Reviews

Nolan by James Crawford

iwatooshi's review against another edition

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1.0

he was my favourite you bastard

lydsansthekidd's review against another edition

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1.0

In the other two books, I didn't see as many errors as other people were mentioning. This book though was riddled with them. On multiple occasions, I had to reread lines to hash out what was trying to be conveyed. Words were constantly missing or needlessly repeated. It was distracting.

The entire ending of this book was pretty anti-climatic. Nolan's death was absolute garbage. He tries to commit suicide to save Caleo (also Jack had no qualms about shooting him if he didn't which is messed up). Then, Steve, who has been a thorn in this book's side the entire time because he's clearly the baddie yet we somehow get hung up on Alix, kills him. I'm almost willing to forgive it because yes, he did claim at the beginning that he would be the one to kill his brother, but it makes Nolan's already stupid gesture worse because it means that Steve got his essence which means Caleo is still dying.

To save the day, Jack becomes a Leech in the worst and biggest example of Deus Ex Machina I've ever seen. He gets all of the powers that he's ever seen from the Angel? Really? And he has complete mastery over all of them so that he can save the day, but more importantly to him Caleo. We're not even gonna explain the whole Angel appearing to him thing? Like... it was weird and didn't make much sense to me after what we've been told about the Angel up until this point.

To be clear, I'm not mad that Jack is a Leech. I assumed that eventually he would be. I was waiting for it in book 2 to be honest. I'd have been super fine with that. Sure, you loose the character that the reader is supposed to relate to because he's human, but again, I'd have been fine with that. What I'm not fine with is this Rogue X-Men garbage. I didn't even think it was great when Caleo could use other people's powers by touching them, but at least I could accept it. Jack just being able to call powers to his memory exactly at the right second that he needs them. No, unacceptable.

I definitely feel that there was a better way to end this series. I feel awful for basically just crapping on this last book, but honestly, I expected more.

zelda75's review against another edition

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4.0

3/4 stars
I wanted to finish the series badly but now i don't know how i feel about it. I liked the end or not? I've mixed feeling about this last book. So sad for Nolan but happy for Caleo and Jack. Many events to follow and a bit hard to follow the plot.

cyanide_latte's review

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3.0

At last, we have the final book in the Leech trilogy for me to review, having finished it.

So, here's where I'm at with this book. As usual, there are some spelling and grammatical errors throughout, but I do feel like this book is the most polished as far as spelling and grammar go out of all three. The formatting for this book is also very cleaned up and the font the book is written in is much easier on the eyes than the font used in the other two books.

Now, I do think this was a pretty decent conclusion to the Leech trilogy. Again, the combat moments feel a little confusing and rushed at times, but overall the events that happen are a decent close to the story. And it ended in a way that made me quite happy. Plus, Mickey. Mickey is arguably the best character in the entire trilogy in my personal opinion, and he shines pretty bright in this book.

Here's my one issue with it all:
Nolan, the character this book is named for.
So Nolan is one-third of the love triangle involving Jack and Caleo as well, which was sort of set up for us in the first book. When Caleo and Jack first meet Nolan in book one, Caleo's definitely drawn to Nolan, and that's pretty obvious. Throughout the books there is tension between the three because Nolan and Jack both have feelings for Caleo, who is understandably confused about how he feels. I honestly didn't really care for the love triangle setup, because Nolan's sexual attraction to a guy who is a LOT younger than himself came off as forced, creepy, and disconnected from his other reasons for being around Caleo. Jack's feelings for Caleo felt more organic and natural, and Caleo just seemed like he was constantly being dragged around by puppetstrings regarding figuring out his sexual attraction to Nolan versus what he feels for Jack.
Additionally, at one point in this book, Caleo briefly believes Jack is killed and more or less flings himself at Nolan for comfort and the two have sex. Caleo declares to himself he loves Nolan, and later tries to assure himself that's the case simply because "Jack is a human and if I fall in love with him and he grows old and dies, that'll hurt". Honestly, the mention of comfort sex between Nolan and Caleo felt forced and like a cheap grab to see how many shippers would get on board with that.
And I just ultimately felt no emotional pull to connect with Nolan. We get a brief glimpse into his past via psychic flashback, but it's still not very emotionally moving to read. (Not to mention, whereas the previous two books really stayed with the POV of the character they were named for, this one didn't. For this book being named Nolan, we never really got Nolan's POV at all, and he's not even in it for more than half the plot. Naming this book Nolan feels kind of lazy, as it didn't follow the structure of the previous two books at all, and there was no real point of connection to Nolan as a character emotionally, at least not as far as I'm concerned.)
So yeah, in case you couldn't tell...I HATE Nolan as a character. He can choke.


But overall I'm happy I've finished reading this series, and I'm glad that I bought it. I definitely enjoyed the world and concept that Crawford created, and if he ever chooses to revisit this world or build a similar one, I'd like to see what he writes next and how he grows as a writer.
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