Cradle Books 2-6

I read these books a few days ago so my impressions are a bit stale, but I have a lot to say about them, or at least I did.

My classification of the books as plot-based did not need to change at all through the series. The characters have enough quirks to be distinctive, but they're not really deep. I like at least a little bit of romance, and given that the main character is male and his companion is female, it only makes sense for this to come up. But the closest it comes to this is a ship-tease, where for half a paragraph or so the woman notices how close the man is or something like that and her cheeks warm up. Seriously, there is no examination of feelings whatsoever. The man is even worse--from his point of view, the only hint of him having any romantic inclinations whatsoever are when he sees women under-dressed and gets embarrassed. It's unrealistic in my opinion, but it's hardly the only thing. But it is kind of nice that such a fantasy series exists when so many modern fantasy series are obsessed with sex and even sexual deviancy.

The writing is quite good. It gives enough details that to avoid both the cold, empty environments of that fanfiction writer ShayneT and the plodding pace of most high fantasy novels. Although, to be honest, I do skim the battle sections because they tend to have more detail than I like.

If I could sum up these books in a sentence, I would call them “An RPG/fighting game converted as well as possible into a book series”. Furthermore, I think they would make a great video game if anyone decided to do that adaptation. There is very little that happens in the book which isn’t fighting, training, or planning to fight or train, or being subjected to the will of someone thereby leading to fighting. I found myself constantly amazed at the author’s continuing escalation of conflict. The main character starts at the bottom of the power totem pole, but by the end of the sixth book he is (apparently) practically a god compared to the people who pushed him around growing up. Throughout the series he is constantly making (stronger and stronger) bitter enemies who are defeated sooner or later. It gets a little old.

In conclusion, this is an exciting series that worked well as a time killer, but I don’t expect to remember any details in a year. Which might be nice—maybe I’ll be able to enjoy it a second time just because it was so unmemorable.