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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2090 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 31, 2025

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So, what are you reading?

Still on Red Dynamite. Going through King Lear.

The Systemic Lands:

tl;dr: 4.5 stars for books 1 and 2, 4 stars for books 3 to 9, 3.5 stars for book 10

Several other reviews say that the story falls off after the first antagonist is introduced in book 3, and I'm inclined to agree with them. For me, the first tipping point is in chapter 122 (halfway through book 3), when the protagonist, who previously made a big deal of keeping his word, rather egregiously breaks a promise. Specifically: In chapter 121, he promises a reward of 100,000 points to whoever snitches on a traitor. But in chapter 122 he decides to pay only the first installment of that reward before having the snitch secretly killed. In chapter 128, it is confirmed that the snitch has been killed. Compare that to chapter 70 in book 2 ("I don't lie. My word is my currency.") and chapter 46 in book 1 ("A deal is a deal. I always keep my word. I may be a murdering asshole, but I don't lie.").

The second tipping point occurs in chapter 463 (early in book 10), when the protagonist imposes a "Kafkaesque" punishment on an antagonist who cannot be killed. Maybe I'm overreacting, but it reminds me too much of the Sasuke poop incident in Chunin Exam Day, which was a definite marker of that story's downturn. So I've stopped reading there.

(As part of the English problems, I guess I should also mention that the protagonist's dialog is written rather weirdly. My mental image of him always is a bearded Russian in his 40s, rather than the clean-shaven American in his 30s that he's supposed to be. But that's a minor issue.)

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