Overall, this series is not only all over the place but also goes nowhere. After reading 5 books, I’m done. I won’t be reading the next and I wouldn’t recommend the series.
Before I go into depth on this series. I’ll say I find it incredibly disgusting this story (Harbinger) opens with a plague that only kills people in South America, Africa, and Asia. Sure the plague hit the southern hemisphere but SOMEHOW Australia avoids any deaths. It JUST so happens that the three continents with majority BIPOC people are the ones where EVERYONE dies. It’s so weird cause Cassius has allegedly saved the world innumerable times but when all the melanated people are dying, no one calls him. He’s not even aware of it. OK. Yea, that’s not AT ALL problematic. Nothing to see here, no unconscious bias at all. Just “interesting” choices made by the author.
The series is your typical underdog good guy (who also happens to have crazy OP powers) has to defeat some great evil. The failures in this series is that the characters’ motivations are nonexistent. Elios has no reason for what he’s doing so it all just seems really vapid. Why does he want to release Chaos? Why does he hate Cassius? No reason is given and even the scenes from his POV just produce a guy who is evil just because. Hence vapid. Also, Cassius doesn’t really have a motivation either. He just wants to live and fuck Morgan (no one is mad at that lol). However, a protagonist and antagonist with no motivations leads to a series with no driving force. It just comes off as boring and I don’t connect with them. It feels like a mishmash of events that don’t really matter.
Furthermore, this issue causes so many downstream impacts. Since there’s no motivation or character desire, the characters tend to be reactive. They don’t make change instead they just react to every odd thing the author decides to throw at them. It comes off as disjointed. Additionally, since the characters are reactive often there are deus ex machina plot devices where some random entity will fly in and save the day. Or there’s some random power upgrade that’s retroactively explained through info dumps. In fact, I hypothesize, about 50% of this book is info dumps. And it’s all info dumps that aren’t pertinent to the current story. Like really, do I need CHAPTERS of them talking about their lives pre-Fall. Instead of solving the issue at hand they’re gabbing about shit that happened hundreds of years ago and it’s not shit that would help them to defeat the current issue.
Another issue is the clunky world building. The author is trying to combine so many different mythologies and fantasy species. There’s a ton of Greek Mythology influence. Christian Mythology. And that doesn’t include the witches, sorcerers, warlocks, and so many demons. The issue though is that none of it makes sense to the story. Actually, it would be better to say that none of the world building is developed enough to be memorable. We have Argent Lake home of the Nereids. But there’s also Astrea Sea home of the Naiads. Now just two would be ok, but multiply that by 10 and now you can see how difficult it is to keep up. And now combine that with the lackluster plot and character development. What do you have? Clunky world building that doesn’t work with the story. It’s all over the place but goes nowhere. It’s so frustrating because it’s unnecessary. For example, in this story we meet 9 goddesses: the morai, black fates, and furies. Each group has 3 different sisters. That’s 9 characters to keep track but we’re given nothing in regards to defining characteristics. I think at most all we get are names and hair color. They all blend together to such a point they become indistinguishable. What’s the point of having all these supernatural creatures when none of them standout. This series needed an editor BADLY!
Lastly, the author really needs to take an improv class or something because her situational context and timing is fucking horrible. It’s asinine that mid-fight Cassius and Theo run to make out with their significant others. It’s asinine that during a super important meeting with the head of Argo and their boss in the room, Cassius and Theo are crying into the shoulders of their loved ones. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for emotions and expressing them but babes you’re supposed to be saving the world and you’re crying because you feel guilty. It just comes off as stupid. I think what bothers me the most about this characterization is that it mimics how misogynist authors write women. Also all the poorly timed jokes with Kes wanting to bang Cassius is weird. I don’t understand how you’re recounting years of trauma and torture that you’ve experienced. And out of nowhere you’re like “I wanna bang Cassius.”
The series lacks a story, a plot, character development, and at times common sense. I get it’s fiction but friends can we at least make it make sense. It would also help if the author took an anatomy class because men don’t have “taut folds protecting [their] passage.” I wanted to like this series but damn it really fought hard to make me dislike it.