progression but no results

I want to first say that this book in and of itself deserves closer to 4 stars. The reason I’m giving it 2 stars is because it is book 6. 6 books in and the MC is more useless and uninteresting magically than in book 1. I absolutely love that the author is writing a fleshed out magic system and maintaining consistency, but unfortunately the magic use is boring. The one fight in the story showed how ineffective she is and how limited her abilities are. Yea she is hard to kill but it’s had to make that interesting magically. Love the idea of scripts and concepts but being endurable and manipulating gravity that doesn’t work on most of her foes sucks. It’s dope she resolves family issues but none of the interesting things progress. We don’t find out more about Arcanes or the pillars of humanity. One of the biggest issues with cultivation based magic systems is you get entire books of supposed growth with very little to show for it. From book 1-6 she is harder to kill, can bind more items, and can connect slightly easier for her gravity manipulation. Barely any difference at all.1 J316

I d it for the most part, and I'm glad to see we're starting a new arc.
I was a big fan of the final section. The family reunion was fairly well done and I think expanding the pool of PoVs into Tala's larger social circle is a good thing as we continue forward.

Definitely still some things to work through with said family, and things Tala just casually breaking her own bones so she can heal them. That's not normal.


But I have some concerns, two big ones.

1) Alat. Alat was . . . fine in this book. But I am very worried about how well I will hold up against an entire series of this neverending back and forth dialog between Tala and Alat on every, single, thing. I think 1/3 of this book is them just talking. It's not that interesting and it means Tala can almost never be alone in any scene ever again. It gives me big Dross vibes from Cradle. And I hated Dross. He was so problematic to the structure of that series once he was introduced.

2) Too many powers. Tala is getting a little out of control with how many tools she has at her disposal. Gravity magic, passive gravity magic, Flow, Terry, blood stones, high-speed regeneration, durability, strength, a super-unique, experimental-but-somehow-completely-non-problematic living computer in her head that can exposit everything and even directly tells the audience when the protagonist is going through character growth. And now this dissolution breath that is being set up to make Tala more effective against things stronger than her? I don't that at all. Even if it was shown there are counters to it, it seems way more upside than downside. Breadth over depth is kind of humanity's thing in this universe, but just from a storytelling perspective it seems it'll become really unwieldy and hard to balance.

There's a lot of talk about things always having tradeoffs, but most of Tala's abilities have none. She used to have trade-offs in the form of her magic rings being a precious resource. But that problem has been mostly obviated. And even new powers are coming in with essentially zero problems. The breath is effectively infinite because so many seeds were harvested.


Some more minor stuff: We never saw the growing chambers, even though Tala had plenty of time to investigate. Also, it was kind of weird how . . . un-introduced the parents were. I know the point is that Tala doesn't want to interact with them, but they're still present and I have no mental image of them physically or of their personalities. Kevin1,441 25

That was nice.

I finished all the available books (not going to read the Royal Road offers). It ended in a good spot that I'm not manic about the next book.

Really don't know what the outcome of the series will be.

There is a lot of hidden truths that were tossed out the dimensional storage pouch having a creator, other planets with life, the bird being more than it seems, etc, etc.

We will see what the future brings.

3/5 Stars M L Brooks 523 8

A stagnant pacing

Tala has been working on the whole fused thing for most of the series so far and while I get she's a prodigy and she's done it faster than others having this one goal that she's creeping towards has really made the plot stagnate. Still other than that it was a good book. Hugh7

Quirky fun, Action and Tears

The sixth book in the Tala series and still going strong. There is humour, character development, facing past trauma, action, human interest and tears. It is a real world with real people and magic and the author has continued to open up new aspects to his world. I've thoroughly enjoyed this series and hope to read more by the author in the future. Jeremy Shelton 52 1 follower

I love this series

This story keeps getting better with each installment. I’ve grown to love the trips they take and ways they progress. I hope others keep reading these so the author will keep writing them. Ashley278 2

That goodness that trauma starts to be addressed in this book because 5 books of being affected by family trauma and not doing anything about it was too much.
I appreciate how much Tallah grows as a person and matures.
A very cosy book, well until the epilogue.
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