wulvaen's Reviews (313)

To be honest, a good chunk of this book I spent feeling like something was off and that it was weaker than the previous books, I'm not 100% sure why. I'm not sure what Matt Dinniman is trying to set up with all this

Water or ocean rushing around in the back of Carl's head

, but it felt out of place and weird. I felt like I took lessons from all the other books in the series but I found no lessons here. 

A good few plans and conversations were put behind closed doors and revisited in flashbacks later on, to explain something just before it was executed. I'm not a huge fan of this, because Carl and Donut are players in a brutal game fighting for survival, we've been there with them since the beginning, we as readers, sorta are an invisible team member. So as the other books progressed, we saw Carl and Donut grow stronger in many ways, and we were there with them, we saw Carl form his plans in real-time. But now that scenes are being hidden and revealed later on in flashbacks when it comes to plans, it feels like there is a disconnect between Carl, Donut and the reader. We're no longer part of the team. We're now one of the onlooking NPC's watching Team Donut do crazy shit without being in the loop. 

I also think there is too much plot convenience now that we have

sponsors coordinating benefactor boxes and sending in items to crawlers to be given to other specific crawlers

. Yes there was plot convenience before in the other books, but it wasn't so heavily relied on like this book was.

It also became clear which characters were going to die at the end of the book simply because it focused on these characters more than usual and fleshed them out more, clearly to make their deaths have more impact on the reader. The books usually end with a big battle, which meant such a new shift in focus on so many characters, like the twins, made it obvious they'd die in groups at the end.

I've gave it 4.75 Stars, this is still a great mark, each other book in the series I gave 5 stars, while there were notable critisms, they were so enjoyable that they didn't affect my enjoyment of the book and didn't break the flow. This book however, has me worried for the following books in the series.
The book was still as funny as ever, it was still as thrilling as ever, but there were a few quirks here and there I couldn't ignore. 

I'd love to give this 5 stars but adding the Critical Drinker to the list of narrators was a terrible Idea, while it was a short cameo, it completely took me out of the experience and was so out of place. While I enjoy his YouTube reviews, I have no idea why it was decided to add him to the cast. The audio quality of his mic was far different than the rest of the cast, his line delivery was super poor and you clearly heard him reading instead of performing. I'm glad the cameo was short, but I had to knock some points off for it.

As for the rest of the audiobook / book, brilliant as ever! 🥳

This was perhaps the funniest book I've read so far! The amount of real world references was hilarious, such as a certain furry creature have a chat to an alien about certain episodes of Gossip Girl. This was fast-paced, gripping, funny and made me want MORE! I'm going straight to book 2 now! 😎

Keep in mind this is a REALLY old original work from Sanderson and is nowhere near the quality of his books now, this is another Sanderson Curiosity to show how far he has come as a writer.

Context aside, the concept itself is very interesting and the main character can be annoying at times but quite fun the rest of the time.

Story-wise it's kinda meh, and this is a very short story, so don't be expecting it to make a lasting impression on you, but do enjoy the ride. 

It's a good introductory book for fantasy beginners of all ages