@w_i_zard

Plot - 80 - The story starts off with the main character, Fenn, being quite literally thrown into the initial action... escaping from a muddy bog/quicksand type situation... Yes, a character named "fen" is stuck in a bog. It also turns out to be the case that he's got amnesia and can't remember anything about his past, other than the fact that his name is Fenn. He extracts himself from the bog, only to come face to face with the dragon spirit associated with the forest containing the bog. He talks himself out of that, and the dragon departs, doing something mysterious as he leaves. From there, Fenn proceeds to be rescued by Gysel and Calidra, a pair of women who are out in the woods for no reason we ever learn of. They take him back, clean him up, and we find that Calidra has to travel back home to attend the funeral of her father, who happens to be a Laird of one of the Cantons of Bregalia. So they travel from the Isle of Salt to the mainland and are separated part...

Plot - 60 - Aliens arrive and insta-kill most of the world by collapsing all the buildings and vehicles, which is a very rough premise for me to accept, but I've heard so many good things about this book that I held my nose and plowed on. Our hero, Carl, is lucky enough to have run out in his boxers and flip-flops to chase an escaped cat just before this calamity, and thus survives. Due to a bunch of interstellar bureaucracy, the company that is mining Earth is required to give any survivors of the initial attack an opportunity to earn back the remains of their planet via a heavily regulated contest of their choice. In this case, it's the Borent Corporation, and they prefer to make the contest a series of 18 dungeon levels. It's winter, and the only shelter is the dungeon, so he and the cat named Princess Donut enter the dungeon contest. They nearly die, then get advice from a "guide" and set about learning how the game works and gaining the power needed to survive ...

Note: I'm spoilering most of the plot section for those who chance across this without having read the prior book. There's really no way to talk about this one without acknowledging the surprise ending of She is the Darkness

Plot - 85 - All the key leaders and most of the key old crew are trapped in stasis in the ice caves below the Glittering Plane. All that remains are a few stragglers left behind because they were tardy, absent, ill, or not considered a true member of the company. Again, the Black Company has been reduced to a tiny fragment of its former self. In this reincarnation, it has become an underground resistance movement in the city of Taglios, and we join them as they finally ramp up their campaign to exact vengeance on Soulcatcher and the Taglian leadership. "Water sleeps, but Enemy never rests" is their slogan. The unofficial, but de facto, leader of the company is Sleepy, Murgen's former apprentice. Aided by Goblin...

Plot - 85 - We follow the adventures of a goblin latrine slave, Shelly, who lives in Castle Halfsock... which is an amusing name. One might wonder which way the sock was split in half, and if the (human) castle leadership is left to its own devices, the result is sure to be vertical. In the process of cleaning up the body of a mage who has quite literally "shit the bed," Shelly learns that there is a plot afoot to frame the one half-decent member of the leadership, the one who advocates doing something about the impending threat of the Skeleton Queen. Not enamored of becoming a zombie in an undead army, Shelly finds himself unable to let the humans continue to screw things up and begins to help avert disaster. From there, the plot proceeds through a series of adventures with a relatively classic rising/middle/climax/ending format and only a few sub-plots, one of which is only half resolved by the end. It's a good, if uncomplicated story where everything more or less...

Plot - 95 - We follow Aram through his journey from a simple, awkward boy in a fishing village to a champion dragon rider. There are nice twists and turns, and it never feels rote or like something else (at least not that I've read). The plot progression is excellently classic, with continuous growth leading up to a dramatic final confrontation. I would say it's one of the strongest plots I've reviewed so far.

Narration - 90 - The audio was very good, though I thought the narrator's husky voice hampered the female voices somewhat.

Characters - 90 - The characters in this are quite good and distinct. Each has a clear voice (in terms of the things they say, not the narration) and a consistent set of motivations. I also want to note that, unlike my experience with the obviously autistic character in The Fall is All There Is, Aram, who is possibly even more autistic, is likable, and his struggles make him sympatheti...

Plot - 85 - Rohan is pulled away from Wistful and back to Earth and has to deal with an inconvenient past he thought he had left behind, including his mother, a past lover, and criminal charges. At the same time, he's got to talk the powers that be on Earth into letting him save them, which requires wiggling out from under the shadows of his past and the shadow of the original first choice for the task: Hyperion. All of these subplots progress well, though with so many of them the plot sometimes feels a bit defocused. Nonetheless, the "save Earth" plot is still clearly the main plot, with a good solid structure.

Narration - 100 - Excellent, no notes.

Characters - 80 - One of the fun things about the first book was the variety of different races and character types, with even the ships having personality. In this book, most of the characters are human superheroes, and most have strong similarities to existing comic book c...