I had to open my mouth...

I had an awful lot of hope in this series and William D Arrand had shown promise in this series. I had wrote in my review for 'super sale on super heroes 2' that William had improved from his previous series 'the selfless hero'.

I was wrong.

So why am I disappointed? well as stated in my previous review, I had enjoyed how William had focused on the main characters and kept the story flowing from the first book. But SSOSH 3 completely sideline the original main characters for seven, YES SEVEN new characters! with the majority of the original main characters having a severe lack of character development and some of them even having 'important' parts in the main story. it's upsetting to see that one of the original characters to have five maybe six small moments in the book, then be used for one of the most important events near the end of the story. It should have made me feel upset, IT SHOULD have made me care for what was happening to them, but because the lack of "screen time" they had, I felt like it was nothing.

this is the problem you get when you have too many characters! I loose interest in all of them because eventually I don't know who's who. when you have 14 characters that I need to know, I end up forgetting them and they end up as faceless blobs!

however I do want to both praise and critise for William's merger of his 'universe' with Runner, Vince and Felix ending up in the same story. With the Marvel avengers like story coming together, it feels like it's about time that an author has tried to create a story on this caliber. the only issue that I want to bring up is the problems with bringing his Randi Darren work into the universe. personally, Randi Darren's work just isn't my cup of tea. there's nothing wrong with it, I'm just not a fan. As such, I have no clue what's going on in that story. As a personal recommendation, I would suggest keeping the two author's stories separated for the benefit of the reader. However that's for William to decide.

Ultimately I am disappointed, I do hope that William can prove me wrong. As a fan of his work, I know that William can write brilliant first books that want me to continue to the next book. But I cannot stress this enough, please William, if you're reading this. Stick with your original main characters! To me SSOSH 2 was a definite improvement on your work and showed you didn't need to resort into throwing new characters to spice up a story. You can do better than this

6 people found this helpful

not as good

this fell short of the last two books. the humour and funy interactions now play second fiddle to world events. no explosive pancake madness and hareem swelling becomes nuch more prevalent. not the same tone as the previous two

3 people found this helpful

Disappointing

The first book was enjoyable, the second was still good but less so but this book just seems to be a just concentrating on tales of how amazing the protagonist is and how much ladies love him as he builds up a harem. the shift tonally towards this across the books is just not as enjoyable so i did not bother finishing this book.

2 people found this helpful

Disappointing direction and messy plot

So after writing a glowing review of book1 which I thought was a great book with an inventive plot line, book 2 kept my fascination on how the story would progress, book 3 fails completely on many levels.

I agree with a lot of other reviewers that the author has failed to maintain the characters of the story that keep it entertaining. The major characters in the first books, such as Lily not only take a back seat but are practically written out of the story, but then suddenly become critical at the end and you're left thinking what just happened, in a confused sense rather than emotionally connected. The books plot lines of following the development of super powers has been turned into a fantasy novel about magic elves and dragons. I read one of his alternate works previously (Wild Wastes) under his other pen name and wasn't that impressed and saw a huge parallel to this book. Now I realise that he's essentially written parallel stories to finally merge them together as Vince comes into this world and I'm sure vice versa, although I'm not interested in the Wild Waste series.

Then I also noticed the name of the 'benefactor' rang a bell....more on that below.

Overall I found the book concentrating more on the need to merge his other books story lines and less on keeping the characters interesting. As another reviewer pointed out, Felix barely uses his power in this book, the main characters powers aren't really used, it relies on adding a whole new bunch of female fantasy characters that all fall for Felix as usual, which is becoming a very tired premise. The book basically becomes a list of times Felix needs to take members of his harem out to dinner with interludes of fantasy creatures protecting him as they simply run around between locations. Really disappointed with the way such a great initial story has developed.

Possible spoiler alert

Without giving too much away unless you want to check, if you've read the description of his first group of books, Other Life, the main character is Runner (who we now find out is Felix's benefactor) and the basis of that story, which you only have to read the books description, gives away the entire basis for the worlds and powers etc when you put 2 and 2 together. I'd rather not have known this yet, but as I had checked his other books it wasn't hard to do. All the books are now coming together to join what I guess is a finale. This could have been a stroke of genius but I feel is simply diluting the very story that got people interested and ending up with a messy haphazard mixture of plot lines.

2 people found this helpful

Do NOT buy this book.

1st book in the series was great! It slowly setup and explained mysterious powers of our hero and his limits. We had lots of drama some little harem setup with interesting girls. And interesting interactions between characters.

2nd Book had our hero explore his powers and gain power. There was more harem stuff but you could still find balance between it and the story. A bit to much harem in some places and the girls lost a lot from their original characters but still ok.

3th Book - pure harem, sex, emotionally dead main character clothed in an empty shell of what he was before. His "powers" completely ignored for the whole book(beside almost automatic resurrection of some characters - also the "points" didynt add up AT ALL in some places). Instead of a story we got 90% of the book focusing on him being the most perfect and most desired sex machine in the multiverse. His personality was changing already in book 2 but now he is more of a bad guy that i wish to see dead almost at every single page. Reading about him is painful his dilemmas are shallow and empty. He completely forgot about his powers witch dont even take a second plan in this book they are just somewhere in the background. Author made him just an nexus to focus 3 dimensions of womans to worship and kiss his feets.

I could go one and one about what's wrong with this book but i will leave it at that. The only reason I only dont refund it straight away is so this review stick around. Do NOT buy this book. waste of credit/money!

1 person found this helpful

A surprising change of focus

I've really enjoyed the previous two books and that the story was the main focus, with mentions here and there of his harem. However this book moves the focus to his harem more than is necessary.

Despite enjoying the storyline, following Felix and Legion as they grow, expand and overcome ever more difficult challenges, I don't know if I'll be purchasing the next book in this series. This switch of focus has soured things for me.

1 person found this helpful

great writer great books

i very much enjoyed these books i just cant seem to put them down and always start the trilogy again when a new one is out or i start the entire series again the re read factor is amazing and you enjoy them as much the tenth time to the first great books and character great writing to tie them all in together just amazing

Waffling tripe!

What started out with potential in book 1, has by now devolved into long winded diatribes and cheap soap opera tricks. if there is anymore books in the series I will really have to consider if it's worthwhile.

Brilliant

Totally engrossing! I Know these characters so well by the story line and narration. There's a twist I wasn't expecting... Hopefully a 4th book at some point!

addictive, look forward to the next installment in

great story, well peformed, great characters, looking forward to the next installment the series,