brandondorf's reviews
266 reviews

Plot = 1 
Characters = 1
Promise = 1
Engagement = 1
Efficiency = 1

Plot = .50
Characters = 1
Promise = .75
Engagement = .50
Efficiency = .75

Plot = .75
Characters = .50
Promise = 1
Engagement = 1
Efficiency= 1

Quick Look
Plot = .75
Characters = .50
Promise = .75
Engagement = .75
Efficiency = 1

SPOILER FREE LOOK (Please note I listened to this book so names may be spelled wrong.)
Plot = Darrow is reunited with his allies that remain and takes the fight to the Emperor and Jackal. We get to see the conclusion of many plot threads. His relationship with being a Red, his place with Mustang, the Status of the Obsidians with Ragnar, the betrayal of Roque, the status of the society at the end of this Sons of Ares crusade. Overall, I was pleased with the plot and my only complaint comes from some of the character choices. Those choices dinged the plot a bit for me because I felt that just when the series was widening its scope it suddenly pulled it tight again, and not to my liking.

Characters = a .50 means it was okay. I don't want to spoil anything here so I'll just say some things generically. I finally started liking Sevro and his growth. Victra continues to be a personal favorite of mine and same with the Tellemanus crew. I'm burning out on Darrow a bit. I feel the series has grown past him and I've been told I'll be happy with the next book because of this. Mustang redeemed herself and I felt, for the first, time she was written well. The .50 mostly comes from the bad guys. I wanted to see some different outcomes and I was hoping for some different...conflicts to happen. I will explain in the spoiler section. 

Promise = This book delivered on its promise. We got to see the ramp up and outcome of the Sons of Ares and Darrow's journey to topple the Society. That being said, the ending and how the promise played out was only okay to me so I took off a bit for that. 

Engagement = I cannot explain this without spoilers. But I will try. There were portions of this book that seemed like tangents that were a bit over explored and there was an entire plot moment early on that left me tense for far too long for fear that Mr. Brown was going to hit me with one of my least favorite plot devices ever. I can't say much but if you read book two then you know Darrow was captured. The things that happen after that had me concerned how and if everything that was happening for the next hundred pages were reliable for the reader.

Efficiency = This book was the perfect length. If it had been shorter we would have needed a fourth to conclude the struggle, and based on the ending scenes that would not have been a good idea. Any longer and we would have been just ready to reach the end. 

SPOILER LOOK (RANT STYLE)

Alright so let me complain about a few things and praise a few others. Praise first, I think Brown is an author who grows tremendously with each book, the biggest increase in his skill for me in this one was his female characters. They felt individual and not like the tropes they were in the first book. I loved how complicated Victra, Mustang, and (Sepsi?) were. Let's not even PRETEND that there wan't a challenge for the author with Sepsi since she becomes the replacement of freaking Ragnar. So I want to say that was amazing. Now complaints. I HATED that the Jackal was the final Villain. His betrayal at the end of book two was fun, but I just never cared for him as an antagonist. Maybe if we had chapters from his POV I could have been more invested, but most of the time I just didn't care about him. Then we have the choice of what happens with the friends. I guess I might be in the minority here but it was FAR more important to make Roque the character who Darrow changes over (excuse my language) fucking Cassius. Cassius is and always will be a piece of shit to me, period. I never liked how his sense of justice is a driving character trait. That and supposed honor. Roque's sense of duty was a much more interesting angle for Darrow to tackle in my opinion since you can't just call Roque a hypocrite. Cassius is nothing but a waste of space. He tries to kill Darrow in Red Rising after learning the latter HAD TO KILL his brother Julian. It is thoroughly and OBVIOUSLY pointed out to him that Darrow had NO CHOICE if he wanted to you know.....LIVE. Then, the convoluted plot with him helping them at the end of the book was just so random. It 110% felt like Mr. Brown, who I will never criticize in person because his glacier stare would teleport me into a world of peaceful oceans, just wanted to keep Cassius alive and relevant. My problem with that, it caused other more interesting characters to have an early death. All this said, I did really like the book and I am going to continue. I can tell from the names of the next few that my predictions about how this struggle will put the galaxy into a state of regression for a while may be true. I guess I will see!

The plot device I thought was happening in the beginning was that Darrow wasn't actually rescued and was living out a sort of enhanced torture VR where the Jackal was learning all his secrets by tricking him into believing he was saved. That WOULD HAVE SUCKED. So I'm glad my time wasn't wasted. 

For fun, my dream ending. Darrow knows Cassius is a piece of gum on the bottom of a shoe at the bottom of a garbage bag that is crushed in a dump. SOOOO. He betrays them for real. Sevro doesn't die since that's been set up since Red Rising that there was that drug that makes it seem like you die. Fast Forward....................Cassius is told to kill Darrow and he gets close. Just as he lifts his blade Sevro jumps up from death and screams some shit like "I'm gonna pierce your ears onto my ass," and kills Cassius. Darrow and Mustang use the confusion to then wreck house with Mustang killing the Emperor and Darrow killing the Jackal. The end. 

Quick Look
Plot = 1
Character= 1
Promise = 1
Engagement = .75
Efficiency= .75

SPOILER FREE LOOK

Plot = Carl and Donut enter the Faction Wars, which have been built up since the second and third book and it is delivered like a ten course meal. The impossible is managed as not only do we get to see the play by play of the wars, but also get to delve into the deeper space politics, growing AI problem, and get introduced to a slew of other plot lines that somehow didn't bog the story down. 

Characters = We have the returning cast of Crawlers and etc that we continue to see fight their way to reach floor ten and the ability to get out of the Dungeon. That being said, one of the more interesting aspects of the book came from the former crawlers who came down to be mercenaries for the Princess Posse. They ended up giving Carl and Donut a run for their money as main characters, stemming from the fact that they WERE some of the main Crawlers of their seasons, and had their own machinations and plots to round out. In the spoiler section below I'll explain more on this, but I found myself drawn in to these new characters in a surprisingly fresh way. I was nervous they would redirect the plot away from what I've been loving, but nope, they added to it. 

Promise = I really don't know how Matt keeps doing this. I keep thinking there's no way he can top the last book and keep it grounded all the same, but then he does. Power Creep is a real threat to books and characters of this genre, and yes Carl and Donut are WAY more powerful than they were in book 1, but I still constantly feel like their life is hanging on a thread. The other characters are never as safe as we want them to be either and have managed to keep their power growing in cool and fascinating ways as well. So yeah, the promise of this book is kept and delivered. Faction Wars was awesome. 

Engagement = I have one criticism of this book and it is the same for the last two categories here. To be fair, this has been a pretty consistent issue, but I don't get as mad about it anymore. The author has a tendency to maybe over-explain things in the first hundred pages of each book. I know that I may pick on this a little more than I should, but the only time I wanted to put this book down and do something else was in the first 20%. Once the Faction Wars started I was sucked back in. I know there's an explanation needed, but some of it just goes right through my brain because I don't have a need for it yet. I'll give an example below in the spoilers, but I do think he is getting better at this overall. Once of the main reasons the Butcher's Maskerade is still my favorite of the series is because of how this was balanced. 

Efficiency = The above problem also affects efficiency. Because it got bored during the over explanation of things in the beginning it signals to me that some stuff could have been cut out or revised. That's all. 

SPOILER LOOK

Plot = I was absolutely hooked into the developments that happened here. The AI is growing in influence and I'm wondering how Car and Donut are going to deal with that. Carl's decision to eliminate the ability to shut down the AI was a twist I was not expecting. We also got to see some of the elements of the earlier books pop in. His Doomsday bomb was considered. The Cookbook and Gate of Feral Gods was massively important here as well. The Bedlam Bride also gets developed as something to use later on. The former crawlers made me nervous at first. I was really hoping we wouldn't see some nonsense betrayal stories and I'm glad we didn't. I did like that they had their own motivations or side quests that went alongside helping the Princess Posse though. Like, of course they wouldn't pass up a chance to wreak some havoc on the whole thing while supporting the Crawlers of the season. This was the major end of one of Carl's major goals as well, to get as many people as he could to the tenth floor. Yeah I had a ton of fun with the story here, and the FREAKING Lucia Mar stuff! WHAT?!!! So good. 

Characters = I'm just gonna highlight a few moments that I loved. That Crawler who blew up an entire faction by sabotaging their tanks was goddamn awesome. Justice Light was fascinating as well and I can't wait to see the amount of carnage he caused in the end. Juice box, a throwaway character of the fourth book has become the voice of the NPCs. And the way Carl avoids following the rules and killing her faction was a sigh of relief. Li Na and the consequence of the Divine Ring of Suffering was also intense. So yeah, I could write a whole review on each character by themselves, but you get it. Awesome. 

Promise = I have nothing new to add here for spoilers other than the Katia stuff was great. I feel Matt has forced an important commitment to her character arc since the second book and I'm glad he's delivering. I don't think she's done yet, but I was very pleased with her ability to leave the Dungeon. Heartwarming in a book series where we are often devastated at loss. 

Engagement and Efficiency = So let me give a spoiler for why I think these were rough in the beginning. To start, this was a lot to set up and I get that. I don't think I could ever juggle this many moving pieces in a book. I think writers of warfare and in depth military engagements could praise Matt here because he for sure kept it far from simple. That being said, it was a slog to read through in the first hundred pages. I wish there was a way to remove elements of it until it was important. I get that may look like Deus Ex Machina nonsense when every time something happens Carl has a backup plan that seems to come from nowhere, but I think I'd maybe prefer that. So my example is the entire Carl and Katia trapping Shi Maria scene. I still don't know what the heck happened there. Potion leads to shared dream for the two, then Shi Maria can get trapped in Katia's and be put to sleep or something, then an enemy attacks by teleporting them through a loophole since teleports are illegal at this phase, to Carl didn't fully teleport and so Shi Maria gets loose temporarily, but then the dream thing works so she gets put back in, then Carl does teleport fully to the bad guys where he learns of the carnage, then he returns and has it all explained to him. AND I got that all wrong I'm sure. I decided to just move past it and wait to see how it played out. There tends to be a moment in each book where Carl or another character does something so beyond the realm of normal thinking that I lose myself. Good example is when Carl assassinated that Kua Tin in book three (I think). None of that made sense to me, but whatever. I love this series but like anything else I have a gripe with that one element of it. Crazy is fine, but crazy complicated can go too far at times. 

Plot = .75
Characters =.75
Promise = .50
Engagement  .75
Efficiency 1

With a collection of stories I usually rank them first. 

None of these stories are bad by any means. Im ranking them by what I enjoyed the most. 

In 4th place was Granddaughter Cormorant. Shae is one of my favorite characters but this story was exactly how Fonda Lee describes after it was done, extra. For fun. To show that part of her life. In a way it's filler but not in a negative way. 

3rd place was Better Than Jade. Romantasy haha. It was cute seeing Hilo and Wen falling in love. Even more fun seeing Kehn and Tar again though. This was heartwarming and fun. 

2nd place was The Witch and Her Friend. This one fascinated me. It was a bit of a retcon but also fun to see that Ayt Mada had a weird connection to Emery Anden. Ure was an interesting character and I'm glad I got to see Anden's mom and what happened with her. 

1st place was easily Not Only Blood. For one, I get to spend more time with Lan. If you know you know. Two, I think it was excellently handled how he got Anden adopted as a Kaul. It actually benefits his character so much in Jade Legacy. 

Rating is hard. 
Plot = .50 (purposefully there was really only 2 of them that had much.)

Characters = 1 (focused on excellent characters.)

Promise = 1 (it was exactly what she said it was.)

Engagement = .75 (last story bored me a bit.)

Efficiency = .50 (would have like more. Maybe something on Bero or Kehn Maik in school. Even Gont Asch) 

Overall = 3.75/5 

Plot = 1 ( these books are a roller coaster. You go from everyday life to sudden and scary events that you think are random. Then you realize that the train has been heading your way the whole time but you were lulled into a feeling of safety.)

Characters = 1 (Hilo, Anden, and Shae are the most human characters I can think of.)

Promise = 1 (At first I was scared but somehow the story came full circle.)

Engagement = .75 (the beginning, like the other two books, was a little slow, but once the pieces were laid out I just had to see where they got placed.)

Efficiency = 1 (How could I want more after 700 pages???!!!. I'm usually the guy who says please condense and cut but I want more!!! But I also don't want Fonda Lee to stab my heart anymore so...nevermind.) 

Overall 4.75/5

Plot .75
Characters 1
Promise 1
Engagement 1
Efficiency .75 

Total 4.5