Could not finish.

There is so much wrong with this series that it'd be hard to put it all in a review. I'll stick with what's most troubling and annoying but know that this just barely scratches the surface.

First, the nonsensical priorities in book one. The main character seems like he has his head screwed on and knows his situation is dire, yet the author spends an insane amount of time listing off things in massive info dumps that are irrelevant to the current situation. This completely kills the tension and immersion.

Next, the abnormal need to repeat the same description over and over while also stating it's not important right now. The author will repetitively state that something is either interesting or not, but not important right now, give a couple of minutes talking about it, only to repeat that it's not important right now. Then switching to another topic for a moment and coming right back AGAIN stating more about the 'not important' thing in even more detail. This has happened so many times that it could be turned into a drinking game.

Then we have the blatant flip from murder hobo protagonist in book one to 'I need companions' in book two. Now, I'm not entirely against this, but the way it was done made me roll my eyes so hard that I nearly went blind. Not even mentioning the stinted speech patterns between the characters not seeming natural at all but forced, the characters seem like something out of an eighties comic book strip. I was half expecting Lynxie to say 'Holy smokes, Sinner. Do you think we should run?' Of course, it also doesn't help that EVERY character seems to be the same, and reacts the same to every situation. This is just plain bad and unimaginative writing.

Finally, the bit that made me stop the playback and relegate this book to my trash pile. The whole 'I'm going to power up the people that even I see no benefit in befriending'. The main character proceeds to forget about his own progression for a group he 'apparently' has no intention of staying with. The 'lone wolf building a pack' rubbish. Oh goodie. In any other title, I'd be all for this. A strong alpha-type leading a group of 'meat' to progress into a unified fighting force? Who wouldn't want to follow that? But then you have to look at all the interactions up to this point and you can already see how this is going to go. I simply can't be bothered to see how it unimaginatively and predictably ends.

There are better series out there. Avoid it unless you have a lot of patience. The book could easily be half its length.

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