sa090
Written on Aug 23, 2018
It’s always sad when a series that starts out with a great premise, ends up being nothing more than a disappointing turn of events upon reaching its final book.
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After a long time, I can finally put this series to rest. I do enjoy the effort Michael Scott put into adding all the mythological creatures, individuals and the historical figures into this story even when it got too much. However, in this book in particular, it was very apparent how much of a mess the power system is in this story. With characters like Odin and Hel around you’ll expect that they would be as powerful as they were in their own legends, especially given that some were considered gods and goddesses, but they never struck me as individuals with that same level of power at all. The immortal humans like Dr. Dee and The Flamels for example, seemed to be way more capable than the supposed deities and I definitely didn’t enjoy that aspect.
That being said, the real issue in this series lies in the existence of the Codex and how it seemingly just states that everything here is predetermined by Abraham the Mage and that time and time again, history will continue to repeat itself. This being stuck in a closed circle notion is not fun, I wanted to see Josh and Sophie be the twins of legend and what that entailed in a more unique aspect to the verse, but when you give me these small hints since book 5 and now 6 about how the story is really proceeding, I can’t help but feel that it lacks any sort of real closure.
The characters were numerous as I stated before and given that they were working in two different places and in two different timelines it made the transitioning feel pointless or more of a hassle than I needed. I mean with a city like Danu Talis around, I really hoped that whenever we get to that part of the story, it would be solely focused on it instead of the shifting POVs. Especially when some of the point of views don’t seem that important to me, or as important as some of the other stuff. Furthermore, the sheer amount of individuals involved in this story technically implies that not all of them would get their stories/roles told or showcased in details which is unfortunately what happened to some. It also completely sidelined Sophie which I thought sucks given that logically both twins should be shown to be equally important.
Thankfully the writing of the book, like the rest of the series was easy to get through. I read the book in about 3-4 sittings across 5-6 days and read about 60% of it in my final sitting. I do admit that I skimmed some of the overblown descriptions that I don’t care much about, but other than that it was pretty smooth on that end. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a bad series, the mythological and historical aspect was fun in many ways but the explanations and how some of the conflicts were resolved leaves quite a bit to be desired in the end.
Final rating: weak 3/5
