Andrew Rowe‘s Arcane Ascension series starts out quite interesting and remains so for the majority of the first two novels. While there are some issues with the Keras character, who feels like a protagonist from a completely different novel, the other characters have an entertaining chemistry and events move along nicely. Unfortunately though, in the third the structure becomes far, far too meta… and the constant references to a new companion series in which Keras is in fact the main character do not help.
Something I’ve long disliked are extended or continuous action scenes. I feel action should be used as an exclamation point, for shock and awe, or as the culmination of previous events. What’s the point of dragging out a single battle across multiple chapters or having half (or more) of a book be a sequential series of fight scenes? Unless you’re trying to make your readers emphasize with your characters by exhausting them I just don’t see any value in the practice.
Which brings us to the fifth of J. Parsons‘ Arcane Awakening novels. Rather than getting a rest after defeating the hoard in the previous novel, the characters have to rush to where the other half of the army is and fight yet another extended underdog campaign against seemingly endless forces. It’s simply repetitive and tiresome.