A few interesting concepts for the genre, especially given the story was written in 2018, and somewhat likeable characters. However, overall the main antagonist and non-sensical conversations/thoughts made it difficult to finish.
The author uses a lot of internal monologue for the antagonist to try and make it seem like there are logical reasons for him to behave the way he does, but in the end it still doesn’t help to make him any more relatable or even understandable. He is just crazy, and that is about it. I have seen multiple people online talking about how great of a villain Lucas was, but honestly I could never find myself even caring to listen to the portions about him, as they always ended up being nothing but “the crazy person sinks further into delusion”. I never once felted anything interesting or thought provoking about him.
As for non-sensical conversations and thoughts, the author uses both to try and expand on concepts of his world, but ends up having the characters constantly sound like weirdos who explain things to each other that everyone in the conversation already knows. If everyone involved in a conversation is knowledgeable on a topic, then no-one would waste time explaining the topic to the others as if they know nothing about what is going on. And people who are knowledgeable about something would not take the time to sit there and explain the thing to themselves in their thoughts. This ends up leaving a decent chunk of the exposition being delivered in a very awkward manner.
Another writing choice that came across as forced to me was how throughout the story, the author would make sure to refer to the main character Vincent as “the old man”. We know that Vincent is in his 70s, we have been informed of that many times. But most of the time it felt the author was only refering to him as “the old man” to point it out to us that the old person is doing something not expected of an old person, instead of allowing the reader to simply realize that on their own.
This may be more of a personal nitpick, but the giant time skips (if I am recalling correctly it was around 25 years, then 10, then 30 or so) leave me not really feeling connected to the characters in any real way, as most of their development feels as if it is happening off screen. And even then, almost all of the development is only really stats/abilities and becoming closer as friends. Other than the healer becoming a bit more confident, it doesn’t feel like any of the main 4 “heroes” we follow really have any changes in personality.