Reviewed by sa090 on
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I asked on Reddit for tournament heavy books and this was one of the recommendations, I have also coincidentally added it to my TBR right before I asked that question, so reading it was a no brainer. Thankfully, I did, because Evan Winter is one of the much much better debut authors I have had the pleasure of reading through their debut novel.
I really enjoyed the way he made up the world, it was confusing at first with so so many new terms being thrown around in quick succession, but thankfully, a glossary was added to make the beginning parts of the book easier to get a feel of before I proceeded with the story. Later on, and especially because the terms continue to be used constantly, they stuck in my mind much easier than I initially expected. Granted, only a few were actually explored in bigger details, but given that it’s the first book in a planned series of 4, I’m not too worried about it, although I may have wanted to see other factions up close while reading.
The fighting and the magic system took precedence in this one as we follow Tau and his quest for revenge, this was where the book shined in a way, but it was also where it sort of shows the flaw in some of the elements incorporated by Evan Winter. Specifically the power scaling in the book. The fact that Tau follows the anime abundant shounen protagonist motto of “hard work beats all” was interesting, however, the speed of that growth is where I drew back a bit. What is seemingly going to be taking the 3-6 years or cycles of hard work was mushed together for Tau in less than a year. This created a problem for me as a reader, because of the plot conveniences to the main character.
I would not consider that in itself to be a a felony made by Winter because, let’s face it, everyone does that to a some degree in the “Chosen One” stories. No, I would hold it against this series for one other reason, it makes everyone around Tau so bloody useless and pathetic. If none of the instances of the book is believed to do that, then I urge anyone to reread the mini chapter titled Daaso Headtaker in chapter 14. That chapter solidified for me that every single attempt by Winter to bring in a powerful opponent anywhere, is squashed to bits and pieces when they provide zero struggles to the main character who wasn’t even training for that long for one, and he even had a life altering injury that should have made that leap into greatness much harder still. This leads to another potential problem with the series moving forward.
When you start off a book series with someone so overpowered, it makes me wary of the upcoming opponents. Ridiculous can only be countered by being even more ridiculous and as proven by the very recent and catastrophic dip in quality in a Japanese manga series called Nanatsu no Taizai, it wouldn’t be an easy hole to crawl out of. Obviously, I could be surprised of what the author has in store for me, but I still think that it’s going to be a very hard thing to do.
On the plus sides, the writing of the book is extremely easy to get through. Yes, it took me a while to get through it, I just couldn’t read in earnest until I identified my bigger issues of the book before getting more invested. I’ll say that the second half of the book was more gripping to me, and it took me two sittings to get through it in comparison to the earlier part. It picked up the pace, which I don’t think was an issue to begin with, until the very end where all hell broke loose.
The fighting scenes and how many instances there were of them were appreciated, I of course love my magic so I hoped for more of that side as well, but there is surprising lack of female characters in the spotlight for battle oriented scenes (only women are Gifted, basically magic users), but in the brief spotlights they do have, it’s not hard to see how any of them could actually end up as a very interesting addition to the series later on. Especially with what I later learned about their abilities, the hidden darkness of their Queendom and the outside threat against them. That outside threat, The Hedeni, were interesting to see or learn more about as well, and I’m really looking forward to see what he has in store in regards to them.
That being said though, the characters could use some work. As Tau was the one I spent the majority of my time in this world with, I can start with him and he’s by far the most selfish and self centered prick I have ever read about in recent memory. I have no idea how anyone would ever consider him as a significant other, how anyone would continue vouching for him, how his mind even works when he continues to make the same exact mistakes that led him into the vengeful path to begin with and it’s a shame that someone’s entire existence in this series ended up being his comfort without much purpose. I don’t know about any one else, but once the relationship between Champions and Queen was mentioned, it was easy to see the progression of this story in that regard from a mile away for me and that obviously meant that a character’s status needed to be updated.
Regardless of my personal disgust of that type of relationships between sovereigns and anyone below that explicit rank, it saddened me a bit to see how under utilized some characters in the series were. In addition, in the very end at the epilogue, there was a clear indication of something between the young queen and our protagonist that I’m honestly somewhat not sure how well Winter can write a female character. Again, I’m just shooting it out there as he may very well surprise me, but we’ll see. I hope for a much better conclusion than the one I’m envisioning so here’s to that.
Lastly, I’d like to talk about the society the author made up in this series. The oppression and how rising up against the system might change that, is not a new concept by any means, but I liked how it was portrayed in this series. For instance, despite our protagonist being a part of the “good” guys, learning more about the history of the world and the history of their nation, really has me thinking of what exactly is the good we’re taking about here. And I love that. I like it grey, pure white and pure black is such a boring concept at times and if your history is just as interesting as this one then PLEASE be as grey as you possibly can.
I enjoyed this book in the end, maybe not as much as I would’ve because the main character was terrible in my opinion, and I need a character to care about to care more about the story, I do think that there is room to win me over completely though and I’ll definitely be looking forward see where this goes in the Fire of Vengeance.
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 14 August, 2020: Finished reading
- 14 August, 2020: Reviewed