wulvaen's Reviews (313)

Tatsuki Fujimoto you bastard, you absolute bastard, I knew what you where doing and why, and I knew what you were going to do to me and it still got me deep in the feels you absolute bastard 😭

They say "Don't judge a book by it's cover", 

I say "Don't be hasty with your judgement".

I took notes, so here's how I felt starting the book, so you can compare to how I felt as the book went on:

"A literal quote:

...what the fuck is this shit? This book constantly comes out with nonsense like this, this book feels like it was written by a mad man in dreamy prose."

Yeah, I wasn't exactly kind at the beginning of this book and it felt like I was swept up in a mad man's diatribe 😂
But I realised it's simply prose I'm not familiar with, Tolkein's prose is often referred to as" flowery", I'd say Bradbury's prose in this book is "dreamy".
It grew on me as the the book went along, drawing me in, making it intimate.

If truly felt like I was inside Montag's mind, his complex and ponderous mind as it was in the initial stages of a mind freed from the shackles of oppression, and the fear, uncertainty and rage that came along with it.

We didn't know a huge amount about the outside world, who was raging war and why, and normally I'd be bothered by that, but in this case I was far more engaged by Montag and his journey. I loved Faber, such an interesting character.

This book felt like a warning to the intellectuals and the learned folk, to not let their knowledge and pursuit of knowledge fool themselves into a belief of superiority.
That making everyone equally ignorant doesn't make everyone happy and safe.

A book is not the only receptacle of knowledge and storytelling; long before books, there were people. People are the oldest receptacles of knowledge and stories. You may burn our books, reduce our libraries and computers to ash, but it's people who carry knowledge, people spread their wisdom, people tell their tales, and while it can be a long game of Chinese whispers with the knowledge and stories being passed along taking on new iterations and forms, it's the heart of it that stays the same. It's the heart of it, not the words, but the understanding, that is what is passed along and imprints itself on the mind and soul. We take in the knowledge, and it's not ours, but in time it becomes part of us, part of who we are, it's meaning joins with our own web of meanings, the knowledge let's us express who we are. Just how our atoms scatter over billions of years and form new things, the knowledge is reduced to atoms, which join with our own, forming new versions of us, in time, often inperceptably.

And so, this book, this crazy and mind-bending book, is not only a ward against intellectual ego and snobbery, but also a love letter, a love letter to the romantic heart of humanity, to the romance of putting pen to paper, the pacing of knowledge, and the patience of wisdom.

I loved this book very much.

I'd like to end this review with another quote, which made me emotional:

Edit:
Just found this amazing quote from the author himself at the end of the book which perfectly summarises the meaning I took from this book:

Tim Robbins' narration was at first irritating, he had a tendency to whisper, I've misophonia and so it triggered me...but then, remarkably, it stopped bothering me.

Reason being, his narration was intimate, personal, and drew me right in. He was like a conductor of emotion, I've never listened to such a passionate and engaging voice actor.
Yes, he's a Hollywood actor, but he treated this book like it was a film he was working his ass off acting in. It was breathtaking, and he often gave me goosebumps. He knew when the story needed him to speak slowly, softly, intimately, and when it needed him to shout and explode with a crescendo of emotion. Like I said, he was a conductor of emotion.

I rarely review an audiobook but I needed to in this case. 

This trilogy mirrors how I felt about Disney's Star Wars sequel trilogy.

So....yeah...
This was another mess, but not as bad as the previous mess. This really did feel like it was trying to fix the confusion of the previous book while also trying to finish the series off, and, unfortunately, it just felt out of balance.

So what do I mean by that? Well if you've read my other reviews for books 1 and 2, you'll know that this series has lacked direction and did not focus on making the player understand the politics and dynamics of the different forces and factions of this world. For two whole books, I did not know who the bad guys were, and even in this final book, I still do not know who the real enemies were.
Now, not every book has to make these things clear, as there are stories with a more nuanced approach to politics and factions in wars, but for this trilogy, there was no nuance, there was a clear lack of effort put into establishing these elements.

Take the Red Rising series for example, you have the original trilogy, where the good guys and the bad guys were clearly established and it was not nuanced. Then take the following books of the series where it grows that universe by establishing multiple factions and making them more nuanced, requiring the reader to better understand them and follow along to understand the dynamics of interactions. That one series shows great examples of both ways of making the reader understand factions and politics.

Whereas this trilogy was deeply flawed. I had no idea who to root for, the main character Simon didn't know what was going on most of the time, he rarely asked questions, he didn't progress power-wise despite this being "Progression Fantasy" and he only grew more powerful when he wore a mask that just let him use the powers of his territory to the fullest and when he takes it off and goes limp and unconscious and needs to be healed in the healing pools of Valinhall. Take Wight's Cradle series, all the characters grow as people and their magic grows too, through hard work and determination and some awesome circumstances, Simon in the Traveler's Gate trilogy, however, was barely trained, knows fuck-all about the capabilities of his territory and is only a threat when he wears the mask. The mask was the real hero. 

And somehow he is now the leader of Valinhall and commanding the other Travelers, despite anyone in Valinhall could use the mask and have access to the full powers of their territory. Simon beat the previous leader and won his sword, therefore he's in charge, and yet the sword can choose who to accept, and yet they accept this kid who knows fuck all and is only powerful because of a mask he can use for a few mins before becoming a useless vegetable and fully at the mercy of whatever enemy he was fighting. Ridiculous.

Alin, turns out, really is like Homelander as I said before in my book 1 review, except his Elysian territory powers essentially give him magic schizophrenia and he's got all these different voices representing different aspects of himself, whispering in his mind all the time. He's literally Simon, dumb as a bag of rocks, needs other people to tell him what to do, rarely thinks for himself and when he does it's stupid. Simon relies on the talking dolls and the other travellers to do almost anything, Alin has a combo of his magic whispers and some other travellers telling him what to do. The difference is, the person.
Simon wants to do the right thing, he relies on his gut and what other people say, Alin wants to do what he thinks other people will believe is the right thing but ONLY if he's seen doing it and looks like the hero. Simon wants to help, seen or not, Alin needs to be seen to help because he wants others to like him.

There was a part in this book where Alin suddenly realised he was being the bad guy. Now, how did he come to this extremely difficult conclusion for someone like Alin whose ego was inflated by his limitless power and his self-righteous stubbornness? Did he go through some terrible journey where he was forced to confront the horrors he caused and he goes through an emotional crucible which forces him to ignore the whispers and face the truth of himself? Nope.

Someone made a joke to someone he was fighting that they "always had to play the hero", then his brain went "Oh, if they think they're the hero, then that must mean they think I'm the villain, oh fuck yeah I did do all this bad shit and I was fighting my friends, well, shit". I paraphrase, it was the magic whispers that convinced him. but it was still one of the laziest shit I've read.

Leah was a cool character that was forgotten when it came to character development, she was Finn from the Star Wars sequels in this analogy. Kai was just as useless from the very beginning of the series til the end, zero pay off or progression. Indurial was a cool character that was just discarded.
I'm depressing myself just writing out all that was wrong with this book.

So what did I like? Well, the action was still pretty good and well-written.
There were some emotional scenes, that was nice, love me some emotional scenes.
Ummmmmm......yeah no sorry I'm tapped out.

The story legit was a mess, but the characters were engaging enough to keep me going, same with the magic and action scenes. But I truly felt like these books wasted my time because the story was shite.

This was pretty short compared to the other volumes, one of the reasons it's not a 5 star rating.

I can tell this is heavily inspired by Berserk, I made comments in a previous review and talked about Berserk, but now the inspiration is pretty overt.
A big, tall muscular dark haired man, with one intact arm and other cut off, travelling with a woman he cares for who's brain isn't all there and he lives only to protect her. That's Guts in Berserk after the Eclipse, and that is Agni right now after he destroyed the giant tree. Also Berserk did the giant three thing too, Fire Punch (all though that's common mythology stuff, but still another thing Berserk did that Fire Punch has done).
Its pretty overt "inspiration" ngl.

He's even talking like Guts, sometimes a bit dense but sometimes makes some philosophical observations about himself and the world around him. 

Dear fuck this is such a wild fucking ride what the fuck holy balls 🤯

Another real quote:

Yup, that is a quote from a big bad wanting to kill everyone on the planet so she can warm the planet up and start humanity again to the point they create the next Star Wars movie.
Yes. This really happened.

Characters keep doing unexpected 180's, like Agni going from being a stone cold mofo on a revenge arc, to being someone who was acting the whole time and actually is still that innocent kid not wanting anyone to die or get hurt.
And now The Director has done a 180 too in a different way, won't spoil it though 😉

I'm really excited to see where this story is going and I'm dying to read the next one 😊

This somehow is getting better, I already love this more than Chainsaw Man!

A literal quote:

So, it got better, a lot better. I love how unconventional this story has been so far, turns out regeneration blessings aren't that uncommon, it's just Agni's is so powerful that he can survive the flames. Apart from one attempted rape scene of a child, Volume 2 was significantly less extreme as volume 1 was, which I very much appreciate.

My favourite manga series is Berserk, it's also quite fucked up, it's such an iconic piece of Dark Fantasy fiction that it has inspired so many other pieces of fiction, from books, movies and video games. While Fire Punch is no Berserk, it's just as interesting.

What serperates Berserk and Fire Punch for me is the lack of lessons and philosophy underlining Fire Punch, unlike Berserk.
Many people find meaning from Berserk, such as never giving up and shouldering your demons, whereas Fire Punch feels like it's just a fucked up and ambitious piece of fiction meant to explore the depths of depravity humans will go to in a dystopian post-apocalypse world, when civilised society has collapsed and the social constructs that have kept humans alive for so long are on their last legs and completely tainted by the depravities and desperations of the people that have almost snuffed out human morality from existence.

You have people with all sorts of abilities being tied down and used like cattle and resources.
The city of Behemdorg for example, where Doma lives, has electricity because they've a guy strapped down, drugged and tortured to force him to use his electricity powers, which get wired into the city itself, powering all their electricity. There are hundreds of blessed with the ability to excrete starchy stuff from their skin, which is used to feed all the citizens of the city. And blessed with fire abilities are used to heat the citizens homes and the buildings. These are only a few examples.

So in this story, think back to my review of Volume 1, Agni cut his arms off so his village wouldn't starve to death and ate his arms instead. Think that, but on a colossal scale of a city. People are literally used as resources to sustain a society living in a city. Yeah. That's fucking fucked up, but hella creative! 🧠.

So far I'm loving this fictional world and the world building, it's super captivating and messed up.
We've also new characters, another regenerative blessed who's been alive for hundreds of years, loves movies, who lost her collection and wants to make her own movie to sate her boredom.
So, who's the hero of her little movie? Agni.
So she essentially promises to help ensure Agni get revenge on Doma, under the condition he does everything she says, including learning acting, martial arts and saying things to the camera. Also, the young girl who almost got raped? The Director woman saved her, only under the condition she become her Camera Girl.

So now Agni is on his way to the city of Behemdorg to kill Doma and probably burn down the entire city in the process of doing so, but the city knows he's coming, somehow (🤫) , and are ready for him.

Onto volume 3!

Hey you. Yeah, you. Ever heard of Chainsaw Man? It's pretty fucked up, right? Yeah. Well this is a different manga, it's called Fire Punch. Did you know it's made by the creator of Chainsaw Man? And he actually created this before it? Yeah.
Well, remember Chainsaw Man was fucked up?
Well, this manga, Fire Punch, is already more fucked up 🤜 🔥

So, I'm going to spoil and give you the rundown of what was in this first volume because i want it to be a warning to those not into fucked up themes:

The year is some time after 2200.
There are people with super abilities referred to as "The Blessed".
Some mental woman called The Ice Witch put the entire world into a perpetual state of cold, and so it's snowing all over the world.

Theres a boy and girl, siblings, who are blessed with regenerative abilities.
The village they are staying in are starving and will die, so the main character, Agni, gets his little sister, Luna, to chop his arms off several times, and they grow back in seconds, and they deliver his arms to the villagers so they don't starve (Yes, fucked up already). This happens everyday. Chop and nom, chop and nom.
His sister is in love with him, and tries to get him to have sex with her so they can have babies and help populate the planet, Agni, naturally, is disgusted and sickened by this and refuses.

So, a buncha bad guys show up to kill the elderly, take slaves, and force the ugly young girls to be bred over and over again until dead (have I mentioned this is pretty fucked up?)
Turns out the baddest of the bad guys is also Blessed, he has flames that keep burning until whoever they're burning dies. They find human arms in all the villagers houses, are disgusted they're cannibals, and so burn everything and everyone to death, including Agni's little sister Luna.

You see, Agni's regeneration ability is far superior to Luna, when she loses a limb it takes a hour to regrow, whereas Agni's takes 2 seconds. So, Agni is perpetually on fire, until he dies, except he won't, because his regeneration is too powerful and quick, and so his sister slowly dies in front of him, and just when he tries to let himself die so they can all be reunited with their parents in the afterlife, his damn sister has to have her last words as "Live". So, he does.

Over the course of 8 years, he stops screaming and flailing in pain, learns to walk with the pain, learns to force the flames away from his head and to stay below it, and so he has learned to live with the excruciating pain of his entire body engulfed in never-ending flames, all with the goal of finding the man who killed his sister, and incinerating him to dust with his Fire Punch.

So, like I said, it's pretty fucked up.
You've got cannibalism, attempted incest, multiple attempted rapes, you've got a man trying to convince a 12 year old girl and an 8 year old boy to have sex with his dogs so he can watch and get off to it.
Yes, it's extremely fucked up.
So this review is deliberate in being so revealing and spoilery, because this is not for the innocent manga reader and this is definitely not gonna be everyone's cup of tea. So this review is a warning to you, this is only volume 1, and it's super fucked up. The concept itself is so twistedly original and awesome, and I can't wait to see how Agni grows and develops as a character and how he'll use his unique situation to change the world.

So if you're thinking of reading this, go for it, but you've been warned.