Josh
Great continuation of the great first book! The overall setting is just as tortured and inevitably corrupt as the chunk of the world the first book explored, but Piety's own life is less dark. This was a welcome change for me since it makes for a more uplifting read while mostly maintaining the grimdark tone.
This book was awesome! Highly recommended. I'm sure I could find stuff I didn't like about it, but by the end I just didn't want to. The main character is kind of ...stupid... but not in a terribly annoying way and I was still rooting for him by the end. The characters feel kind of like they fell out of a manga since they're kind of over the top, but I like all of the main characters and I think it worked really well with the colossal amount of drama that supports the excellently paced plot. There were definitely some clever (and terribly sad) twists to the plot - though I have to admit the story was similar enough to Foundryside that I wasn't super surprised at the big boss battle. The magic is kind of hand-wavy a la just do whatever you want, but the story doesn't need technical magic to succeed. 10/10 would read this telenovela again.
My first step into Russian fantasy - there appear to be real thematic and structural differences to my standard fare though those may be solely Dyachenko characteristics. I found this book to be surprisingly disturbing; I wasn't expecting quite so much of a horror element as I found though it did make for an enthralling read. The mystery of what the characters really are build with fantastic tension, but I didn't feel very satisfied with the climax and resolution... I'll definitely read the next one when it's translated, but if it ends similarly unresolved I likely won't continue.
A promising start to the series. The prose is a little bit over-expletived for my taste, but the dialogue is nonetheless very engaging and seems true to character
This book was great! I liked most of the characters and felt like the magic system was extremely believable - a cleverly twisted fantastical take on the role computers play irl. It reminds me of the Legend of Eli Monpress, but not so much as to detract from its originality. The plot overall wasn't exactly mind bending, and things played out more or less as expected, but I was easily carried away by the story and the pacing is on point. A cleverly portrayed glimpse at the nominal freedom of modern society. There is a touch of romance that seems somewhat sudden and shoehorned in, but there are only so many pages a book can have and it really isn't the point of the story anyhow. Extremely compelling ending; I can't wait for the next one.
Not a particularly uplifting read - it's a dark book that deals with dark themes well enough. It's on a fairly short time-scale but I didn't feel like the characters developed all that much. Fortunately they're reasonably interesting characters to start with, but the characters do feel fairly flat. I don't think I'm really the target audience for this book, but I'll probably read the next one.
I guess I'm probably just too old for this book. Seems like it's about on the same level as the Inheritance cycle which I enjoyed then and not so much now. The biggest flaw I see with this book is that there's no introduction to characters or concepts - its the DLC of Eragon etc... it didn't take me very long to dig up memories of who and what was being talked about, but nobody could read this book without having first read the original series. While the stories were enjoyable on their own, I don't care for the effort to tie them all together to the main storyline - works great in NotW, but here I just don't feel invested in what's going on in the “real world” enough.
Just awesome!
Armageddon is an incredible continuation of power escalation for the cast of awaken online with the promise of more mystery and adventure in coming installments! Great ending!
I enjoyed the first book a lot but the sequel was somewhat less enjoyable. I think I would've enjoyed it more as a teen, but the characters weren't developed enough to capture my current attention. I still find the story interesting enough to continue. The magic system is developing into something... odd - starting to feel more like a philosophical construct than a real plot device.
Wow this series suddenly went waay down the rabbit role. Went where I hoped it wasn't headed after the last book. By itself the supernatural explanation of christianity/other world religions would be fine - I've found it enjoyable before. Here, the additional of a fairly philosophical discussion of morality/religion coupled with extremely juvenile characters is just too clashy to be fun. A good enough ending as far as tying up loose ends goes, but it wasn't very exciting.
This book was really fun; I like heist stories, dragon stories, and “fight the power” stories, and this does all of them well. The 90's rom-com romance is fine - doesn't add or detract from the story. Didn't figure out the ending until it had arrived. Waiting for the next one!