Good but hard to get through

The overall story is good but the way it's written is rough to listen to because everything is repeated so many times, it makes you lose focus on the story and you end up just wishing it would move on. Also the main character seems to constantly forget that they had already achieved some milestone or skill and won then end up conflicted about the same thing all over again.

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Generally enjoyable

For the most part, I have enjoyed this book, I disagree that its slow in regards to the book in general as I have not been bored, however, this book suffers from my pet peeves in that the characters failing to explain themselves which too frequently results in his friends not believing what they have said. What is also So annoying is his disbelief in his own ability even though he frequently acknowledges he's been able to use the particular element several times. Urgh, it is off-putting but outside of these complaints, I am still enjoying the book. I agree with another reviewer in that there needs to have been a very significant change in book 4 otherwise I'm not sure I will continue the series.

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good story but!

sellf centered main character who wants everyone's secrets but won't share his own
Frustrating boy

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Too slow for me

Hard to keep interested as not much happens tolen just keeps going around in circles and doesn't seem to do much

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Repetitive writing and odd pauses

The story could be interesting but the writer repeats points, often multiple times in the same inner monologue. It is easy to lose focus on the story.
The reader makes odd pauses and inflections during the performance, it is robotic and does not help the story continue to follow

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down right sucked eggs

I listened to the first book and pushed my way through it, hoping it would get better, but holy shit this series sucks.

the author has created a knock off Harry potter but worse. the main character is incompetent and has these seemingly "out of the norm" powers/connection to the elements that he can't understand. but instead of asking his superiors to help explain this or guide him in learning, he just decides to not tell anyone anything about this and goes around telling himself and others that he "has no power" or "can't do it" but also puts absolutely no energy and will power into figuring it out by himself. he puts his nose in where its not needed and the author has created this plot line where apparently all these "master crafters" are completely useless and can't do anything, but this fridged little idiot of a character with his "abnormal" abilities is able to fix everything and is always there to save the day.

idk this series is just slow and shitty and predictable and just sucks eggs. if you would like a good series, go listen to the mark of the fool series or the fury of the rising dragon series. at least those authors found a way to create a main character that isn't both a complete idiot as well as gifted and amazing..... I just.... I just hated this.

DON'T BOTHER LISTENING UNLESS YOU'RE DESPERATE

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not worth your time

I got these books because the premise seemed interesting, but I regret that decision.

To start with, the reader put a weird inflection into every sentence that make them flow like a river of bricks, and it makes it so the tone of every single line is exactly the same no matter what is happening.

But it's not just the performance. the writer seems to believe that if something is worth saying once, its worth saying 15 times. I lost count of how many times certain facts were reiterated over and over.

despite that, I gave it the benefit of the doubt and made it to the end of the first book, which was a struggle on it's own, but the effort was far from worth it. The plot is subpar at best. simple rule of the thumb: how well your audience understands your magic system should be directly proportional to how important magic is to resolving conflicts. For a plot where basically every conflict is solved with the magic system, how it works is pretty wishy washy.

How powerful is Tolan? How do we even measure the 'power' of a person? what is a shaping capable of? it might be quicker to ask if there is anything a shaping can't do. So it's limited by a person's power and control? but we can't measure either of those. Even so, how much power and control Tolan has seems to change depending on the situation.

But it's not just the magic system that is inconsistent, the characters are too. I suppose I should warn that I am going to talk about things happening in the lead up to and during the final confrontation, but I won't be specific, so there won't be spoilers

Say, can you tell me if Ferah, in the lead up to the final confrontation is A) hesitant to continue, or B) excited by what they might find? Trick question, it changes on a per minute basis.

Bringing back my point from earlier, Tolan asks the antagonist the exact same question at least five times during the final fight. And I mean the question was exactly the same. What's odd though is that the antagonist actually answered him with new information each time. I'm not exaggerating when I say it reminded me of a video game dialogue tree where a glitch made it so one character just spouted the same line over and over, and the other talked like they were having an actual conversation.

All in all, there is some interesting ideas in here, but the execution fails on every level imaginable. not worth your time.

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