Arcane Dropout 4

By: Edmund Hughes

Narrated by: Alex Ford

Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

Spoiler Guard

Eldon Brock goes about his normal life feeling as though a word, or perhaps a name, is on the tip of his tongue. When a hallucination claiming to be a ghost who knows "who he really is" begins stalking him, he's left with an interesting question. Has he lost his mind, or just begun to find it?

Warning: This novel contains graphic sex scenes between the main character and numerous women/succubi/monster girls.

©2019 Edmund Hughes (P)2019 Edmund Hughes

unpopular opinion

this book is fun but I think it has major flaws. one of the biggest is how the mc and his sister act they feel more like a teacher student than his actual relationship with his teacher. kinda spoiler lee was kinda abandoned by Zoey yet they never talk about it. she says she was protecting him but she is basically hanging with her friends yes ik she does more. the mc doesnt seem to care either he is a loyal character to his friends but we dont see that same passion for his sister. also while this book was in a cliffhanger so it needs to handle what happened in the last one I think this book should have only been about lee and the new group he is around. also lee feels shallow at times like I want him to be bad to be anger at everything but he isn't he doesnt seem effected by anything.

again my biggest problem is lee and his sister I wanted them to have time to be together more they never feel real she nags on him some but they never get the alone time to just talk to laugh or see how they actually were as siblings. honestly I kinda feel like zoey doesnt even care that much about lee like she loves him but never wants to give up for him and never even offers so I just feel so uncaring about the whole thing.

More story to go glad for book 5

Very entertaining. Again a workable blend of action, story line and hotness. Definitely a workable formula.

As always a blast this series

Have listened to the previous 3 books in the series and I feel it keeps the same pace as the ones before it. With enough explenation even a first time listener should be able to follow. Tje plot of this book is even a bit easier then the previous ones but with some interesting new turns of events and lots of interesting interactions with the woulds other population giving more depth to its world. The reading is fantastic with multiple voices all unique and interesting without being distracting. Looning forward to book nr5

These books just keep me sucked in.

It’s not the greatest story in the world, not the best I’ve heard but if you liked the previous books, you will enjoy this one also. I love the connections to the other series written by the author and how in this book the plot thickens with said connections.

See you in the next one.

nice continuation

i bit fast bur ended the cliffhanger nicely and left with next cliffhanger for next book though wish there was more to the end scene.

getting tired of the MC

The book continues in the same then the same vein as prior, but some of the MC's stupidactions, sometimes turning out as "good decisions," are becoming increasingly annoying.

Agatha Deathfinger! lmfao!

The Agatha Deathfinger part had me lmfao! Also the narrator does an exceptional job as usual!

a fun book

the author overuses the word channel, and the narrator says c*ck the exact same way every time like almost prerecorded levels of the same way

cant wait

love this series. very excited to listen to the next one. definitely worth the listen.

Time to get some dislikes

Okay despite what the title might suggest I am not here to troll, bash anyone that happens to like this series, or anything of that sort, this is just my personal opinion. Even so given the popularity of Mr. Hughes's works I know that I am going to get some reflexive dislikes for this review; all I ask if that you hear me out first.

So first full disclosure, I didn't like dark impulses, his previous series, to the point I returned it. This book reveals, though it was hinted at in the first book and probably more so if I had managed to get through the second book of dark impulse, that the two series exist in the same world and this book is a bit of a cross over. This does color my impression of this book; especially since because of that I cannot get myself through the last 3 hours, I will edit my review after I manage that some how.

So the good: 1. The book does not spend overly much time on the amnesia side journey to get the mc and Tess out into the wider world. Maybe the first two hours.
2. There is a bit of world building here, not a lot, but more than what I was expecting and does a good job of fleshing things out.
3. The mc's down to one girl which works better as it makes it feel a little bit more genuine, especially since its pretty clear up to an including this point Tess is his one and only given how she's in almost every scene and gets a say, and typically the final say, over what happens.
4. Yeah it's a cross over, I didn't like dark impulse but if you wanted to know what happened to Jack and his group afterwards here ya go.
5. I want to make this clear, Mr. Hughes writing is solid, he doesn't tel and not show overly much, he doesn't get lost in exposition, he doesn't have characters suddenly take a 180 for the sake of plot, there are no egregious grammar mistakes, nor does he forget how his magic system works, nor are there dues ex machina used because he wrote himself into a corner, hell he even typically good job of describing the area the characters are in though he could o a bit of a better job there.
6. he uses a soft magic system, that while soft is still well suited and is such due to the number of different extra human beings in the world, something that makes sense to me, and he does so well.

The Cons; now for those down votes.
1. First and foremost the MC is a limp noodle, he more or less goes along with the flow and very rarely thinks ahead and thus ends up in situations and problems that he probably wouldn't have if he had a little more forethought. I personally prefer Mc's with a bit of personally agency and intellect.
2. The book suffers from what a lot of cross over books do, that the previous group kind over shadows and overwhelms the current series's group, especially since there's only the two of them.
3. Here's the biggest weakness since it's what the plot hinges on; we a lot "the government is evil" talk, people say it all the time, but they never show their government being deliberately cruel or evil. In fact from what I have seen in this series is that the government does everything in its power as lightly as possible. This is especially true given that if the magic users didn't have control of their power and not moral they could easily destroy dozens of lives if not more. Mean with people that can brainwash others, delete memories, become invisible, summon fire and the like the amount of havoc they could raise, from slave rings, to arson, to cheating on tests or getting away with literal murder. I get why the magic user's government is so strict; now if we want to lean into then the author should have shown us the government being oppressive and evil, but really its those self same groups that want freedom from the government that act badly. Hell the MC even gets raped and tortured back in book one, but these anti government people are supposed to be the good guys? Of course but they killed a character from Dark Impulse, yeah I never liked that character as they were rather self righteous and short sighted so yes this is what breaks the series for me. Don't write a new series that is completely dependent on the previous series for the plot to work.

In general, this is not a bad book, just an average one. I personally would save my money and go read other series like those by William D Arrand/Randi Darren, Jaeger Mitchells. Harmon Cooper, or Cebelius.