Bryce O'Connor

Rather entertaining. If you like progression fantasy, this ticks off many of the right boxes. The weak kid in a martial arts academy who starts progressing and getting much stronger. I also found the worldbuilding interesting, with the CAD devices, the Mind, the war, and all that. The exams and some of the classes were a good part too.

I had some problems with it. Rei and his friends spent basically all their free time training. Which is to be expected for this genre, I guess. There were some drama: bullies, hostile teachers, family drama... But basically it's training, fighting and seeing Rei get stronger. Which, for such a massive novel, might get a little repetitive, perhaps. It also takes a bit of the joy out of a school story. Particularly, the blow-by-blow description of the fights involving characters who are not among the main cast could get a bit boring. Not so when it involves characters we care about.

Another problem I had is Rei's massive advantage. It means less narrative tension. Sure, Rei is much weaker than anybody else in the beginning, but the massive Growth spec of his CAD device basically ensures that he will get better at an insane rate. He'll very soon be stronger than all the people around him. Quickly. It's a matter of a few months. He works like crazy, but he doesn't really need to work so much. He'll get there soon. He works that way because he wants to do well at a tournament but, in the great scheme of things, what does that matter? Even if he didn't get strong quickly enough to do well at the tournament this year, he'll still be stronger than any of his peers soon enough. Also, that's why all the drama about whether he was going to be accepted into the school or not seems nonsensical. Of course he's going to be accepted. They would be complete idiots not to. He's like a high school player who is not good yet but who improves so quickly that he'll be playing at a NBA level in a couple of years.… (más)

A quick read, of mostly fight scenes and war. Not really my thing. It didn't do much to add anything to character or world development, though it was fast-paced and easy to get through. I tend to loathe those old-school fantasy series that are all about culminating war so that the author can get off on writing his fight scenes and imagining himself in the role of the hero. Harsh, I know, but this book felt like a lot of that.

Moving on to another series for now, but will definitely return to Wings of War if O'Connor ever releases it.
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