J. W. Thompson > Recent Status Updates

It's hard not to feel the arbitrariness of a story that is just one seventh of a massive character study. The plot is very basic, and the characters not very interesting. And as Nicholas Kotar said, the romance is forced and awkward. The way Hadrian talks about Valka in hindsight (as some kind of winsome, gentle maiden) bears no relationship to the way she is depicted (as coarse and insensitive). It's jarring.

I am reading this because I enjoyed the author's discussions about fantasy and writing, but boy is it long-winded. I am sure the series gets better stylistically, and I know Ruocchio was pretty young when he wrote this one, but it's not hard to see how the book got so massive and bloated. Unfortunately the rhetorical amplification of every statement gets wearisome after a while, but it's tolerable in short bursts.