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A review by donsmilo
Siphon by Jay Boyce
3.0
I greatly disliked the second book. If you've read my reviews and think you are like me, don't bother reading this book series.
Book 1:
It was a fun book about a perfect and over powered main character sent to a world of magic from another world. I appreciate the execution of the world building and the characters. However, things are not entirely logical in the book. When the character first comes into the world she treats people like dirt. Her inner monologue shows that she’s actually a good person, but her dialogue does nothing to indicate that. However, people magically become friends with her anyway for no apparent reason, which I find rather inconsistent and unrealistic. When she is deciding what to learn, she seems to be rather aimless and not driven. Overall, the story is driven by random events that happened to her instead of because of some over arching purpose. This is the last like a story about a main character and more like a catalog of random events
Book 2:
1) the MC is a jerk to half the people she meets but they love her anyway
2) the MC is written to try to make us like her, but she blatantly doesn’t care about other people. She never tries to really understand much less try to help the classes under her
3) the rest of the world are written as blatantly dumb, with the MC figuring out things that the reader saw ages ago and presenting them as new to a kingdom that has existed with magic for bazillions of years longer than the mc
4) the mc is supposed to be smart but is dumb. On one hand, she is supposed to be a genius who is better than other people at everything, while on the other hand, she pursues dumb business ventures and projects. (Somehow her main source of income is lighted Christmas ornaments that she only takes a cut on while she comes from the real world and should be inventing the wheel (yeah, the inhabitants of the world are dumb) or selling her death gun to the military (given her blatant disregard for oppression or human lives that are out of sight)
5) the magic is ruleless, like soft magic, but is given specific capabilities, like hard magic. This creates tons of situations where magic should be able to do something but it isn’t practiced or used by her or anyone, much to the irritation of a smart audience (like in sci-fi, if you are gonna detail your railguns don’t leave me without radiators). She only uses gravity magic to help lift boxes, she only uses flight to bounce on her bed.
6) the softness means that she randomly gets unearned level ups that make no sense with the otherwise hard known capabilities of magic. For example, most magic functions like alchemy in fmab but with the stipulation that matter to energy conversion and energy to matter conversion is easy. However, when the author wants her to blame the light magic teacher for not teaching combat light magic (why did he deserve to get reamed? She’s a jerk) suddenly it’s revealed that wind speeds up light, and light can punch (as in, transfer force to shatter things, not just melt things like a laser) through solid rock instantly, and can easily be continuously bent to create a semi physical shield that also somehow deflects other light. Don’t get me wrong, I could accept this if this whole “magic doesn’t follow physics“ idea carried through for all kinds of magic, but it doesn’t. All the other types of magic, like water blood and healing rely on proper physics and established rules (you need to know body structures to heal them correctly, water is formed into ice to attack, etc).
Old:
This reads like a 5 year old telling me about their day at school. This happened, then this happened, then this that and the other thing. There is not really a reason to care. The characters are one dimensional, with boys existing solely to fawn over and fought to protect the main character and girls being token friends and piggybanks. It’s not horrible by any stretch, but it is far from good. The world development seems to be using harder magic than something like lotr but there are no definite limits, so every “advancement” feels unearned and random, feeling like a plot tool to make the mc stronger. Also, the mc is incredibly inconsistent. She shows off one moment, then loves all people, then is an immature girl, then kills animals, feels nothing, and casually decides to exterminate all the bad animals. During this we have no sense of how strong the mc is and are continually frustrated by things that should be possible under the previously shown limits of magic not being considered. Also, the mc randomly throws a fit at a teacher for teaching the curriculum and not teaching them how to make death lasers. That in particular lost me. It seemed so out of character and illogical. Then she showed them her magic projector, which Can be a laser gun or a flame thrower or anything else and everyone reacts with supreme disinterest and leaves the most potent weapon in the world behind to go have lunch. The mc is supposed to be a super genius with godly mental stats but also her ideas for modern technology to introduce are sunglasses and zippers and lightsabers.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s got effort put into it, but it is so incredibly illogical while pretending to make sense that it is unreadable.
Not that I would write a better book though :) so what does my opinion really matter?
Book 1:
It was a fun book about a perfect and over powered main character sent to a world of magic from another world. I appreciate the execution of the world building and the characters. However, things are not entirely logical in the book. When the character first comes into the world she treats people like dirt. Her inner monologue shows that she’s actually a good person, but her dialogue does nothing to indicate that. However, people magically become friends with her anyway for no apparent reason, which I find rather inconsistent and unrealistic. When she is deciding what to learn, she seems to be rather aimless and not driven. Overall, the story is driven by random events that happened to her instead of because of some over arching purpose. This is the last like a story about a main character and more like a catalog of random events
Book 2:
1) the MC is a jerk to half the people she meets but they love her anyway
2) the MC is written to try to make us like her, but she blatantly doesn’t care about other people. She never tries to really understand much less try to help the classes under her
3) the rest of the world are written as blatantly dumb, with the MC figuring out things that the reader saw ages ago and presenting them as new to a kingdom that has existed with magic for bazillions of years longer than the mc
4) the mc is supposed to be smart but is dumb. On one hand, she is supposed to be a genius who is better than other people at everything, while on the other hand, she pursues dumb business ventures and projects. (Somehow her main source of income is lighted Christmas ornaments that she only takes a cut on while she comes from the real world and should be inventing the wheel (yeah, the inhabitants of the world are dumb) or selling her death gun to the military (given her blatant disregard for oppression or human lives that are out of sight)
5) the magic is ruleless, like soft magic, but is given specific capabilities, like hard magic. This creates tons of situations where magic should be able to do something but it isn’t practiced or used by her or anyone, much to the irritation of a smart audience (like in sci-fi, if you are gonna detail your railguns don’t leave me without radiators). She only uses gravity magic to help lift boxes, she only uses flight to bounce on her bed.
6) the softness means that she randomly gets unearned level ups that make no sense with the otherwise hard known capabilities of magic. For example, most magic functions like alchemy in fmab but with the stipulation that matter to energy conversion and energy to matter conversion is easy. However, when the author wants her to blame the light magic teacher for not teaching combat light magic (why did he deserve to get reamed? She’s a jerk) suddenly it’s revealed that wind speeds up light, and light can punch (as in, transfer force to shatter things, not just melt things like a laser) through solid rock instantly, and can easily be continuously bent to create a semi physical shield that also somehow deflects other light. Don’t get me wrong, I could accept this if this whole “magic doesn’t follow physics“ idea carried through for all kinds of magic, but it doesn’t. All the other types of magic, like water blood and healing rely on proper physics and established rules (you need to know body structures to heal them correctly, water is formed into ice to attack, etc).
Old:
This reads like a 5 year old telling me about their day at school. This happened, then this happened, then this that and the other thing. There is not really a reason to care. The characters are one dimensional, with boys existing solely to fawn over and fought to protect the main character and girls being token friends and piggybanks. It’s not horrible by any stretch, but it is far from good. The world development seems to be using harder magic than something like lotr but there are no definite limits, so every “advancement” feels unearned and random, feeling like a plot tool to make the mc stronger. Also, the mc is incredibly inconsistent. She shows off one moment, then loves all people, then is an immature girl, then kills animals, feels nothing, and casually decides to exterminate all the bad animals. During this we have no sense of how strong the mc is and are continually frustrated by things that should be possible under the previously shown limits of magic not being considered. Also, the mc randomly throws a fit at a teacher for teaching the curriculum and not teaching them how to make death lasers. That in particular lost me. It seemed so out of character and illogical. Then she showed them her magic projector, which Can be a laser gun or a flame thrower or anything else and everyone reacts with supreme disinterest and leaves the most potent weapon in the world behind to go have lunch. The mc is supposed to be a super genius with godly mental stats but also her ideas for modern technology to introduce are sunglasses and zippers and lightsabers.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s got effort put into it, but it is so incredibly illogical while pretending to make sense that it is unreadable.
Not that I would write a better book though :) so what does my opinion really matter?