yes so far I'm one of the only 2 people to give this book a 1 star.Why, because I did not like it. Most of my dislike was based on subjective things related to characters. Spoilers ahead
Daniel
Having taken a 10 year break from fighting (presumably doing nothing but eating grapes and frolicking in the trees)he is even more full of rage and self loathing. He is 35 years old +- and he still acts like he did in the past but now he communicates in nothing but grunts and growls for which Alex Wyndham gave him a jaw locked town guard's voice. I guess it helps to show he is far from civilization since tree elves apparently have no civilization.Daniel backs down from every verbal confrontation till it's time for him to activate his special world destroying powers (because even in the kingdom of wizards his line is special, in 1000s of years he is the only one to etc ,etc ,etc) which he does 3 or 4 times, which makes it less effective/suspenseful(There's only so many times you can tease destruction before reader stops falling for it)with all the power and years to do something he apparently still could not free his kids from Mordon, for some reason he gave up on it fast.
Lilly
No, I won't even try to spell it. She went from a person to a robot. In the first book she was naive and carrying person who had her own personality but here she is like a robot or a team dog with characters going "oh look at Lilly trying to joke, she thinks she is people" she spends most of the book removed from the story.It was not how others of her kind behaved and I tried to excuse it with her age but she seemed better than this in the first book.
Katherine
First of many to fall into the "you expected anyone to be a decent person, f you" hole that this book dug. Remember how in the last book she was loyal and bit psychotic, ideal girlfriend material, etc well now it's time for "realism" in the last book she may have told Daniel she loved him but was unwilling to cheat on her husband but in this books it turns out she was cheating on her husband with another woman(The story does not make excuses like saying it does not count with another woman or something like that, so it's not just my interpretation of events it's how it went down) she pulls the "you don't get to judge me" anyways. She abandons her son and goes to live into the hellish woods with danny and his 16 kids then she goes on to complain that everything is as bad as Daniel has been saying for years.She is supposedly meant to be the sane one in the world gone mad but in the end she just ends up being annoying. I'm not even sure if that is her role since they have a fight about how she does not want to be the emotional support for the kids so Daniel can more freely rage at them, their bickering got annoying fast.
Seth and Danny's dad
Seth turned into a wife beating drunk. Danny's dad is a regular drunk who thinks his son should have never been born.
16 kids
We only get to know 4-5. They go from hating danny to loving him instantly, some have their reasons but it was too universal for me(There is only 1 black sheep out of them all). After their first fights danny gives them his super armor so they stop being in danger but trees start escalating the difficulty, putting up 6 vs 2 with the 6 having magic swords to counter the armor. Then trees attack the house but danny threatens to blow up the world.
Storyteller
He is back and spends most a lot of time recapping the first book, it comes of inorganic since in universe it has not been that long since he started telling the story. I have not read mageborn but I feel like a lot of stuff is happening because it was mentioned in passing in those books and now all the pieces must be made to fit. We could have used more exposition about that
instead of endless hints that good trees can see the future.At the end of the last book he said he would tell us about how danny got to know his kids and trained them in combat and that is all this book was about, that and nothing more.
Trees
We don't know anything about them.The way Lilly acted made me wonder about what they do all day since they have no music, are very bad at arena fighting(it's a competition yet non of the sides seem to put even the basic preparations into achieving victory, unless it's to cheat against danny)also precogs are allowed to place bets.We hear about their complex art but see non of it, danny seems to have given up on studying spell weaving(nor does he seem to have learned anything new in 10 years) near the end we find out that groves are like separate species (for some reason) and that is it. Old trainer who used to be all "watch your tongue dog" is apparently now good guy full of remorse and he only tried to destroy danny's music instrument for his own good.
Final thoughts
It was really hard to tell what character changes were inconsistencies and what were natural changes born from passage of time and regardless of the nature of those changes it left me watching strangers who wore the skin of characters I got to know in the previous book, more like some mockery than a real sequel. Its also possible that later books will fill out information gaps but this particular books felt like a lot of wheel spinning mixed with a half written lifetime drama