4 stars. Lots to love in this story despite its flaws.
I couldn’t put Book 1 down. It’s seriously long (Book 1 is 34 hours, Book 2 is 33 hours), but seriously good.
Book 1 was incredible. It paints an interesting world, and introduces some unique characters in interesting ways. I actually like Book 1, a lot. That makes the rest of this review painful to write.
Book 2 might have broken something in the formula. And I don’t really trust that the author will find it in Book 3 from what I’ve read so far.
Reidon Ward is a classic “kid who had nothing.” Abandoned by his parents at birth, he became a ward of the state. Saddled with a disease that causes his soft tissue to harden, he has required 100+ surgeries through childhood to his teenage years. He’s got that “nothing will stop him from succeeding attitude” and he’s not afraid of pain.
His physical test scores place him at the bottom of the class. He’s shorter and weaker than almost anyone, even the girls. “The AI that controls the universe” chooses him as a test subject to go through a rigorous military training program. It does this by granting him a gift – the ability to grow faster than anyone. At first, none of the military officers want him at school – save one. He’s not a typical military candidate for sure, due to his weakness. But over time, he moves up from bottom of the class.
Some of those “traditional military officers” still can’t let this go even after he proves himself capable.
I finished book 1 in three or four days, and I loved it.
With the second book, I’m starting to feel the repetition set in. The events take place in a school setting (so far), so what they do in school is training. Both books 1 and 2 contain a lot of eating, non-combat classes, combat classes, and after-school training. The books are full of descriptions of those.
For me, some of the best bits are the developing / evolving personal relationships. There are also some machinations behind the scenes as certain people/groups scheme to take advantage/create disadvantage for their own benefit in an unfair fashion.
For instance, we find out that the head of training of this military school has been tampering with the results of tests to try to get the MC kicked out. And later, a test has been reprogrammed that ends up sending the main character to hospital. I thought militaries had strong discipline, and would have expected strong repercussions to these events. But there appear to be no repercussions to anything the system does against our hero.
Meanwhile, if two students are caught holding hands, the instructors lose their temper.
There IS some enemy out in the frontier of the cosmic border which the military is fighting against, for which 90% of these students are training to fight. But I can’t explain the enemy or the nature of the conflict in any way. I’m 50 hours into these books, and the enemy of this universe-wide war doesn’t come up much (at all) and apparently “the good guys” are 5-10 years away from losing the war entirely.
(In fact, the students are basically learning martial arts with weapons – a hammer, a sword, a lance, etc. Do people fight with lances in the 26th century?)
This makes this book feel mostly like they are training to become famous. Fame (and sponsorships) seem to be the main motivations. But there’s a world-ending war at your door? There’s no mention of the enemy in class – they are training to become famous.
A couple of the main characters have weird actions/reactions with no explanation, and that’s starting to bother me. Why can’t Rei tell his girlfriend /best friend that he got some shocking news and needs some time alone? Instead he disappears for hours, and then refuses to talk about why.
While his absolute best friend in the world (Viv) is asking him to explain “what happened”, he says he doesn’t know. When she asks again for him to explain what happened, he again says “that’s all I know.” Dude, you can’t just tell her what happened? Just say it. Maybe you don’t understand what is happening in the grander scheme of things, but you can tell her what happened. The amount of frustration I had while waiting for this needless high-school-style drama to resolve itself over the course of an hour really upset me and is one spot where my love of the series so far went down by a lot.
Similarly, his best friend Viv has some weird crush on a school bully who was brutal to the main character early in the first book. The kid spent 6 days in “jail” for his actions over it. The author started a redemption arc on the bully (only a few words to try to redeem this character’s actions), but what about a redemption arc for Viv? Viv has betrayed Rei and everyone seems OK with it? Imagine falling in love with someone who STILL hates your best friend and brutally beat him just a few weeks prior leading to jail? Who’s best friends beat your best friend to an inch of his life, and he still stayed friends with them after this? I don’t get Viv.
Edited to add a couple of months later: I think this last point is where I’m going to have to deduct a point from the review score. I really like the book, but the author seems to not care/not understand why many people feel bad about how the MC’s best friend has treated him. Actually, I’ll go further: I don’t think the author cares much about what people think about his story. He specifically does not want feedback on it.
For a while, the repetition and the odd behaviors of the main characters were starting to turn me off. But as I continued to listen to Book 2, I let go of those flaws and began to enjoy the book again.
I think one thing this series is missing is a solid “bad guy” / antagonist. We started with the school bully being the bad guy, but he’s not. Then the teacher is the bad guy, but he’s not. Then a mysterious foreign corporation is the bad guy, but they’re not. Someone’s family member is the bad guy, but she’s not. And now there’s some bad stuff happening and nobody knows who is behind it.
So who’s the bad guy? This book/series needs a bad guy, even if the main characters don’t know who that is yet.
Things I liked about the book series:
- Well written
- Good camaraderie with friends (however, some of those bonds are starting to appear weak)
- Characters have 3D personalities and complex motivations; exhibit personal growth in the story
- In Book 1, all the characters actions seem to make sense. In Book 2, I can’t say this.
- Non-main characters can make independent decisions in their own interests and are not just there to support the MC
- A touch of romance
Things that took away from it:
- It’s one of those books where the “final battle simulations” of first-year students seem like the most important thing going on in the Universe, not a war, not other students or other schools.
- A lot of the tension is teenage drama – who likes who, but is afraid of making a move.
- His best friend since grade school (Viv) seems to betray him mid-year and there’s no resolution to that (yet)
- I’m starting to lose faith in the “school system” format for progression stories. None of the battles are actually life or death. All simulations. They’re just practicing.
This is pretty good. Highly recommended the series so far.
June 2024: Decided to read the series a second time. It reminded me of what I hate about it. I don’t know why I gave this 5 stars.
I used to be subscribed to this author on Patreon hoping to get chapters as they come out. But the writing is really slow. It takes 2-3 weeks to get a single chapter sometimes. And the chapters are short. The author has said, several times, he doesn’t know where the story is going. So he has no plan in advance on how some of the story arcs are going to resolve. That shows, I guess. I don’t think the author actually likes this story any more.
