This was one of those books I was tentatively excited for, because while it seemed loved by many, my friends didn't necessarily end up enjoying it, and my tastes usually align with theirs. Unfortunately, this did hold true in the end, as this book just wasn't for me at all.

I read through a few other reviews in order to help me understand what exactly wasn't working for me, and I found myself agreeing with many of the 2-3 star reviews of my friends and other reviewers on here. I think it really comes down to this book just not being interesting. It was frustrating because it had all the aspects I normally adore in books, and all the pieces that made up the story were ones I've loved before in many other books. The execution of each of these pieces, however, just never caught my interest at all, for various reaons.

The characters seemed like they could be ones I could quickly fall in love with, but I always felt like I was kept at a distance from them. Their motivations and backgrounds felt dumped on me without first building an emotional connection (or weren't used to build that emotional connection). It just felt like shadows of characters and dynamics I loved before, but without the unique spin to make me love these characters as individuals. This meant that I never really felt like I was on an emotional rollercoaster like heist books usually contain: I wasn't worried for their safety, I wasn't elated when they succeeded, and I wasn't even sad when

Spoiler

one of the characters died, because it was so obvious it was going to happen by the end of the first book somewhere

.

Even without characters I love, sometimes the plot is enough to still save it. I adore puzzles and riddles in this book, so you'd think a story entirely chock-full of them would be exactly my sort of book. However, the way the puzzles were handled and solved felt almost clinical, I was never afraid they weren't going to solve the puzzle, and I was never pulled in enough to actually want to try and figure it out myself too. It was also incredibly repetitive, worsened by one of the aspects of the world-building that made it so every Forged item has a secret fail-safe that somehow this group always found right in time, with seemingly little effort sometimes. It was just constant: find Forged item, accidentally trigger the trap, realize it has to have an off switch, find the off switch. It took all the fun out of riddles.

I also just found the way the book ended really weird, with a string of time-skips that each contained 1-2 chapters before skipping forward again. It's what finalized my 2 star rating, instead of 3 stars. It felt like it was trying harder to set-up book 2 rather than properly round off book 1.

Overall, while I still want to try other books by this author, this series just isn't for me!