A strong, character driven series.
Bog Standard 3 continues where the other books left off, being strongly character-focused. While this episode finally sees the MC leave the bog, and confronts an inner demon while adding to the magic-building lore, I feel it gets bogged down, for lack of a better word, in the minutiae to the point it’s bordering on jargon.
I know some readers in this genre very much prefer fine detail-oriented magic systems, for me it feels more like page stuffing. Just a bunch of hoops to jump through and lore gibberish before the MC inevitably gets whatever power/ability they need. I think a significant majority of this book is dedicated to fleshing out the magic system the witches use.
On the surface, I understand this is important for what comes later, but in the end I rate these stories on how they make me feel in addition to the genre pillars I use to try to quantify it. And this particular book left me fairly bored for most of it.
For one, I don’t like the witch/undead stuff. It’s a little too superficial. But apparently that’s all the baddies in this series, so I’m just accepting it. For another, I don’t care for the in-world parents of the MC, he’s not that person. But again, he needs to care for the plot so it’s whatever. But that blah feeling keeps growing.
So gripes aside, what does this series do well? Great characters, with only the MC being somewhat of a puzzle. Still don’t really understand his motivations or see clearly what his path is other than because his body is the son of witch, he’s gonna be some key piece in the war against the witch nation. The side characters are all solid though, not one-dimensional. They have flaws, they don’t always agree with MC or he with them. It’s clearly a character focused story, I think somewhat mirroring the strategy of Wandering Inn, with the goods (well developed characters for example) and the bads (super slow pace).
The world-building itself is fairly boilerplate for a progression fantasy series, albeit without elves or dwarves and such. Just human kingdoms, some a martial dictatorships, some not. And of course the threat of some foreign baddies, mainly the witch Queendom.
The magic-system I like because there isn’t much room for being OP, at least so far. The MC in this series is probably the most genuinely not overpowered MCs of almost any series I can think of. He can do a lot of cool stuff, but there’s so many hard counters, he really has to be smart and a bit lucky to win.
The plot itself is rather slow-paced, because of the focus on character development and lore building. But when there is action, it’s genuinely quite intense. I would say though after three books and no actually important characters dying, that tension feels more and more contrived.
The payoffs are fairly mundane. As this isn’t an OP MC, not a lot of payoffs with regard to kicking ass, more like squeaking by. Some titles and achievements are awarded here and there. But I feel with the investment done to lore, training, and characters, I’d like to see that pay more dividends in payoffs. And this series has yet to do that so far.
In the end, I bit worried for the series. Despite its strong character focus and avoidance of the usual tropes (like OP MCs, steeply linear growth arc, etc), this series is starting to flirt a bit too much with contrivances for my taste.