FORTUNE the FATED

It's been a while since I read one of Sergi's books, and so I thought I would try again. I will not be trying a third time. I'm here to choose my own adventure, but Sergi isn't interested in what I want, or what you want. You're told who you are, what you do, and what you think, sometimes breaking to be told who someone else is, what they do or did, and possibly what they think, and what you think about that. I pushed through to the end to see if the story being told was worthwhile, but there isn't even a story here, it's just the first two or three chapters of one, with an extensive codex of fanart and literal links to his other works that you can totally buy and check out so you get full understanding of Sergi's sprawling product line aka the Sergiverses. I cannot recommend doing so to anyone. If you, like I, were drawn in by the prospect of having meaningful choices or agency in an engaging story, you will be disappointed.

No. If you've read any other story by the author, you know what to expect here: * Choices that don't matter (at least the author stopped insulting and punishing the reader for picking what he apparently deems the 'wrong' choices) and instead the story just railroads on with no worthwhile differences. * Flat characters that seem to solely exist either for exposition or 'diversity' (put into airquotes because the 'diversity' is checklist-y as humanly possible, all these characters are there to tick off a box instead of being part of the world and narrative. It feels very exploitative on top of feeling pretentious and often ill-informed) * As this is another story not set on Earth, there's a lot of juvenile keysmash meant to look like cleverly made-up sci-fi terms/names. * Lots of self-indulgent passages that feel like the author expects the reader to declare this the greatest story ever. * Likewise lots of 'guilt-tripping' the reader when the reader does NOT buy any of the pointless DL...

love it