(Spoilers) Book 7…

So I just finished Book 7 last night. It was a mix of emotions.… There were several moments I liked and audibly laughed. At the same time, I feel like this was one of the hardest books to get through for me personally. Ive seen a lot of people here have had mixed reactions to book 7, and I feel I’m definitely in that camp.

For one thing, there really are way too many characters and plotlines being thrown around. Did we REALLY need the pregnant bear storyline? There were a lot of elements that I just felt myself stopping and saying ”Why was this included?”. The entire last few chapters with Tagg and Louis just felt really out of pocket and served little to no purpose other than last minute tension (which was immediately undercut by Emberus anyway).

This book also has another issue I wasn’t able to put into words until I spoke with another friend who liked the book. Kind of tying back into the too many characters point, I feel like Carl is constantly getting cockblocked out of major story moments for the plot. There are several moments where I feel like Carl should have 100% killed a character only for it to go to someone else or be stopped because other plot elements need to happen (D’nadia, Stalwart, The Sepsis Whore, Lucia Mar). Carl feels like he’s partially regressed into an earlier version of himself. It feels like Book 3 Carl and not the absolute monster wrecking shop in Butcher’s Masquerade…

The moment with the Naga is especially frustrating because it ties into my next point: gags. The series has no shortage of gag and joke characters. There‘s nothing wrong with them existing, but man have they been getting front and center this book: Slugs, Strippers, Preggo Bears, Tina, etc. I’m all for them being there, but I annoys me when they keep chewing scenery or get shoved into the major moments. Bigs is a prime example of this. I was fine with Carl’s slugpox ultimately killing the Naga princess, but that needed to be it. Why do we need to have this character tag along for the rest of the book? She doesn’t have a character arc and only exists to be loud and annoying like the rest of the slugs.

Then we have the tone. It’s clear Matt wants this to be the book where we most clearly see the psychological toll the dungeon has taken on our characters, but there were whole scenes where I was unsure if I was supposed to laugh or be appalled. The entire battle with the Hydra in Bedlam Bride had me almost crying at 2 in the morning. Now we have… a god swinging around a ball of people with his cut off dick…

By this point, I feel like people will assume I’m just trashing on this book. I really do enjoy this series, but Book 7 was a major miss for me. I enjoyed the highs, but it felt way too long, none of the emotional moments really had time to breathe or make an impact, and the gag characters were distracting at best or borderline insufferable at worst. Thank you for letting me vent.