Shayne Silvers

This is pure juvenile self-insert wish fulfilment fantasy. And it's a bad one.
Everyone adores the mc. All relevant females are gorgeous and throw themselves at him. The good as well as evil.
He is a god-like ultra-powerful magician, looks stunning, oh, and he (mild predictable spoiler) inherited billions and a company more powerful than many countries... yea..., did I mention he has eidetic memory? no? well, you probably guessed that already.
It's full of all the other clicheés that come to mind after that as well.

Sometimes I can eat up a story about an mc like that. A pure power trip. But this book isn't just that. It's also the definition of shallow.

It seems like everything is just handed to him. He does nothing but basks in his own awesomeness. He doesn't actually do anything impressive beyond his innate abilities and inheritance.
No razor-sharp mind, no creative application of an ability, no interesting flaw, no intriguing dynamics with other characters, no emotional involvement of the reader, nothing that is appealing to me. Even the entire plot progression basically falls into his lap every step of the way. Which makes all the worshipping of him by literally everyone else that much more baffling to me.
He is the definition of a Gary Stu I guess.

The plot is so contrived I've never asked myself "why" and "why not" so many times in so short a time.
Characters have whole well-articulated conversations in the midst of life or death fights. It's almost like they can just call a timeout, finish their conversation, and then continue fighting.

Usually, in a well-written book, tense and dicey situations require the mc to make use of all her/his abilities or to even surpass him/herself to overcome the danger for it to be truly satisfying.
But even in a total power trip story like this, tension is necessary and to create it the reader needs to have an intentionally crafted expectation of what the mc is capable of. Even if the reader knows based on previous experiences that the mc will have another ace up his sleeve, not knowing about it is just as important as real danger in a conventional story.
That is probably the most important thing this book gets wrong. Well, I guess it has high ratings and a decent number of them... so, it's taste, I guess...

There are many more flaws I can't be bothered to address.
I do not recommend this even tho I would really enjoy a well-done power fantasy at the moment.… (meer)

I thoroughly enjoyed the beginning of this book especially because I very much enjoyed the narration by Linnea Sage.
Some might call it unprofessional but I really love to hear the narrator smiling when reading funny paragraphs. Especially in the beginning, you can hear that she is really into the story herself.
She is not that good at doing many different distinct and recognizable voices but the genuine enjoyment makes it all up and engaged me much deeper than much more famous and professional narrators usually manage.

Sadly the plot gets increasingly frustrating by building a huge unnecessary conflict based on easily rectified misunderstandings and intentional misdirection. More and more obvious chances present themselves over time that all could easily be used to talk about it and clear up the conflict but everyone acts like they are physically unable to say the word "misunderstanding".
It's not even glossed over quickly but instead, these situations are painfully drawn out with posturing, threats, taunting and endless inner dialogue half the time just ignoring the fact that there is obviously some kind of misunderstanding and the other half stubbornly ignoring the opportunity to try to rectify it.
It doesn't stop there either. After each situation like that, the protagonists constantly go in circles around how the mc now has yet another dangerous enemy.
It's incredibly infuriating.

This is just one instantiation of a bigger problem that winds itself through the book. The MC points out the right questions constantly but refuses to lift a finger to find an answer to any of them. Neither in the form of research nor in the form of communication.
Basically, every thought that could derail the intended plot path just can't be thought. It's just blocked by the author. It's just incredibly lazy front to back.

Ultimately it turns out that disappointingly everything about this book is clicheé and unoriginal in the extreme.
I have seen it coming too but I didn't want to believe it. I dismissed the most obvious conclusion with the justification that they are probably just the first layer of misdirection but alas. The book really is that shallow.
It should be YA but there is cursing and probably some R rated stuff eventually which is probably the only reason why it's not.… (meer)