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A review by everybody
Fury of a Phoenix by Shannon Mayer
3.0
The first book in this series was entertaining, with a similar vibe to the John Wick movies.
This is a dark but not particularly deep action movie in book form.
The author never lets an opportunity go by to point out, in a somewhat passive-aggressive manner, that the protagonist doesn't make clichéed decisions for plot purposes or otherwise.
This often takes the form of, "Of course, I don't do clichéd thing X, but instead..." However, this becomes frustrating because the author starts to use these same clichés as plot devices, especially in the sequels.
In the finale of the third book, this became so abysmally bad that I dropped it, even though I was only a couple of hours away from the end of the series.
In the sequels, the fight scenes are often reminiscent of classic action movie choreography.
For fights against grunts, it feels like playing one of those retro 2D brawlers where everyone just waits for you to whup their asses. For "boss battles", the scenes frequently feel like those stupid action movie fights that are essentially round-based.
The magic is soft as a baby bunny. While there are stories that can work well with vague magic, this is not one of them. It never seems like there is any internal logic behind the magic that the reader just doesn't know about. It's arbitrary at best and is often used as a plot device to adjust situations to the author's needs.
All that being said, it sounds really bad, but I actually had fun reading the series, especially the first book, and the second one was fine as well. However, the flaws kept piling up over time, making it worse and worse, and by the third book, it just became too much for me.
To be fair, I want to mention that some aspects of story-telling, that I frequently find horrendously butchered by other authors, are really well done in this series.
This is a dark but not particularly deep action movie in book form.
The author never lets an opportunity go by to point out, in a somewhat passive-aggressive manner, that the protagonist doesn't make clichéed decisions for plot purposes or otherwise.
This often takes the form of, "Of course, I don't do clichéd thing X, but instead..." However, this becomes frustrating because the author starts to use these same clichés as plot devices, especially in the sequels.
In the finale of the third book, this became so abysmally bad that I dropped it, even though I was only a couple of hours away from the end of the series.
In the sequels, the fight scenes are often reminiscent of classic action movie choreography.
For fights against grunts, it feels like playing one of those retro 2D brawlers where everyone just waits for you to whup their asses. For "boss battles", the scenes frequently feel like those stupid action movie fights that are essentially round-based.
The magic is soft as a baby bunny. While there are stories that can work well with vague magic, this is not one of them. It never seems like there is any internal logic behind the magic that the reader just doesn't know about. It's arbitrary at best and is often used as a plot device to adjust situations to the author's needs.
All that being said, it sounds really bad, but I actually had fun reading the series, especially the first book, and the second one was fine as well. However, the flaws kept piling up over time, making it worse and worse, and by the third book, it just became too much for me.
To be fair, I want to mention that some aspects of story-telling, that I frequently find horrendously butchered by other authors, are really well done in this series.