The Phoenix Requiem

Simply Excellent

Having been sucked in by the initial story and then just having to finish it all off and purchase each book to see what happens, I am deeply disappointed in the series.

The series starts out generally good, an interesting storyline with just enough quirks to keep you going. Sadly as the story develops the author gets stuck in a tangent of describing and re describing everything about a character. There are way too many paragraphs describing a characters looks and traits over and over again. There was no need to go into so much detail repeatedly about characters that we already knew.
At times it feels like a school child trying to up their word count on an essay. The series is filled with unnecessary paragraphs and not relevant information.
I found myself at times scanning and skipping paragraphs because it was simply a repeat yet again of what we knew.
There is no problem in summarising a characters looks, personality or traits but for whatever reason the author decides he must spend several paragraphs again and again telling us the same information.

As for the storyline itself, it seems that either the author got lost in his own creation or simply ran out of ideas that would suit the narrative. The last 3 books could have been made into 1. By cutting out all the unnecessary jargon. Leading into the developing storyline, there is much time spent telling us how a character is feeling in any given moment rather than getting to the point and then summarising their reactions.
The story loses interest about half way through and becomes a rag tag of this and that. Clearly trying to ram as many words in as possible.

Heading back to the story. The science behind many of the advancements is lacklustre at best. For a space faring society able to build starships and traverse the galaxy and meet new races, why are they still reliant on traditional firearms? Why are cars still in use despite the description of a packed and densely populated Capitol World? Why does the pilot need to wear a headset? It seems that perhaps the author couldn’t be bothered with the research into potential and developing technologies and sciences or to take a leap and make a few things up. Rather sticking to the known when it comes to the “minor” details.

For the hefty price tag on the series I definitely would never recommend to a friend or indeed to my fellow Sci Fi/ Space Opera enthusiasts. I found the series to be disappointing both in how it was approached and the eventual outcome. Especially the ending of this book where the author wraps up some outstanding issues with “they are okay” and “they moved on”.

Overall a disappointing read, lacking in imagination and driven interest into what could have been a great story.