Status Updates From The Duelist (The Duelist, #1)

They went for the rushed option. And left off on the promise of a sex scene... well played, I guess. Fuck you, but well played.

Running out of road here, and still has some pretty big things to cover. It's either going to rush through this ending, or postpone the action until the next book in order to entice people to continue on. Both options seem fairly likely. I'm not sure what's worse.

Ah yes, of course the villain's wife is smitten with the protagonist and wants him to save her. Of course. This guy's relationships are so unearned, and yet it's already acting like the one between him and Zoie was a match made in heaven.
Saw someone posit that these are written by multiple people, and I'm starting to believe that. The recent bit has felt better, and there's been a distinct lack of similes.

'He swung the Darth Maul staff at my head, but I parried it Ewan McGregor style.' ... ... ... Why wouldn't you at LEAST say Obi-Wan to keep the sentence consistent?! Why would you use one character name but then one actor name? IT MAKES NO SENSE!
This motherfucker is incapable of describing anything without using a simile. JUST USE ADJECTIVES, MY GOD.

'My ears crackled and popped like Rice Krispies' Why use that reference?! IT ADDS NOTHING TO THE SENTENCE! Just stop it at popped, and it's an adequate description! You literally wasted everyone's time, including your own, by writing in that dumb reference. Oh my god it's driving me INSANE

'You're like a sexy Yoda' is something the protagonist just said without a hint of sarcasm. This book is awful. I hate the fact that I'm probably going to read the next one.
I should get into this racket of churning out this half-baked smut and not giving the slightest shit about its quality. The people who rate this highly must never read actual books... or they're all bots. That's likely, I guess.

Ah yes, the classic "throw in random bad guys who act stupidly evil and threaten the protagonist for no good reason so the protagonist can be heroic and macho" trope.

The most annoying character is probably Rylan, and his slavish adoration of the main character. It's mostly undeserved, which makes it bad. Poor kid was destined to never have any agency of his own.
At least the OP MC has the excuse of being able to rewind time and learn things from it. This book's mc is just overpowered as hell and everyone likes him (save for the villains) for no real good reason.

This book is determined to make me regret giving any credit to the writing. A character said "oh my" and the goddamn author used George Takei as a verb. "'Oh my,' Jenner George Takeied." I'm not fucking kidding. I almost threw the Kindle across the room. Does he think it's funny?! There has to be a reason!

There I was, giving slight credit to the writing, and then I read the phrase "my laser beams of Fuck You" to describe a glare. Can't believe this shit. This motherfucker also described music as being similar to the soundtrack of FF7. Are you serious? That's not even a good description - there's a lot to that soundtrack! Are there people who get excited when they read a reference like that? I don't get it

I think I'm actually enjoying this more than I did the other series so far. Heavy use of references aside (boy he's still doing it), the writing is actually ok, and the story is somewhat interesting. Definitely more than a few eye-roll moments, though.
I should stop comparing it to that other series I read; it's not like they are in direct competition or anything... they just happen to be in the same genre.

I'm only 5% in, and there's already been 7 references to specific real-world things - movies, video games, books, etc. (8 if you count the mention of Mountain Dew). Do these authors not know how to describe things without relying on references? I don't get it. It's not like it takes that much more effort to simply describe things. And leaning on a reference will alienate some readers that don't get the reference.

Yeah, another one of this kind. I had a random inclination to see what another writer feels like in this genre, and I had previously downloaded this to my Kindle, so I started it. If you told me this was the other dude but under a different pen name, I'd believe you. It feels identical. I'm not surprised by that, I guess. I kind of figured they'd all be fairly samey.

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