I went into this interested in seeing how a crime family’s enforce deals with magical threats. I was left with Wolfe, a character whose decisions actually made me frustrated. The supposed amount of time this enforcer has worked in the crime family felt wrong, when you take into account the actions that this enforcer takes. This doesn’t seem like a crime boss’s right-hand man for over 15 years. Where’s the experience in dealing with
betrayal? Where’s the paranoia? There are few books where I’ve found myself questioning the author’s decision when it comes to their characters. This just happened to be one of them. Wolfe just seems so OCC for the type of character that he’s introduced as, that I was broken out the imagery this author was trying to convey several times in this book. I honestly don’t like this MC.
Then there’s the love interest, Shel. At times, I genuinely felt like this character was written with a base template, and then they added whatever was needed for any given situation. To me, there’s nothing interesting about this girl.
Tha said, the premise is fun. The idea of the Gods playing a game by giving mortals cards and having different seasons every once in a while is genius. There’s so much that one can do with this idea. Also, for the first deck-building LitRPG I’ve read, the mechanics were simple to understand. I’m looking forward to reading other stories with deck-building mechanics in them.
Overall, while the premise is interesting, and the action is well written, the character decisions felt so OCC for me that I can’t give this book more than a 3. And I’ll sadly not be continuing the series.