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Skybound

Fate's Anvil, Book 2

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Skybound

By: Scott Browder
Narrated by: Laurie Catherine Winkel
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The adventures of Morgan Mackenzie and her sidekick Lulu the Loofah continue!

The [Skyclad Sorceress] has made new friends and discovered she has some enemies. Now, along with the Worldwalker Dana and the survivors of the Expedition, she is working to get out of the Wildlands.

Meanwhile, the Deskren have beseiged Fort Expedition and The General rides with his troops to their relief. He is followed by The Hammer, leading the Children of the First Beast. Certainly an impressive and dangerous force, but will they get to Expedition in time to save the city? If they arrive in time, can they hold the walls until the Tribes arrive?

As the northern continent slips deeper into autumn and winter, the Empire in the south prepares for spring and the planting of crops. Their raiding campaign into the north has not gone well, and tensions are rising as food shortages loom. All is not as it seems in Nouveau Deskra.

©2023 Scott Browder (P)2023 Podium Audio Action & Adventure Epic Fantasy Military
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Most relevant
I like the story. It's a good continuation of the first book.
Even with me disagreeing on some ideologies of the main characters, the writing makes me see their point and care.

But... the author has made a bad decision here. There are about three times more point of view characters than in the first book. No joke. After a while, I couldn't even keep the names straight. All of them just blurred together. And even worse, some events got up to four retellings from different characters. I had to listen at a higher speed for this, or i would have dropped the book.
A result of that was that not much is happening in terms of plot progression. Looking back at what plot point everybody got in this book could have been told in half the length.

One particular character got a big section at the beginning, and i'm just sitting her thinking, "What was the point of that? That had no consequences on anything."

The reader is still doing a good job. no complaints there.

good, but...

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Die Geschichte ist packend, die Charaktere... interessant und die Sprecherin ist gut. Zumindest nach neiner Meinung. Am Anfang werden die Charakterübersichten etwas zu oft (zu lang) eingespielt. Das hätte man einkürzen können, aber ansonsten hatte ich durchaus schon schlechtere Litrpg.

Besser als erwartet

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With just about 1/3 of its chapters dedicated to the main character this book feels like a collection of filler episodes. The point of view jumps wildly from chapter to chapter or even within single chapters, resulting in a confusing amalgamation of story bits, impressions and themes and a lack of a coherent tone. New characters are introduced at a breakneck pace, leaving the reader very little time to get attached to them.
With how many different little stories this book tries to tell it really could have benefited from having another 12 hours to tell them properly.

The blurb up above? That's literally all there is in this book.
Morgan, Dana and the Expedition are working to get out of the wildlands. Had they been given the entire 12 hours an 37 minutes perhaps they would've made it out by the end.
Instead almost half of the book revolves around a siege and a march toward said siege that introduces a bunch of cardboard side-characters completely bereft of any personality because they aren't given the time to demonstrate personality. The other 20% or so of the book are dedicated to "The Hammer" which means he too isn't given enough time to develop into an actual character in this book either. By the end all I can say about him is: "He's the beasty boy.", which is exactly as much as I could say about him by the end of the first book.
In the end very little is actually resolved in any way, let alone to any degree of satisfaction though we are given a few bits of intriguing lore here and there and the narrator does an admirable job as with the first book. Also of note is a clear improvement in the conveyance of stats - Where, in the first book, we had to suffer through a lengthy listing of the main character's stats almost every chapter Browder has dialled this down considerably for the sequel.

I probably won't pick up book four unless the next book is either considerably more narrowly focused or at the very least given more time to tell its many stories if the author absolutely wants to stick to his "buckshot" approach to storytelling. In either case it needs to give the main character enough time and space to grow and develop. All the character development for Morgan was squeezed into her last two chapters here which really left me with some harsh whiplash when the epilogue waltzed in and trampled all over my anticipation. There are cliffhangers and then there is cutting a story at the half-way-point.

TL;DR, too few pages for too many stories thus a confusing and meandering plot... squiggle? Spaghetti? It's not a line. That's for sure.

Filler Episode?

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This book felt more like a filler episode than an actual continuation of the 1st book.
A few important things do happen and I'm still looking forward to the next book, but I won't listen to this book multiple times like I did with the 1st book just because I liked it so much.
I really hope the quality increases for the next book, because if it doesn't I'm pretty sure my interest in the story will be used up.

this was disappointing

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