Andrew Rowe https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1551600782l/43902687.SY75.jpg 67973755] too much to go on.I will give this next book a go, but I hope things don't keep trending in this direction.The narration is fantastic as always. It being unabridged can feel bad at time due to some of the detailed descriptions of things that your eyes would probably skim over if you were reading it. However Nick Podehl always seems to handle it as well as he can. I will definitely continue on in the audio format.