Adapt

A Touch of Power, Book 2

By: Jay Boyce

Narrated by: Samara Naeymi

Length: 15 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

Improvise. Overcome. Adapt.

Only five days have passed since Jade was brought to a distant world and a new life. Mobile for the first time ever, Jade is given the chance to do something she’s always wanted: attend school.

Dracona isn’t your typical school, however. In Andara she needs to learn all the skills an adventurer needs. For her, that means how to cast magic and use weapons without hurting herself. She’ll have to learn fast because the obstacle course isn’t the only thing challenging her progress; she’s racing against the clock to learn how to beat the Mesmer before they find her.

With both enemies and allies all around, Jade must hit the ground running, because what’s chasing her may be worse than the hospital bed she left behind. Turns out that adapting to a new world is only the first step.

©2019 Mountaindale Press (P)2019 Mountaindale Press

Really terrible main character

I can't personally advise anyone buy these books, they are pretty mediocre at best, and I apologize to the author for having to say that. I have read/listened to a great many books, and this might be the most unpleasant main character I have ever come across. She is immature, conceited, rude and quite frankly an insult to the planet she comes from, ours. I have never seen a character vacillate between friendly and outright rude and immature so often. This is also the second book where literally nothing has happened. She thinks she knows everything, is better than everyone else and can act any way she wants with no consequences. I don't believe this is the way actual living human beings would act.

There has been no world building in two books, I can't tell you what kingdom they are in, the ruling family seems to have no duties or responsibilities, and there is nothing to explain the political or social structure. Nobody has any intellectual interest in the world she comes from, nor the things she creates, beyond lip service.

Ultimately these are extremely shallow books that mostly amount to a teenage high school angst story with little to no plot to speak of. The first book spent a decent amount of time going through the system she uses for her abilities etc, the second book almost entirely forgot this and instead the focus shifted to the main characters social life.

If the author insists on subjugating their audience to a third book, I desperately hope they spend some time on world building, because so far the world she lives in now is paper thin.

The Mary Sue aspect it just too much.

I really like the setting and wanted this to be a better book but, the shear amount of Mary Sue in this novel is staggering. The entirety of the book is the MC gaining and mastering new skills with little to no effort whatsoever. The most effort anything seems to ever take is her magic being drained but, she has something like 4 or five times the magic of a master and can completely recover in minuets. I was really hoping that MC would be challenged at some point but, at no point do you really feel like anything is a real threat to her anymore. The story then ends with everyone still "preparing" to leave on a mission that the entire book had been building up since early on. It really feels like most of the book was just padding so that the story could be split into two books. I hope this isn't the case but, the vast majority or events in this book where just repetitive instances of her instantly mastering something and everyone fawning over her.

No where close to the first book.

I couldn't bring myself to finishing the book. There are other reviews that sum up the issues I had in book 2. I get she's going to be OP, but it's her characteristics and attitude that starts to really grind on you. to the point where she would think if certain people as being rude and spoiled, and immediately act basically the same way and think nothing of it. there are so many other little things (not wanting to soil anything) that just finally add up to make the book a huge disappointment.

... disappointed

right so this is a return of Jade my favorite Mary Sue and while in the first one book she was happy-go-lucky and a fun interesting character that while absolutely a complete Mary Sue was relatively harmless and easy to forgive here she becomes a lot more annoying from her casual abuse of her power to making demands of people like a brat there's so much about her to like and every time the book starts to get me back on her side she inevitably crosses a line that makes me uncomfortable with the direction her character seems to be headed and the fact that everyone casually accept these things from her instead of confronting her with the fact that she's a little bit of a terrible person makes it worse I genuinely liked her in the first book she was so fun and happy and full of light and while I understand that living in the sort of world that she now exists in will cause her to change the problems that I have with her new Direction have nothing to do with the dangers presented by the world and more to do with a casual disrespect for other people she's a nice person she really is but she doesn't understand what respect is or boundaries but I fully admit that these are personal knit picks and assuming you're comfortable with someone casually mind-controlling another person into being a good guy or cheating to get her way and then berating others and not to mention throwing a full-blown temper tantrum because people didn't understand something that she did these moments soured the story for me I made it hard to enjoy enter root for The Lovable Mary Sue that Jade truly can be assuming you can ignore those things then you you will really really like this volume but I think I'm done after this installment

Great story just rushed

First off I love how the narrator sings songs, not a common thing.

Now book 1 is a solid 5 star. This book has a few issues like being rushed. Honestly this book ends after less than one week of school. The author may of only done a 3 book deal but honestly the whole book is like Harry Potter after end of year tests are over that when all the action happens just that’s the whole book. My suggestion slow down a bit.

Also in book one it was stated 10 is average for humans except for Magic and luck however the two maids barley have any stats above. Five. These are much lower than what the mc started with so why are they so much healthier than she was despite having lower stats?

Great! But its a cliffhanger.

Great continuation and the character development is great. My only gripe is that the entire book sort of leads up to one giant cliffhanger. I was really hoping to get some closure for the main conflict of this book and it kind of leads close to the conflict but stops right before it.

My preference with cliffhangers is that it more introduces the next problem rather than leaves off right before the conclusion of a threat. If you don't want to be left hanging super hard you might wait for the next book to come out first but shy of that, it was REALLY good. I really did enjoy the book and my main complaint right this moment is that the next book isn't out yet lol.

I don't get why people love this

I just honestly don't get why people love this series. The MC is the definition of a Mary Sue character and all the bad that implies. She has literally everything handed to her on a silver platter and virtually everyone adores her immediately. the few characters that don't are largely bullied essentially into silence. There's little actual struggle here, just scene after scene showing how effortlessly amazing Jade is. I finished the first book and wanted to give the second a chance with how many people love it, but I just can't deal with how smug the MC is while not having to work for anything.

Good, but going downhill

First the good, the narration is nicely done. There are a lot of characters, so I had to give some leeway for several characters sounding similar...but that is really nitpicking.

While I enjoyed the story, I found myself questioning why I was traveling along with this character...the book is fairly long, but very little of the activity seems to influence the storyline. It feels like the author wrote down a bunch of traits and is trying to force some super cool recognition/revelation for every single one...in the space of a couple days. By the end of this book, I didn't care what cool trait there was. I also found it hard to believe that the instructors seemed to be clueless...for the most part. I understand the premise that this society lacks the "invention" spirit, but it is beginning to become too big a stretch. I think the pacing of the book would have been better( and made a better/longer series) if the various magics were investigated in chunks of 2-3 instead of 10-15.

Also note, that if you read/listened to the first book, nothing really happens in this one....and when something interesting finally does happen...the book ends. I really want to beat the marketing genius with a rubber hose....its just bad.

Recommendation: Don't buy this book yet. Wait for the next book, wait until some else listens or reads it...then find out if the author is still evil...if so...quit the series. If not, wait for series to be released as a collection...then buy the series. At the current plot rate and plot organization, this series is getting ready to crash and burn.....which is really sad, because I think the beginning premise and general world could be really cool to work with.

let the siphoning begin

about the cycling begin this is a great bridge into the next story the only problem with this is they should have taken a page from Charles Dean when he does stats you just sit at the end of a chapter and make sure that you have the option I'm listening or jumping on to the rest of the story they should have done this with this book because of the how long it takes because of how much the safener has taken other than that this is a great bridge book from Book 2 to book 3 can't wait for that one to goes on audio

Excellent LITRPG with slice of life pacing

I really liked this book. I was mad when it ended because the next book wasn't finished yet but I will happily wait for book three because I want the best book I can get.

This a LITRPG book, in this case it means everybody has status screens and can quantify their abilities and skills, that's it for the most part, so it's kinda litrpg-lite. But it's no weaker for it, frankly I like that it's different and it removes some of the common litrpg issues that other books have.

The pacing takes it easy, I lost track but I think less than a week passes before the end of the book. So the book feels very "slice of life" no rushing from one action scene to another to another. The author takes her time and knows how to use it.

My only annoyance is the stat screen, it's difficult to do well and unfortunately because the MC gets so many abilities and skills, it takes around 2-3 minutes of just reading the stats I started skipping it since I knew the MC would just reiterate what important had changed. It's not done much in the book but by the third time I was getting annoyed but its really a minor issue compared other books

This is a refreshing and bright series, I'm very excited to see what's next.

Shallow mary-sue with poor pacing

The author has now taken two books to cover just over one week, in which the only 'story' is the main character meeting more character that all instantly love her and can't do without her.

The author makes it pretty clear they haven't given stuff much thought and only throw it in there because it seemed cool to them, an example being the author clearly not knowing how archery works, and another being them having a level system for all skills, but the levels clearly mean absolutely nothing, as having the skill doesn't actually impart any knowledge or other benefit. There's no seeming reason to be a master at something (besides an efficiency gain that was only revealed toward end of this book), since she already ha perfect control of and skill in anything she attempts.

All characters beside the main character are also completely dimwitted and couldn't have a novel idea between them if they so tried.

cliffhangar

can't wait for the next instalment. I was unable to stop listening once I started.

A most enjoyable read

I have always enjoyed fantasy books but listening to both syphon and adapt have a me now eagerly awaiting the next book in the series. Even better when it comes out in audible. The story keeps you on the edge waiting for the next day to see what Jade is going to get up to.