My critical review of The Lost Cube

The experience of reading The Lost Cube I think can be related, much like the tale of the prodigal son from the Bible, to that of of a poor man who learns of an inheritance beyond his wildest dreams. This is a book that was to inherit the legacy of the Cultivation genre. It's gleaming gem of a core, was such that it would have felt deserved by any unbiased third party onlookers. The promised one. The girl next door. The diamond in the rough.

Unfortunately, in this timeline, the government steps in and claims the booty before it could find its way into our prodigal sons hands.

Quality: ⭐ ⭐ (Apprentice)

Pro's

The gleaming-gem core of this novel is a mind-blowing narrative that acts as a payoff book for the first three entries in the series. It's a magnificent weave that continually blasts revelation after revelation at the reader, building up to a penultimate climax that has some of the most insane chaos energy you can ever read. Playing second, third, and on and on fiddle to the utterly engrossing narrative are Phil's out of this world, imaginative worldbuilding ideas, as well as description and scene setting that test the limits of your imagination. Lastly, this cast of characters is uniquely charming and likeable within the whole of the fantasy genre.

We also have some of the best repertoire of vocabulary, philosophy and theme that the series has seen this far. This was almost on par with the greats of the fantasy genre, comparing heavily with Malazan which also has a woven plot structure, philosophical themes, peak narrative highs, and a superior imaginative uniqueness.

Con's

Imagine watching the ending of The Return of the Jedi and at the end, with Vader dying, he turns to Luke and says, "Luke, I the am your."

This book had post processing. The author didn't just take the first draft and throw it into the market for his rabid buyers to inhale unconditionally. Yet, what I purchased on Amazon was a first draft that was ridden with continuity errors, missing words, and misplaced punctuation. The book was initially thrown on the Amazon store for days with a missing chapter, both in the script and the table of content. Whatever proofreading and post editing this book went through in the month between the final chapter being published on Patreon and it being uploaded to Amazon was absolutely abysmal. And there's no way to avoid noting that.

I'm ok with ignoring a certain amount of unpolish. I was even willing to let go the continuity error in which a certain character who betrayed another in book 3, suddenly claims it wasn't a betrayal but a coercion. Especially considering Phil Tucker is independently published and wrote and published 5 books this year. But the way the errors showed up in this book really affected my experience of this book. Chapters 63-65 seem like they weren't even reread. And those are the climactic chapters of the novel. It really affected the emotional impact and the enrapture of the reader that would have been taken place in those scenes. There were some sentences I could not even decipher the meaning of in the middle of an emotional reunion. It's one of the most tragic crash and burn experiences I've ever had as a reader. This novel could have inherited the kingdom. This would have been my favorite fantasy novel.

Enjoyment: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ (Happy)

In my rating rubrik, 5 stars is obsessed and crazed. For a couple of days, this was the only fantasy novel that ever brought me to that level of enjoyment. This book did make me laugh, cry, and think, however. And no reader could ask for anything more, but the lasting impact of the novel is quite soured.

Recommendation: ⭐ ⭐ (Do not recommend reading in print)

This entire series up until this point was probably my most easy to recommend series in the fantasy genre, outside of Lord of the Rings. It is accessible, but still has a lot of heightened elements such as great character development, and themes. I do not recommend reading book 4 at all.

BUT

There is one gleaming ray of hope for this novel, and it's that this will receive an audiobook in 2026. And as we know, narrators confer with authors to fix errors so that the narrator isn't speaking gibberish and impartial sentences. I don't like that a narrator becomes the (seemingly) most effective piece in the post-processung endeavor, and if I were the audiobook narrator, I would refuse this book outright, simply for how much time I'd have to spend ironing out the intention of the author. An audiobook narrator is not an editor, nor should even be tasked with proofreading.

Conclusion

Something in the creative process has got to give for Mr. Tucker. Safe to say that at a minimum, 5 books in a year didn't work out.

He is capable of turning out the most fun reading in fantasy. He's an absolute nexus of imagination. I think his stories are even a fantastic safe haven for many readers who want some fun reading but don't like Sanderson. I will continue The Immortal Great Souls series via audiobook, and hope that the author can reclaim a hold on the rapidly disintegrating polish and quality of his recent bibliography.

Overall score: 2.33 ⭐