wulvaen's Reviews (313)

This shit is wild 😂 

Man I love this series, it's so fucked up and funny and it never holds back and I cannot stress how I love how fearless it is

Goddammit forget my previous review, this shit got so damn good 🤣

Getting really tired of this dragged on storyline, why does Denji have to stop being Chainsaw Man? Like I know those fuckers said if he didn't they'd kill the kid he's looking after, but like, why do they want him to stop? I thought they're on the same side. This whole shit is confusing af and boring and it feels like nothing is happening, there doesn't always have to be this big world-ending story, but at least let something happen, like character growth moments or something.
Right now this arc just feels...stuck? 

By the end of this series there will be no living things left considering how many people are killed off in each little battle 💀

Yikes. What a mess.

So, I took notes. There's really only two cases in which I do that:
1.) The book is a short story collection.
2.) I see problems.
And I saw many problems.

I do find most of the time, in a series, the second book does be better than the first, as the author gets to know the world and it's characters more the second time around. Very rarely do I find a series where the second book is significantly more flawed than the "pilot" book.

This book is a mess.
It does not feel like progression fantasy.
Kai does not teach Simon at all.
The premise is set up for a really effective way of being progression fantasy, by way of Valinhall; The Territory is supposed to constantly attack Simon, awake and asleep, to continuously test him and keep his instincts at its best, the rooms of the house contain trials that test and hone your skills and reward you with a powerful item.
Simon, doesn't get attacked in Valinhall anymore, he rarely tests himself in the rooms, and Kai is teaching him nothing.
How is this progression fantasy when nobody is progressing with their magic?

Alin is the only one unlocking new powers, but it doesn't even feel like progressing, because all he's doing is asking for more power, being warned he has to have the virtue to unlock it, and then him easily convincing them to throw away that rule and give him the power.

This book and the previous suffers from that annoying thing you see in soap operas and TV where someone doesn't tell someone vital information, even though a normal person would, simply so the other person will do something big and stupid and easily avoidable just so drama happens, and then they tell them later like "oh yeah, forgot to tell you, you shouldn't stop the sacrifices because then a big bad will be unleashed, oops, I was too busy training you to rescue the sacrifices to tell you not to rescue the sacrifices".

Yes, this happened, Simon's Master knew saving the sacrifices would cause the big bad homicidal and unbelievably powerful Incarnation to escape from the magic tree prison, and instead of telling Simon why he shouldn't save them, and that it is a "necessary evil", he instead keeps his mouth shut, trains the boy who specifically said he wants to train to stop the sacrifices, and then let's him go off to do that 😂 ARE YOU SERIOUS 🤣🤣🤣
No sacrifices means the Valinhall tree wouldn't contain an Incarnation, which Valinhall, including Kai, actually wants it contained. It makes no sense. Nothing is making sense, we're left in the dark for key parts that keep a story coherent.

I have no idea which side resonates with me. I don't know who's good and bad, who's morally right etc. I don't know which side to root for, and I don't know who the main character is rooting and fighting for either, because we're barely told anything of the world.
Simon is fighting for Valinhall, because of Kai and them taking him in and teaching him. But that doesn't mean they're on the right side.

I don't understand why they have to sacrifice 9 people a year to keep the trees fueled for containing the Incarnations and they choose to take a sacrifice from villages, why can't it be 9 criminals, why not choose some of the most deplorable and irredeemable criminals as sacrifices, people who would be imprisoned for life or executed? Why does it have to be random villagers who are innocent? As far as I can see, that's the only thing that made the Damascans seem like the bad guys in the first book, apart from some of the king's people lying, manipulating people and apparently executing people who are acting improper.
 
And then on the opposite side of the war, Enosh, they're the bad guys because they want to destroy the trees to release the Incarnations, which apparently will kill a lot of innocents and cause destruction. Why? Why do they want this? And why isn't Alin asking why this supposed to be the good guy side? Alin has stray thoughts every so often of him saying he doesn't want the Incarnations released and he agrees with Simon etc...and then he goes back to being on the side that wants to destroy the trees??? What? 🤣🤣🤣

Both Alin and Simon have had personality changes, somehow Alin is no longer a psychotic prick like Homelander, he's actually someone I pity now as he's just a superpowered pawn who's too dense and starved for validation that it makes him easy to manipulate. He actually seems to care for people now.
Simon, in the first book had a good heart but he was ignorant and scraping by through hard work and a mix of luck. In this book however, he's a bloody dumbass. Part of it is ignorance, thanks to Kai being a shite Master a nobody else really there to help guide him, but it's also Simon's fault because he never asks questions, he only asks the dolls questions, and they rarely give answers and just talk shite to him instead.

Leah is much more interesting now, she's probably the character with the most complexity and depth to her, she's questioning who she is, which is very relatable, but in this case she enjoyed the freedom, honesty and simplicity of being a villager, but she is an Heiress,

and now Successor to the throne,

and is afraid of it changing her into her father.

She's discovering she has feelings for Simon, except she doesn't realise it's romantic feelings yet, but it seems clear to me it's heading in that direction.

Kai is the comedic relief character who will probably be the most important character later at some point, but for now, he's useless and pretty one-dimensional and meh. He's written without substance. The end of book 1 revealed Induril as the man who saved Simon and his mother all those years ago, it felt like a setup for something interesting, like maybe he rebelled against Valinhall or he's undercover or something, but nope, everyone gets along, and despite Simon describing Induril and his chipped giant sword, Kai and everyone in Valinhall didn't tell Simon about him and feigned ignorance instead, for no apparent reason.

And then in this book, Simon finds out it's him, because he just showed up in Valinhall, and it was done so casually I was like "Huh? 🤨, that's the reveal? Whaaaa?" 🤣

The first person perspective is getting really annoying during combat scenes, Simon and Alin spend so much time just watching people fight and not getting involved. There are huge portions of fight scenes that are just Simon or Alin's perspective during a combat scene where they're just standing there or sitting there watching them, and then after a long time they say something like "It was time for Alin to get involved". Bro you stood there and watched your fellow fighters get slaughtered and killed while you just watched to describe it for us 😂

I thought the first book was a pretty good start and was a good setup for the rest of the books, but now it's clear that potential was wasted and book 2 was really disappointing.

This book is legit a mess, and disappointing.
This is a trilogy, this book is the halfway point if the series, as a reader I shouldn't know fuck all what's going on or even who the foes are.
I'm now moving on to the third and final book, City of Light. Please someone say prayers that the book ain't a soulsucking pile of shite.

How the fuck does Denji keeping getting crazy homicidal women to go from wanting to kill him to falling for him, this dude is the meme "I can fix her" except he doesn't even try and it happens 😂

Denji still the luckiest unlucky bastard around 

This was an unexpected pleasure!

I LOVED this book!
This book played with stereotypes and the conventional to subvert them in mind fucky ways, and I am SOOOO here for it!
It wasn't perfect, but it's an awesome beginning to a series.

I have to say though, Alin, FUCKK ME HE'S SO ANNOYING 🤬
I know it's deliberately done by Wight, but it's too affective. The guy is an arrogant, glory-seeking, insecure, attention-seeking little prick.
He reminds me of Homelander from The Boys, Alin is so insecure and wants everyone to love him and think he's amazing, and he's willing to do anything to achieve that.

The guy nearly killed a bunch of kids while starting a battle that could have easily been talked out, because he wanted to look like a hero, and in situations where people are trying to genuinely save lives, he takes it as a competition and get pissed off at the person who did the saving because it wasn't him looking like a hero.

I genuinely think the character has traits of psychopathy and sociopathy.

So if I'm right, that means the prophesised Savior-Of-All, is actually a psychopath.

I believe he'd create or cause a disaster just to swoop in and save it and be seen as a hero and have everyone throwing flowers at him and worshipping him.

As for Leah, I don't know what her deal is, but Will Wight took the age-old story of a kid with a crush willing to go to the ends of the earth to save a girl, to the extreme. Not one, but two boys went through shit to save her.

And then, jokes on them, because she didn't need to be saved as she's undercover or something and is a princess and could have left at any time.

Oh, and then, turns out the bad guys might actually not be the bad guys, and might be the guys forced to do bad things to stop the even bigger bad guys from coming along and destroying the world, similiar to Brandon Sanderson's The Final Empire.
So now the bad guys might not be the bad guys and the good guys might be the worse guys.

All I know is I'm rooting for the main character Simon. The guy saves people, even when he doesn't know why, he just feels like it's the right thing to do, and that's a man I'd follow. So, whoever goes up against Simon in the next book, they're the bad guy to me 😂

As for the magic, there are elements I see from Cradle and the Abidan, as this trilogy is connected to a wider shared universe.
So far I'm not a huge fan of the magic, the whole gate stuff is interesting and like your own little pocket universe that you draw power from, but so far I'm not a huge fan, so we'll see if that improves with the next two books.

Kai was a funny character, but given how he talks, acts and is physically described...I have suspicions he's

Ozriel from the Abidan

, but I have doubts on that being the case, I think it might just be a coincidence and the fact Travis Baldree did the same voice and performance for both characters. 
As for the dolls.....I don't know what to say about them, it's a bizarre addition to the story...so...yeah 👀

Also, the ending, 😟😦😧😯😲😱🤯
Overall, I really enjoyed the book.
The pacing was good, except for Alin's parts, which were boring and annoying.
I'm excited to continue with The Crimson Vault!

Edit:
After reading book 2, things I thought in this book was clever setup, I now realise was actually just laziness disguised as mysterious setup.
So I've lowered my score from 4.5 to 3.75, because it's not as good as Cradle book 1.