patremagne 's review for:

The Shadow Throne by Django Wexler
3.0

Edit for formatting.

I don't really know what to rate this, but it's somewhere between 3 and 4, though I may round up to 4 at some point because it was entertaining.

I also don't know when I got so critical, but here are the main issues I had:

Orlanko was painfully two-dimensional, almost straight out of a cartoon, so much so that I had no issue imagining him twirling a great moustache beneath his gigantic spectacles. I had trouble seeing any motivation behind his actions other than the fact he's a bad dude who wants to fuck shit up.

Very vague spoilers, as these two were fairly predictable
Spoiler
Raesinia's gang of what, late teens/early 20s people outsmarting the supposed political genius that is Orlanko?

The volunteers turning into surprisingly successful skirmishers after a week of training.


Repetition: Maybe since I saw the post on Reddit about how many times Wexler uses "make preparations" in the book my brain has been tuned into it, but I lost count of the amount of times I heard "small of her back". And I swear, if I didn't know otherwise, I'd think Janus was a Vulkan based on how many times he says "logic".

Janus was, as I've seen others remark, a total Gary Stu, but it's for that reason that I loved him. All in all I did enjoy the book, as it had great action and mostly good characters, but with some reservations. Maybe someone can share some insight that I missed while listening, as that can happen with audiobooks.