hannahfyed 's review for:

Bastille vs. the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson, Janci Patterson

2.0

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I am disappointed. This is the first book I've read by Janci Patterson (haven't read any Cytoverse books), and I'm... not a fan. Bastille doesn't have much of a personality beyond wanting to stab things. I'm glad we finally see a Gak, but the "strawman" climax does not make sense and is not the level of cleverness I expected. We don't see many new Smedry talents; it's mostly retreads. The thing with the blood-forged lens--what? No explanation given by cryptic Attica on how that works. No payoff with Shasta. Characters that played important roles in past books vanish (Rykers, Sing, Australia, Shasta). The romance was unnecessary. Maybe I'm picking on Patterson, but there are also a lot of repeated words and phrases (mewling, blood-thirsty vengeance, glowered) that even the commentary that pokes fun at authors and writing doesn't alleviate. I'm torn on whether to recommend this series. The first four books were hilarious and fun, but the last two felt half-hearted and unsatisfactory.