The Notebook
Overall Rating: 3/5
Spoilers: Moderate
TL;DR: Massive lack of awareness of time, very unimaginative when it comes to magic variety or its applications, all characters who aren't Yanko become dead baggage by about halfway through
Note: This review covers the entire series (four books) plus the three prequel short stories.
***
Ninjas! Pirates! Ninja pirates! Pirate ninjas! Magic! Racial slurs!
I'm not saying that it wasn't a delightful adventure to start, I'm just saying that there was very little self-awareness going on. The first two books were pretty good, riding a solid 4/5, but then things really started to fall apart.
Kei and Dak were my favorite characters, with Kei being the best through the whole thing. He's also a parrot who only knows how to ask for food and call people racial slurs. Dak was excellent for the first half, but there is very little, almost no, payoff to his character in the end. He stops being a character who is actually involved in the stakes of the plot with agency to move it here and there, and instead becomes just another tool for Yanko to direct at will. And, really, by book three, anyone who isn't Yanko is basically just baggage. If they have a name, they're entirely dead weight who contribute absolutely nothing. Lakeo, who had a very promising start in book one, does nothing but throw quips around like a Marvel movie. Arayevo, somehow, does even less than that, with the attitude of the flighty, retarded NPC who can't resist going into the Haunted Woods of Blood, Monsters, Death, and Doom. Jhali has tenuous agency at best, zero chemistry, no personality except to quarrel with Lakeo, and no real extended role except to force the plot to its conclusion. And heck with Tynlee who was little more than an expositional plot piece in order to avoid characters actually having to interact and maybe try to read each other and figure out motives and play cat and mouse. And if a character doesn't have a name, well, they're a Red Shirt, either destined to die or simply bask in the glory that is Yanko the Gary Stu.
When it comes to the magic, considering that there's five years of ultra-sooper-dooper-exclusively-high-level schooling, the variety of magic uses is a bit underwhelming. Now, the earth magic is very well-explored, and I greatly applaud some of the creative uses of it. It's nice to see another element get some love. And yet, if fire magic is the premiere magic of Nuria, why are fireballs the only thing they ever do? Seriously, it is the only attack that is ever used. Yeah, they get big and strong and whatever, but...is there nothing else taught at this sooper-dooper-prestigious academy? The mind magic is also very underdeveloped, and, as a result, ridiculously overpowered but with very convenient limitations. Seriously, think Deanna Troi from TNG Season 1 (or any season, I guess).
From these two things, we basically get a magical retelling of Star Wars IV-VI but, instead of Yoda, we get The Power of Friendship and The Power Was Inside Him All Along garbage. And no, I'm not joking. Power of Friendship and The Power Was Inside Him All Along If He Just Believed In Himself are somehow valid training tools here.
I think a lot of the character issues could have been mitigated if some thought was given to sheer logistics. From beginning to end is somehow roughly six months. Well hot damn, these people are capable of sailing from Scandinavia to South Africa in...one week? Two? Sure, the Turgonians have steamships, but the Nurians are still using sails. And from Italy to the Caribbean in...four days? Oh, oh, and the Nurians are able to march an entire army from some small, no-account coastal city two days north to the capital city with absolutely no issues. It's nice to know that the feuding factions in the capital (which started out as the Golden City but somehow morphed into just the Great City) don't care about a ~40 mile radius, which includes plenty of coastline. Or that Yanko's remote, secluded, news-is-always-old-by-the-time-it-reaches-them village is just 50 miles from a major metropolitan port.
No explanation is ever given for why Yanko is sought out for ultra-important-mission in the first place (again, 30 miles from a major city). I might believe the because-he's-innocuous-and-from-a-disgraced-house-who-still-supported-the-king, except so much more is implied that just isn't explained.
What starts out as a delightful adventure of ninjas and pirates quickly devolves into a streamlined Gary Stu power trip with a dead weight entourage.
***
TL;DR: Massive lack of awareness of time, very unimaginative when it comes to magic variety or its applications, all characters who aren't Yanko become dead baggage by about halfway through
