To Pierce the Heart

The Forerunner Initiative, Book 3

By: Draith

Narrated by: Andrea Emmes

Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

Having teleported halfway across the continent, we've finally escaped Ivicka's notice and are free to do something about getting home to Earth. Except none of our options are exactly simple.

My attention may be getting slightly diverted by a certain K'tharn. But only a little. It's not my fault Rufka has style, grace, and humor to match.

Even as Rufka goes to the Aetherium's capital to rescue her mum, we head to Glimmering Sands. A totally normal resort town, other than the fact it's on an alien planet and is run by a bunch of giant squids known as the M'tari. Or, as the locals say, the Lords of the Deep. M'tari are basically what happens when Cthulhu decides to hang up his eldritch god hat and run a resort town instead. Of course, we've barely arrived when things go wrong.

In the aftermath, we rejoin Rufka, and I discover I'm not the only one who knows how To Pierce the Heart.

©2023 Draith (P)2023 Podium Audio

not what I expected

I listened to this series mostly based on the narrator and the name of the first book, and I wasn't expecting a romance between the MC and a spider-cat-girl, but I'm here for it.

on the other hand? the magic system is FANTASTIC, incredibly diverse and detailed while not handing everything out easily.

Furries?

Now from book one I thought the MC was a lesbian and feared men due to trauma in her past with a older man. Now that turned out not to be the cause of her trauma and she isnt dating the girl she wanted to move in with.

All that seemed normal and deepened the story. I quite liked this series due to a lack of romance and focus upon magic as well as story.

Now we got the MC lusting after a six foot four armed four eyes furred alien. I'm not sure I'm down to read a furry fan fic romance. Like does her partner have a cat face with whiskers and she wants to make out with that?

I hope the whole human on cat lust is turned down in the future.

First book is decent then it goes downhill

There are some things to like here but in the end it just turns to disappointment.
The first issue i would raise is present in all the books, and comes from the fact that the books are written from the perspective of a main character that clearly has ADHD, I as the listener get to experience this inability to focus and jumping from thing to thing in a second hand manner in many of the conversations and scenery descriptions. And to be frank this is just an uncomfortable way to experience the story while it adds nothing for me.
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The second issue i have is with the characters, and the fact that they are just not consistent in the way they react, think and deal with the situations that occur throughout the story, This is especially true for Beth that supposedly has years of experience with *redacted*, In the first book she is consistently presented in a competent manner, Later on she acts like she has no competence or experience in these things, and even if there is growing emotional duress from how the story develops Beth is just no longer a believable character because even when an experienced character makes bad decisions they don't do this in a way that completely discards their way of dealing with things, nor do they forget the experience they have, they would still use all their available tools even if they were to become hyper focused on one thing above all else. While this type of character disconnect is not so jarringly present with the others, it is present and i have come to the point that i will now stop listening to this series because the experience is just hollow.