Kate (Blogging with Dragons)
Written on May 30, 2018
Blunt Force Magic just really did not work for me. This book reminded me a lot of the Dresden Files, so if you are a fan of that series, you may like this book. Personally, I felt stifled and exasperated by the main character’s endless diatribes of insecurity to the point where I could not feel anything for the other characters and was annoyed by the constant fight scenes.
I did not feel attached to any of the characters at all. In fact, I really did not care if anything horrible happened to main character, Janzen and would have welcomed a reprieve from his self-deprecating sense of humor, something that was entertaining in the beginning and then got ridiculously and mind-numbingly old before the halfway mark in the book. At first, I found his admitting to all of his insecurities realistic and somewhat charming, but I soon felt like I was listening to the thoughts of a grown-up baby. It is clear the author has wit, and a lot of Janzen’s humor hits with a zing, but a lot of the time, that same humor felt like a shot in the dark rather than an actual successful joke. Regardless of whether these endless monologues of poor stand-up comedy hit or miss, I felt like my brain was being overloaded by Janzen's chatter and I just wished he would shut up, something that was sadly impossible as he was the first person narrator of the book.
What’s more, was that between all of the wisecracks about his weight or his poor looks, we find out that Janzen is actually a super capable guy whom the underworld or whatever has been waiting to rise up and take the mantle of his former master and kick some serious abyss ass. This might have been cool if I weren’t so immune to the trope of a hero who feels he has failed, gone into hiding, and then comes back and saves the day. Plus, Janzen’s utterances of “this is my city” during fight scenes made me roll my eyes. Apparently, he’s Batman.
Sadly, I did not much like the other characters either. I did not care when characters who should not have been helping showed up to save the day or for a beyond the grave visit. Later, when one character died, my reaction was complete indifference. I did like Grove, a deaf character with military experience, but this may just have been because he did not ruin it by talking much. I couldn't help but wonder if they included such a reticent character specifically in order to offset Janzen's continuous stream of consciousness.
I ended up skimming the final battle and most of the fight scenes before it. They were countless. I felt like I was reading a shonen manga where half the book was a fight scene and the only dialogue was a single “POW,” scrawled across the center of the page. Maybe if I were a younger boy, I would find all of these scenes riveting and whatnot, but I was super bored of them. What appeared to be a cool monster, pictured on the awesome cover of the book, was ruined by the fight scenes and by its sudden ability to talk, which immediately rendered it less mysterious and dangerous.
The one thing I did really think was interesting in this book was the magic system. I was interested in the artificery and wished that the book had focused more on that than the current endless fiasco with the wolf-bird-demon thing chasing them. I think the future novels will cover more of Janzen’s training as an artificer and maybe a future tinkerer, which might be interesting, but I don’t plan on reading the next novels in the series. Between the fighting and the awful, incessant narration, I was super relieved when the book was over.
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