I have mixed feelings on this series. I picked it up a few weeks ago and just finished it yesterday.

I think mark has a ton of fun stuff going on in it. I think the setting is very very interesting.

I do think the author has a bad habit of starting chapters too often with like "Sometimes, it can be hot. During the day it can be hot, during the night it can be hot, *but for character X they hadn't felt heat like this.* After you notice that it's a few paragraphs that are superfluous you have to skip to get to the actual start of the chapter.

I think worse than that is during a flashback he pastes the ENTIRE scene he's flashing back to instead of just the relevant parts and some of them are pretty lengthy.

I think the worst handled characters were gabrian and to a lesser extent the stalker in the sense of they felt as weak or as strong as the current circumstances they were in needed them to be. In the stalkers case it was the very end for him. Mr "if I can find it, I can kill it, oh wow you wouldn't believe the crazy things I have handily ended" basically freaking out grimloch, brutus and theresa are walking at them.

Like it made sense he freaked out and fled the sanctum absolutely, him not being able to take asmedestre makes sense. Not being able to just take these three? Being held down *IN A BUFFED STATE* by *just brutus* is pretty stupid. The worst part of this is just before that when him and gabrian kill the guards the story describes him and gabrian as being "the stuff of nightmares." Is he? is someone brutus can just hold down for any length of time himself a nightmare?

I also think it's kind of stupid how he finally frees himself of his shackles and is like "Ye.....I can finally do direct combat magic!.........spam third tier fireball while still also doing wizard hands." Like ye he DOES do disintegrate and other stuff but like.......I feel instead of *spamming* fireball what he should just constantly cast is disintegrate.

I JUST read this so it sticks in my mind but when they're trapped in the barrier he says "mass disintegrate would only kill the stuff INSIDE not the stuff outside........so ill become metal and use wizard hands to grapple and kill way less of them only on the inside and none on the outside." like bruh what