Tyler has a death wish…

Oh, Spoilers. Let’s get that out of the way.

Tyler started out like a great friend. Well, he still is, but the author created in him someone who has not the wisdom nor desire to be silent, ever. Every stressful or ominous moment is filled up by Tyler’s loud uneducated opinions, thoughts and hangups. He never shuts up. He is that plucky character that has no clue, but he has jokes…

I’m all for literary realism, but the most annoying character in the book doesn’t need to be annoying me while listening. At every turn, there is Tyler ready to state the obvious. Dangerous situation? Tyler at his finest winning zero hearts and minds and doing it with zero knowledge or context for what is going on. Absolutely nothing stops Tyler from opening his mouth. Stressful situation? There’s Tyler, front and centre taking verbal pokes at everyone. He had potential, but he’s been made so insufferable, I can’t wait until he gets spaced.

Great narration. I do like how this books has been written for the most part, but I do really want to know more about Matt and Ben and the old crew, but we don’t get enough of that, instead we get Tyler.

They really need to stop nerfing Ben at every turn. First series was all about range anxiety for everything from Ben’s life to his power and even just energy to fiction. They even nerfed how much he is awake in this book. So already Ben is dying (probably not) and his cancer has somehow stopped behaving like real cancer and as soon as Ben heals up, it springs back to action giving him all of the symptoms again like it’s a separate character with unlimited lives and power.

The author has done some great world building and I enjoy the direction it’s taking, I just find that too much of the headwinds the character there faces ends up being internal when we should be able to move past it and face more external trials and tribulations. However those internal struggles keep showing up and convenient times to nerf our characters or throw a stick in the works. Timing like that is burdensome and not a good mechanic in my humble opinion. It’s like if every single superman comic was to lean on kryptonite every single episode. It would be boring and convenient gamesmanship by the author to let him easily create hardship for superman. It would be exhausting, lazy writing. So, I’m hoping this series doesn’t fall back into that bad habit and instead gets creative.

And yet, like I said, I do enjoy the series. I’m in for it. I’m here. I will buy the next one because a compelling universe has been created.

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