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thewordslinger 's review for:
The Call of the Void
by S.M. Gaither
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
*sigh*
Y'all I dunno how I feel about this book. I've had criticisms about the first 2 books, but still thought they were pretty good. But this one's suffering from middle book syndrome <i>hard</i>. Because for a large part of the book fucking nothing is going on.
The characters are just sitting around talking to each other in one place or another. Sure, there's the occasional battle to spice things up--but they're never fighting anything of consequence, it's over very quickly (like within a chapter), and there's never any high stakes to make the battle memorable.
The whole plot itself doesn't really <i>go</i> anywhere until the last oh, 35 pages. This book's over 500 pages. There was a LOT of stuff in here that just felt... unnecessary?
I might have given it the benefit of the doubt in the first two books, but now it just seems like this might be Gaither's MO. 400+ pages of boring bullshit followed by about 100 pages (if you're lucky) of action and maybe a tiny bit of character development.
I came out of this one a little frustrated that I'd wasted a colossal amount of time on a book when what I should have done is just read the last quarter and be done with it. It's frustrating because the actual <i>plot</i> part of this story is really interesting.
Something else that's occurred to me coming out of this book is that we're 3 books in now and despite coming up against no less than 3 enemies in no less than 4 separate battles, and our heroes haven't managed to eradicate a single one of them. Not a single enemy has met justice. In fact, on every occasion, the reason the enemy escapes death is... really dumb. Varen should have lost his life like 4 different times by now. The actual god of chaos up and <i>ran away</i> from Elander in the first couple chapters, never to be seen again, I guess because it was convenient to the plot??? The elven queen lady could have at least faced a LITTLE justice for what she did to Cas, but no. Not a single hair on her head was touched. And the ending??? The battle that wasn't a battle because we weren't even present for 80% of it???
You'd think with all these battles the crew is facing SOMEONE would actually be killed other than nameless, faceless NPCs. Where's the high-stakes? Where's the sorrow for losing someone close to you? Where's the sacrifice or the sense of justice for defeating an enemy?
There's been nothing satisfying about any of the battles they've faced. Because they only ones they've won have been against monsters that don't matter. And the times that one of Cas' friends have been killed or injured of swallowed up by the earth (or whatever the hell happened to Laurent), they show up like a chapter later, fully intact, sometimes even upgraded.
So chapter 36 was completely fucking pointless and dramatic for no damned reason at all.
So we have a story where like 75% of the time nothing's going on, with battles that go nowhere, aren't interesting, or life-threatening. A story where every character close to the FMC has some serious plot armor. Why did this series need to be 5 whole books long? Because if we trimmed the fat and kept JUST the plot stuff, this could easily have been a trilogy.
It's hard to root for someone when you're 3 books into a 5 book story and they've accomplished almost nothing, you know?
Y'all I dunno how I feel about this book. I've had criticisms about the first 2 books, but still thought they were pretty good. But this one's suffering from middle book syndrome <i>hard</i>. Because for a large part of the book fucking nothing is going on.
The characters are just sitting around talking to each other in one place or another. Sure, there's the occasional battle to spice things up--but they're never fighting anything of consequence, it's over very quickly (like within a chapter), and there's never any high stakes to make the battle memorable.
The whole plot itself doesn't really <i>go</i> anywhere until the last oh, 35 pages. This book's over 500 pages. There was a LOT of stuff in here that just felt... unnecessary?
I might have given it the benefit of the doubt in the first two books, but now it just seems like this might be Gaither's MO. 400+ pages of boring bullshit followed by about 100 pages (if you're lucky) of action and maybe a tiny bit of character development.
I came out of this one a little frustrated that I'd wasted a colossal amount of time on a book when what I should have done is just read the last quarter and be done with it. It's frustrating because the actual <i>plot</i> part of this story is really interesting.
Something else that's occurred to me coming out of this book is that we're 3 books in now and despite coming up against no less than 3 enemies in no less than 4 separate battles, and our heroes haven't managed to eradicate a single one of them. Not a single enemy has met justice. In fact, on every occasion, the reason the enemy escapes death is... really dumb. Varen should have lost his life like 4 different times by now. The actual god of chaos up and <i>ran away</i> from Elander in the first couple chapters, never to be seen again, I guess because it was convenient to the plot??? The elven queen lady could have at least faced a LITTLE justice for what she did to Cas, but no. Not a single hair on her head was touched. And the ending??? The battle that wasn't a battle because we weren't even present for 80% of it???
You'd think with all these battles the crew is facing SOMEONE would actually be killed other than nameless, faceless NPCs. Where's the high-stakes? Where's the sorrow for losing someone close to you? Where's the sacrifice or the sense of justice for defeating an enemy?
There's been nothing satisfying about any of the battles they've faced. Because they only ones they've won have been against monsters that don't matter. And the times that one of Cas' friends have been killed or injured of swallowed up by the earth (or whatever the hell happened to Laurent), they show up like a chapter later, fully intact, sometimes even upgraded.
So chapter 36 was completely fucking pointless and dramatic for no damned reason at all.
So we have a story where like 75% of the time nothing's going on, with battles that go nowhere, aren't interesting, or life-threatening. A story where every character close to the FMC has some serious plot armor. Why did this series need to be 5 whole books long? Because if we trimmed the fat and kept JUST the plot stuff, this could easily have been a trilogy.
It's hard to root for someone when you're 3 books into a 5 book story and they've accomplished almost nothing, you know?