I found myself having to slow things down and listen to fights over while also having to figure out what certain pronouns referred to in those fights because the card system is extremely complicated and often not explained well. The complications wouldn’t be so bad if they came over time, but this felt like a book where the author created a “system” before writing the book and thus all the complicated rules were a burden to the narrative instead of creating interest over the life of the series.
The main issues though are that the heart of the character is what the author believes to be righteous anger and judgment that excuses murder, gambling, drug-dealing, and all types of crime while punishing victimization. There’s probably something to that as people who are wantonly cruel are the most difficult criminals to understand and the actions described are unforgivable, but it is just such a bummer.
Further, I wasn’t a fan of the romance. The female character’s reliance on the male character and her willingness to cut him slack on everything and basically just be the perfect saint made her not seem believable. She felt like the character that was needed to massage the rough narrative into working, and I’m guessing she’ll do that for people who don’t find this narrative so objectionable.
There’s a lot to like in this, and I’d try something else by the author if the reviews said it wasn’t about an extremely angry anti-hero who is a huge bummer and that the system isn’t so complicated that it requires re-listening to follow what is happening, and if the female character wasn’t so subservient and perfectly molded to the male protagonist. It really took all these problems working together to make me stop reading and to give it this review score as I could probably have forgiven any one of them alone. . . except for the angry-boy revenge anti-hero stuff. You have to be able to like and respect the protagonist and I’m not reading progression fantasy for bummers.
The voice-acting is pretty good but it is slowed way down, so I couldn’t give it a full 5 stars.