My top 3 MC’s in LitRPG are Silas, Discount Dan and Carl. The reason I enjoy Silas is because he’s actually happy to be there. He loves adventuring, he doesn’t like what the system forces but makes the most of it and has FUN doing it. Unchained continues that, Silas continues his growth and gains power while still maintaining positivity and helping those around him. I love this series and can’t wait to see what happens when they get back to Earth!
I found it almost unreadable. Simply too much useless descriptive commentary. Like.....it took 7 pages for the orcs to walk out of the gate to meet Silas. Geez. Why is is so hard for authors to simply tell a story?
I will preface this review by saying this series isn’t perfect. I’ve been pretty critical of it in the earlier novels. That’s usually the opposite of most series which are stronger earlier and then get progressively worse as the series goes on, often getting bogged down in fillers, overly drawn out plot lines, or in the management of stat sheet debt. But this series has actually found its stride and improved as it’s gone along. I think the author has accomplished this mainly by sticking to each new book having a clear, self-contained arc all while doing those other things necessary to prolong a series.
Now it’s some of those other things I found a little boring in this book. The super-long training montage. The combining of skills. All the time spent working on his crafting class only to pretty much never mention the army of golems or the thousands of weapons he crafted for the fight.
I have stated that in a series with multiple competing systems, that’s clearly moving the MC towards combining these systems, that Silas has way too many skills and we have to keep up the process, started a few books ago, of getting rid of all these skills he doesn’t use. This is a phenomenon in this genre that I call Stat Sheet Debt. It’s when decisions early in the novel to grant skills, titles, etc, place a burden on the author and their series moving forward. This manifests usually as either awkwardly pretending the skill doesn’t exist, or more normally, the author feeling the need to level up these things and work them into fights. The issue with this is the more of these things there are, the more space is required in each successive book to maintain them. It’s basically a writing trap that authors in this relatively new genre don’t realize they’re falling into.
I’ve given the author a lot of credit for recognizing this a few books back and slowly consolidating these skills. But still, Silas’ stat sheet is stupidly long. It’s not the longest, for example the Path of Ascension has basically just given up on even writing out a stat sheet since there’s literally hundreds of things to deal with. But Silas’ is too long. There’s all these titles and skills that are never utilized. Long story short, I was hoping for more consolidation in this book. We did get a lot of combining of skills, but it’s almost like we also then created as many new ones as we got rid of. So it’s a wash.
As I said, this training and consolidation act in this story I’ve established was kind of boring. But there was a lot of lore dumping going on to set up for future plots of the series as well as expand the unity of systems aspect of the plot.
And as much as enjoyed the war and the satisfaction of big win at the end of a book, there was a hefty dose of the systems just give the MCs and his allies whatever they need to win. The systems are plot armor and deus ex machina rolled into one. I don’t think this is the best way to write in this genre.
I also feel like there’s a real lack of stakes with Silas’ multiversal shenanigans because he never loses anyone. This is another series where all the side characters have plot armor because either the audience can’t stomach some stakes and character growth, preferring a g-rated experience, or the author simply can’t let any his characters go. For instance, I think the author should kill Selena off. I think this teasing of the dangers of what Silas is becoming should be explored. We should go down that dark path. But that’s just what I’d like to see in a series. I don’t think the series, as it’s written so far, would make sense for the author to pivot on that tone now. So I’m just basically saying this series is fairly tropey.
Overall, my complaints are pretty small. For what this series is, it’s pretty dang good. I think the way the author makes each book so far its own story is a real key to success in this genre. I can tell he has an ending in sight and plan for this series, and that makes me confident in what’s to come. Which is the opposite for directionless, open-ended series that are just meandering and treading water around this same book count or more.
This book is almost all action. With constant training and fights, the fun relies entirely on the magic system. Unfortunately, it seems as though the author is struggling to find enough interest and creative ways for the characters to use their powers. A lot of the action has a vagueness that suggests the author never figured out how the power was being used, just which power. What few ideas exist are not clearly explained, despite being reused many times during the book.
At the same time, the broader world building remains interesting and the characters, despite the lack of screen time, remain interesting.
Including characters from the Divided Realms works well. I wish we got to see more of the girls and the clan leaders.
Overall, it's not terrible, but it's a distinct drop in quality compared to the previous books.
The multiverse has called and Silas is on his way to help Ryan and again we learn there is more to power, as a reader of cultivation books Oswald does this well as we get to learn even more about the divided realms. The next threat is gradually being revealed and I love how we are expanding such a large universe even as we focus on the MCs and each type of realm. The action and cool new abilities that Silas and his team learn and upgrade are always interesting and the story flows well without being too dry. Love how this series has progressed and im looking forward to the next book.
Good book. It's clean with no profanity. It's story is very good with great battles and fantasy elements.
The loot was lacking in this book. They had all these incredible battles and didn't get any loot. So that was a disappointment.
The MC's departure from the Divided Realms was also very lacking. The fight ended and they were gone. It was very abrupt and a buzz kill. You don't get any of the MCs end of book rap up. It just left you hanging and saying " That's it?" So the book ending was a bit of a disappointment.
Unchained is another book in this fantastic series of multiple systems, ever evolving enemies, powerful friends, and just all around fun. Really enjoying this series, and it looks like the next book is going to be an interesting one indeed. Was wondering when the series would get around to his coming back to earth, and it looks like book 12 is the one, should be an interesting read for sure.
Sean never disappointed, this one was great as always. Things are definitely getting complicated for our boy though. Mastery of new powers, hints of things to come, ominous new quests...yep he's got a lot going on! Plus troubles he isn't even aware of yet. Things are just going to get wilder from here!
There were multiple editing fails that I noticed in the second half of the book. It either lacked the time needed for editing or needed more people looking at it to find the missed mistakes.
Great addition to the Multiverse series. Fun to see old MCs from various parts of the Multiverse come together and follow Silas' progression. If you haven't go and pick up book#1 now.
Very cool concept overlapping a bunch of his previous series. Think the Avenger movie in the MCU.... but with awesome book characters. very original and VERY cool
Another great example of this author’s storytelling. No ridiculous plot points, good handling of increasing powers and stats. Really hits the LitRPG spot!