Age of Swords (The Legends of the First Empire #2)

I stopped reading when I came upon this beautiful line ” Although men were strong like rocks, any stone could crack. Women were more like water. They nurtured life and could shape the hardest granite through unrelenting determination.” This author tricked me. He starts off in the first book with some interesting characters and even though he neglects the male characters through most of the first book I thought maybe they would take more of a center role along with the female leads. Nope.

They are tools to push plot or show stupidity or greed or some other such nonsense. Most of the book their just slaves to their romantic feelings towards other women. The male whos background is grounded as a warrior was my favorite from the first and he is to me now a loser. He gos from being in control in the first book to being so wishy washy that a child can sway him from a decision he makes.

The females are responsible for every thing you could think of. They are inventors, grand wizards, warriors. You name it they do it. Gets to a point where I am wondering why there are any problems in this world. Then I remember its run by men.

I don’t understand how this author writes. The first book felt well written while this feels lazy and just hits tropes that I would expect in some lazy b movie drama. If the third book is on sale for three bucks ill buy and read it but at this point that book is fifteen dollars and the way this author writes it isn’t deserved.

I’m glad this isn’t the first book that I’ve read by this author, because I’d never have read another. I’ve enjoyed all his other books that I’ve read.

The Grrl Power team writing was annoying. While individually each member was interesting, the outcomes were straight up ridiculous. It got to the point one could predict what would happen next taking merely by the gender of the person. It the character was male they are cowardly, idiotic scum and if they are female they were paragons of all that is noble in humankind. The one exception was a cripple who was pathetic. I’ve met golden retrievers who have a stronger sense of self. His codependency was to the point of mental illness; somehow the story warped this into nobility.

The ode by Raithe to Per at the end was completely out of character. Not as jarring as Cuba Gooding, Jr at the end of Instinct, but it was getting there.

The discovery process was beyond belief.
1. It was ludicrous that the pottery wheel was invented prior to the cart, but ok.
2. The bow is invented, perfected, and utilized to kill the bad guy(s) in a few days time.
3. There is trading contact between dwarves who have steel, sails, barrels, and the like, but no cross-pollination of ideas. There is no way the idea of a wheel wouldn’t have made it through on the off chance that the humans had never seen a log. A log from the forest. That they lived in. Logs that they used for a palisade.
4. At the pace that these benighted and enlightened inventors set for discovery, one can expect they will have warp drive somewhere around the middle of the next book.
5. Seriously though, what primitive tribe has alloys in their metal working, but doesn’t have bows or slings? The technological path was entirely nonsensical.

This book felt like the author wanting to make political statements rather than tell an interesting story.

I really liked the first book in this series, but in this one it seems like Sullivan didn’t put in the same effort. Either that, or he changed his mind about what kind of story this was going to be.
The first book set up this intriguing world with unique races and cultures, and then in this one it’s like, “lol, these are actually elves and dwarves, gotcha!” I feel lied to, and disappointed.
The dialogue was sub-par as well, with the bad guy sounding comically evil, and some of the main characters talking like they lived in the 20th century.
My suspension of disbelief faltered a few times, both with the dialogue and the character Roan. She invents the wheel, and the bow and the arrow, within about 2 weeks within the story.
This would have been a good book, but Sullivan totally changed the tone from one book to the next. Hopefully the next one is better.

I was excited for this book to come out, as I enjoyed Age of Myth, but this is amateur YA drivel. When Roan invented the wheel is when the eye-rolling started, and continued through Brin inventing written language the same week, and Roan doubling back and inventing archery a few days later. I’m fine with strong female characters, but this was Mary-Suing all over the place. Add to that all the men are chest-thumpingly stupid and incompetent, and you wind up with this ham-fisted turd of a book. Don’t waste your $14.99.

To start off, this book waa pretty good, but I had a horrible time with suspension of disbelief. The main characters invent everything from writing to swordsmithing during the course of the novel, and it was hard to swallow. A combination of relentless super-competence and a lack of progression in the self-concept of anyone but Persephone made parts of the book hard to swallow.

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