1/5 stars
Synopsis
Warning! This section contains spoilers, if you would like to avoid these spoilers, jump to the review below.
I was not able to finish this book. I made it to 15% of the way through.
The book started off with Jake waking up and going to work. He had a feeling that the day was going to be different. He wasn’t sure why. Then Jake was suddenly transported to an area with a strange humanoid. This humanoid greeted him and gave him options for choosing a class. Jake chose archery, and he was put in a tutorial with other people.
After being transported to the tutorial, Jake and the group he was with had to fight several things. Of course, Jake was so perfect that he accounted for most of the damage. One of these fights (Jake started it) resulted in a group member losing her leg. Jake was completely unrepentant of the role he played in her losing her leg and came to the conclusion that it was completely her fault for stumbling and freezing mid-battle. After they set up camp, Jake decided to take a look around, and ran into three hostile humans. Before he could warn the group, they attacked him. Of course, he was able to hold his own against a swordsman, axe man, and archer. He could even sense when the arrows were coming from behind him, and he was able to sway to the side slightly, reach over his shoulder, and grab the arrow from the air because he was just so awesome. And then, after the fight, he was standing over the bodies, completely drenched in blood, as his group finally made their way over to see what was going on. Jake was grinning because he felt good. Really good. Because apparently the “sensations that came from facing down certain death and coming out on top were wonderful.” (This was literally what it said in the book.)
After the sociopathic behavior from Jake, he yelled at the group that this was their new reality, and to get with the program or be killed. They started moving again, and came across more people. These people proposed an alliance. But Jake felt there was something wrong, and so he warned the group, then provoked the enemy leader, and walked away. The enemy leader sent a squad after him to hunt and kill him, but Jake expected this and killed six out of the seven hunters. He sent the one he left alive back to the enemy leader with a message.
Review
I didn’t feel like this book had good character development. Jake seemed like a normal, if a little weak, person at the beginning of the book. But once he chose his class, it seemed like he became a different person entirely. He gained a special sense that let him know when he was in danger or when something wasn’t right. Where did this sixth sense come from? There was no build up to it. Was it a result of him choosing the archery class? One moment he didn’t have it, the next, he did.
Jake did not seem like a normal person emotionally. As soon as he got his class, he suddenly loved fighting and killing. How did he know how to fight? He was a desk worker, I think, before he got a class. He had no fighting experience before becoming an archer. But he was able to fight against multiple people alone, in the dark, and win with ease, even going so far as to catch an arrow that was fired at him from behind. I found this to be super unrealistic, and it took me completely out of the story.
The writing style was passive, describing things after it happened instead of as it was happening. It was really tedious. I frequently had to go back and fill in the blanks because the movements of the characters were not described. It would have been better if the author wrote what was happening as it happened, instead of skipping over what happened and just writing what the result of it.
I often found myself looking at how far I had read in the book, just wishing it was over because it was boring. The author just seemed to waffle on. It was almost like he was trying to get as many words as he could into the book, to make it as long as he could. Very, very frequently there would be paragraphs of philosophical musings. I know some people enjoy philosophy; however, I am not one of those people. I would like to read an actual story, not philosophy. The author could have trimmed those parts out of the book, and I feel like it would not have impacted the story at all. If he was trying to impart a lesson to the reader, I don’t know what it was. I wouldn’t have minded the philosophical musings as much if it seemed like they actually had a lesson they were trying to teach.
I think the author tried to make Jake a little bit like a lone wolf. Tough and resilient and able to go it alone. However, the further I read, the more I became convinced that Jake was a narcissistic sociopath. He loved hunting people, loved killing. And he was always right. Every decision and action he made was always the correct one. He could do no wrong. Some authors can make this type of character work, if the character grows throughout the story. Or even attempts to grow. But Jake did not grow. He saw no reason to change the way he was. In fact, other people were the problem in his opinion. Granted, I didn’t read through the entire book, but I skimmed through it a bit, and it did not change.
Fireheart Books 