This series officially sucks. One of the stronger aspects of this weak series has been combat but thinks to the author needing to pull a plot device out of a hat EVERY SINGLE BIG FIGHT now, even that’s no longer enjoyable.
I’ve made my gripes with this series pretty clear on my other reviews, I won’t spend time rehashing them even though those issues persist. The contrivances are the worst aspect of this series. The payoffs aren’t results of investments in training, progression, and strategy, they are the result of the author stepping in and granting a boon of some kind. In this book, the author takes it down a notch, as the MC becomes a primordial or something fighting this alien fungus reaching levels two or three times his current power. And then the system takes all those gains back, so… whereas before all these plot contrivances usually ended with a new skill, ability, whatever and a title, this time the author Indian gives the ability… then of course grants a title. Seriously there’s two pages of titles now. Two pages!
This series is just lazy. I don’t understand the world building. Why this system needs to cull billions of humans isn’t made clear or logical. Why the system is in contested space, not its space, yet can limit what other systems do in that space makes no sense. Shouldn’t they be on equal footing in this regard?
Why does ambient mana only affect animals? Why doesn’t it affect plants anymore like it did with the razor grass in the first book? Why isn’t it affecting microbes? Why does it only seem to make animals bigger (hint because this is the limit of the author’s imagination)? Since the author has introduced genetics into this whole magic thing, how do these mana evolved creatures get all these new abilities like armored skin? That’s not how evolution works.
For that matter, the whole biome of earth would collapse without animals in niches. That’s why it always makes more sense in progression fantasy for dungeons to be the source of mana creatures.
Also, scanning electron microscopes don’t use “slides” or have “eyepieces”. Like maybe google one before describing one in your story genius. Not as bad as thinking Normandy is on the Mediterranean, that makes you too dumb to write a book in my opinion even if most of the population couldn’t find Normandy on a map either, but… those people also don’t write books.
This book the author further undermined his entire magic system. The MC has spent years, of dilated and real time, training to get to epic tier. He took probably the first four books of this series to get to rare tier. Yet Jiang’s soldiers go from common to high rare tier in TWO DAYS? It makes no sense, especially when the author says that most of the enemies are all uncommon and rare.
The system has abilities when the author needs it to and doesn’t when he doesn’t them to. It’s omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient one minute, limited and clueless the next. It’s a benevolent (if pragmatic) force another minute, then it’s mutating dogs to kill humans and allowing high tiered factions to threaten MC for “reasons” the next. For real, if the system is bent on MC becoming its champion, how does many incursions, genocide of the human race, and bullying of MC by high-tiered factions help that in any way whatsoever? Why are these factions even allowed to exist if the system is so powerful? Why does it need high tiered people at all? MC had a vision of a future being a slave to one of these factions, why would the system allow that if it needs him?
In a phrase, the whole story is sloppy as hell. Inconsistent, poorly thought out, and poorly executed.
This series sucks. That’s the bottom line. I really need to find something good to sink my teeth into. I think I’ve read all of or sampled pretty much all the big names in the genre, and found plenty of smaller names I really enjoy. But please comment your favorite series and help a guy out. I’m tired of the amateur garbage.