The first 3 books can feel a bit small and less exciting. However, this series/world really grows in scale and grows on you.

First 3 books feel a bit boring and a bit monologue-ish. Lots of angsty bits. Super awkward internal monologues with certain characters. Book 1 starts with a bang but it really gets smaller and a bit slower after that. But it’s a good book. I’m a bit tired of the emotionally stilted archetype, would be lovely to see an MC with serious charisma and not as much emotional baggage, but it is what it is.

Books 4-6 really picks up big time, that’s when I really started to enjoy it.

Love the Canadian backdrop. Canada never gets love and it’s neat to see a series spend real time there.

Love the narrator. Obviously. He’s fantastic. He’s always fantastic.

Stick with the series and it pays off. I do wish there had been a lot less self reflection and more details on the system and decision making. Often it’s skimmed over or I am yelling at the MC for not asking certain questions or being more curious.

Self reflection is good, I’m not against it but it does tend to turn quite a bit of the series into a “tell, not do.” The MC circles back to anger issues constantly, again not intrinsically bad but just over played IMHO, I think a lot of that development can happen over the whole series, not just front load the first 3 books. As the MC does love on more or less for parts of books 4-6 it becomes more enjoyable and less of a grind. In books 1-3 I found a times I could skip ahead in frustration and miss nothing.

That said, still a great series and I enjoy how the author wrestles with a concept of a system and how it would work.

I do find ideas are brought up and have promise but languish for several books with no payoff. Like John’s electromagnetic affinity. Gained through Ali. He is working on it but the character never really seems curious enough to dig into it and make that discovery a part of the journey. People don’t realize that the electromagnetic force is a strong force and gravity is a weak force. In fact electromagnetism is 10^60 times more powerful than gravity but authors seem to find it easier to elucidate what that a gravity power would look like. Whereas electromagnetism has such phenomenal potential and the MC just never chases it…not beyond a few very cool moments that you would think would spur the MC to Perdue it hard and try to grow his affinity for it. That process would have been super interesting. Maybe that gets tackled in books 7-9, I’m not sure, but much of the actual development of skills seems too opaque or over simplified but dungeon grinding ends up being too rote, too boring when it should have allowed for maybe a better realized progression. Scaling a system is a tricky thing.

In spite of that, the series really picks up and starts paying things off and it does get exciting. The MC’s relative power level becomes more clear in books 4-6, making for some fun times and more payoff. The system becomes more interesting too in many ways. Time will tell how this series rounds out but don’t miss it. It’s worth the read .

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