The beginning of Ellake‘s first Runic Artist novel just didn’t grab me. Neither the interaction with the god nor the chase with the tiger-thing was particularly interesting and then being trapped in a gamified dungeon at level 0? Just no interest whatsoever in continuing past that point.
Marvin Knight‘s Paladin of the Sigil quadrilogy is a bit odd in that the first and third books are the best, while the second is middling and the last is kinda bad. Basically it’s an overpowered protagonist kingdom-building revenge story with a subfocus on harem content, featuring a relationship dynamic similar to Corsairs & Cataclysms‘ (minus the slavery).
The start of Paladin of the Sword is quite strong, the first sex scene is hilarious, and it ends strong as well. The second book unfortunately more resembles the middle portion of the first, which drags, and all the sex (of which there’s a fairly large amount) is generic smut. Things pick up nicely in the third, both in plot developments and in humor returning to some of the sexual content, and it ends up the best of the series. Then we come to the fourth which has a wide range of problems, from the terrible heaven setting to the baffling ‘Dungeon Queen’, but ultimately I think the killer is the focus on modern technology and the attempts to twist the genre toward sci-fi.
Overall I suppose I have to say that I enjoyed the series more than not… but can’t honestly recommend it to anyone with how badly it ends.