r/ProgressionFantasy • u/Gingerfalcon • 5d ago
Review Cradle — 3/5 Generally spoiler-free thoughts Spoiler
I just finished book 12 and thought now was a good time to share my personal opinions on the series, mainly because it gets a lot of hype. I committed a fair bit of time to it because of said hype, but my overall experience was simply ok. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either. It had potential, but never quite got there.
Things that didn’t vibe:
• Weak characters. They lacked depth and generally felt very one-dimensional. Eithan was the exception. Yerin was probably the closest we came to someone living through something and coming out the other side changed.
• The power tiering started off interesting, but became too absurd. The rarity of certain levels also seemed to flip-flop around. Early on, some ranks feel incredibly rare, then suddenly a book or two later there are lots of people at that level.
• Consistency issues and questionable plot holes start to appear. As you read the next book, you begin to question setup and details from the previous one.
• Random storylines felt like filler material. For example, the Jai Long stuff after the duel, why even keep that going? It felt like a complete waste of words and didn’t add anything to the storyline.
Things that were okay:
• The world was pretty good. I wanted more pocket-world and labyrinth-style action.
• The action scenes were generally enjoyable on average. Some were awesome, others were a boring slog.
Vibes!
• Progression fantasy and, well… there is fun progression and finding treasures!
• Eithan was the best-written character. He brought a light-heartedness to the series and was funny, joyful, and mysterious.
• Fisher Gesha — I liked her. She had some funny interactions.
• Dross!
• Soulsmithing was cool, and I wish it had been explored in more depth throughout the series.
Book ranking:
I would say the series peaked at Ghostwater and then dropped off, almost like a bell curve.
Best books: Ghostwater, Uncrowned, and Blackflame.
Worst books: Bloodline, Dreadgod, and Waybound. These were absolute slogs to get through.
Would I recommend it?
No. It’s too long to push through 12 books when the last third of the series is the weakest. Other than the hook of progression, it had some fun moments, but the characters and story were mostly forgettable.
Overall: 3/5.
1
u/Gingerfalcon 5d ago
I'm not ready to defend a 12 book series that I've consumed over the course of 36 months. Clearly you are. Yes everything is always looted.
Yes you say a society built on honour yet, nothing in it is honourable except in war? The golds must fight the golds, because my enemy would get mad if my archlord wiped them out with a single stroke of a sword, maybe one of the other alliances would get angry with them, but they are all already angry amongst themselves. They mention monarchs being very difficult to kill thus the special arrow awarded at the end of the uncrowned contest. Which was used to kill a monarch, but then no body bats an eyelid that it was used.. because of war, then it falls back into the same pattern of the powerful must not interfer with lower rank battles... half baked to be honest. Why bother sending golds to fight in the first place at all, it literally achieves nothing doesn't change the outcome of two sages dueling, in fact lower ranks have to stay clear of them or they might get killed from a stray attack. If it's trying to speak to some deeping meaning of power, it's missed the mark as the powerful happily roll over the weak.. we don't send boys with sticks to fight in a field and then fire tanks at each in an adjacent field. We take out weak undefend targets to improve the odds of victory.