Matthew > Recent Status Updates

Hasn't aged great.
And really isn't as good as I had remembered.

Not bad, just not living up to nostalgia's hype.

Not living up to how good I remember it being when I read it as a teenager

Why am I continuing to inflict this on myself?

It is now very clear that Pirateaba can't write believable smart characters. As soon as the story actually focuses on any character that has been described as smart, it becomes impossible to believe this description of them. Multiple supposed geniuses being shown to have comprehension skills of five-year-olds....

Wasting massive amounts of time on side characters.

Leaning even more into making supposedly smart characters acting exceptionally stupid without that in any way counting against them counting as smart to everyone else.

This is the story of horrible prose reminiscent of early 2000s fanfic.

This is the story of sorely tested patience.

Huge page counts to new characters who die without having ever met the main characters and only have entirely unimportant interactions with secondary characters.....

The main characters keep getting stupider.....

And it is FAR too long

So long.
Too many narrative perspective characters - many of whom seem rather secondary.
The story is VERY unfocused.

The world building is a lot of fun, broad if not deep.

Inconsistent character writing is getting frustrating. Characters introduced as self-destructively courageous then being terrified to paralysis be much lesser versions of the same.
Characters the book keeps telling us are smart then just acting exceptionally stupid just to build unnecessary moments of pointless dramatic tension.

So very long.....

Why did I decide to inflict a second of these on myself?

The second main character being made deeper by her being made much less likeable (when neither character is very likeable) is not helping this book.

So slow, so long, MC is so annoying.

Secondary character is less annoying but still not very likeable.

I am becoming confused by how well rated this book is.

Slow moving
And the lead starts off a little annoying

Reading the hardback has the slight advantage of the pictures at the top of some chapters, though obviously misses the wonders of Jeff’s voice that my first experience of Parade of Horribles had in release week.

I have to assume to obvious error in the levelling of Eye for Detail was a meta joke

Don't do drugs, especially if they are random half rotten mice of insanity you stole from a cat lady's house

“You done stuck your pecker in the wrong beehive” the tone of the book covered in a quote from a couple of chapters ago

Second read, in preparation for Parade of Horribles.

Welcome to the Party, Pals

While second reading means I was prepared for the behavioural changes in Donut and understand why they are happening, they are still annoying even if I know they are important character development. Did her trauma response have to be so much like nails on a chalkboard?

Third read - in preparation for book 8 coming out next month

I think the smut is making the book less good.

Without it, I think this book would be well ahead of the rest of the series.