J. R. Rain

This book has quite a few glaring flaws and generously uses a lot of common tropes and clichées I am usually tired of but for some reason, I enjoyed it enough for a 3-star rating anyway.

The biggest personal pet peeve I had with this book was the "quantum" explanation.
It throws around really bad pseudoscience in general but as long as this isn't too specific it usually doesn't bother me too much. But this very specifically tries to make up some bogus explanation involving quantum computing requiring alternate dimensions to work. If you make up science invent your own, don't coopt existing science and then change it to something completely wrong.

I understand it is tempting to use "quantum" to explain your fake science.
While it might seem to a layman that everything quantum is basically black magic voodoo it's really not. Quantum field theory is actually very well understood and is 100 years old already at this point. And at least the basics are not actually that hard to understand. People just don't try.

For god's sake, stop using "quantum" to explain your pseudoscience already. Just invent your own terminology and you can do with it whatever you want!

Sadly the sequel never got an audiobook so I won't continue even though I would've tried.
Edit: apparently there is an audiobook now!… (plus d'informations)

I like the setting of this series at the cusp of the discovery of magic by humans.
The acknowledgment of the futility of hiding something so widespread and impactful is refreshing.

Very, very few books actually manage to pull off the hidden magical society thing in an even slightly believable way.

The way the MC gets roped into the book plot in this one is more than a bit contrived and I am quite annoyed that this sect of insane/stupid people is still a major plot point. I kind of hoped there would just be a small side plot rooting them out for good.
I don't think they make for a good adversary. I never found religious fanatics without much brain appealing as the bad guys.

… (plus d'informations)