>>24824901
I'm back, because I want to complain more about this book. The more I think about it, the worse it is.
1, the series begins by introducing the main characters as students of an elite Ninja clan. They don't use the word "ninja", but that's what they all for all intents and purposes.
So a lot of time is spent explaining various ninja skills. Information gathering. Spying. Subterfuge. And skills at close quarter combat and archery.
The three main friends are all good at something. Dante, the biggest one is the strongest. Hava the girl is the best archer. And Hatu the main character is the most observant and capable of parsing information. The narrative goes out of its way to explain this multiple times throughout the book. However, in all of the first book, there is no instance where Hava's archery serves her. There is no instance where Hatu's observational skills serve him. There is no instance where Dante's size and strength serve him.
Rather, Dante's first major fight, he gets overpowered. Hatu is in a constant state of helplessness, and he doesn't understand his own feelings about Hava. And Hava just never holds a bow all book.
As for their more generalized spy skills, they rarely ever use them. There's a short period of time where Hatu and Dante go on a mission and apply their skills, before they're captured, and then their skills are forgotten.
Hava splits and goes to a school to learn sexy ninja skills. Except it's explicitly stated that Hava is not attractive enough, or seductive enough to have the talent. She's the tomboy type, so she just has a very awkward time in that school, where Raymond E Feist writes a bunch of awkward events of an underage girl having sex with students and teachers alike. All for it to amount to nothing, because she's bad at it, and gets taken out of class to be sent on a mission that has nothing to do with sexy skills. What a waste of pages.
Dante gets sidelined as a character when he's captured and doesn't escape. Hatu escapes, reconnects with Hava, and they go on a mission where they have to pretend to be married. So they actually do apply their skill *slightly*, where they just pretend to be married, settle in a town and and gather information. It's not exactly challenging for them, because they're already in love, and all they have to do is listen for anything worth reporting to HQ. No real subterfuge, except lying about their past.
At the middle of the first book, the idea that Hava might have to kill Hatu comes up. And by the end of the book, Hava is still reminded that she might have to kill Hatu. This is supposed to be a source of drama and suspense. But Raymond already made it super clear that the two are hopelessly in love. So there's no way she would ever kill him. So there is no real drama there. Predictably, this objective is sidelined in the second book. Probably because Raymond realized in between books how stupid it was.
