[Recenzja] Myke Cole "Armored Saint"

Who? Myke Cole

What? "Armored Saint"

Why? They gave it for free

When? December 2018

Rating:  1/10, absolute toxic shite. 

I avoid Tor Publishing since the despicable way they treated John C. Wright few years back (one of their employees slandered him and they refused to draw any consequences towards her), but this little gem they gave for free. I’ve never heard of the author or the book, had zero expectations and a goodreads challenge to win, so I read it. And I have a bunch of questions.
Who the hell is the target audience of this book? A lot of imagery and especially main character (we’ll get to her in a minute) make it seem like a children’s book. The same with truly horrible “power of love” speech which is in the same time focused on lgbt issues not to mention some scary ideas. Ability to love is the thing that makes you a good person? Well, Goebbels would love to hear that. Also, remember dear kids, that love is always good no matter how the other party receives it, and whole Magic Gay Man From The Forest talk is in the aftermath of main character tricking her friend to kiss her. What is this? Rape apology for ten year olds? The fuck?
In the same time we have a lot of graphic content – a lot of violence, genocidal mobs, limbs missing, people smashed into the pulp, brain matter flying around and such. WHO IS THE TARGET OF THIS BOOK?!
Main character doesn’t help a bit. She’s supposedly sixteen but I was shocked when I read that – she acts somewhere between five or twelve year old and rather dumb and badly behaved one. Everything, EVERYTHING in this book happens because Heloise makes something so dumb a much smaller child would know it shouldn’t be done and she is praised for “being brave”. She doesn’t even have some convoluted logic behind her, she just acts on a whim or because “her body took over”. Every goddamn time the catastrophe could be easily avoided if she wasn’t escalating the conflicts for no reason.
And because Heloise’s dumb behavior is always praised I don’t really know what is the take out of this. As long as you're able to love someone everything you do is justified? What the hell?
It is not badly written style-wise but when it comes to the structure and some more “technical” stuff its rather awful. Not only the mood of it changes rapidly and nonsensically (Magic Gay Man From The Forest with a little mouse on his shoulder in the middle of some magic slaughter?) but also all foreshadowing is so heavy handed this book soon went from predictable (and I am not allergic to predictable!) to ridiculous very fast. There is also whole chapter about Heloise tricking her best friend to kiss her, WHOLE CHAPTER, and the amount of useless words in there includes even a retrospection and the actual kiss is not described. Not to mention that we’re talking about two teen girls. After this abomination we get the Magic Gay Man From The Forest monologue about love justifying whatever you do and making you a good person which makes another chapter.
The only thing I like was the fact that Writ was right and wizards do turn into portals to Hell, though I only wished for it in the name of “if it’s gonna be dumb let it at least be entertaining”.
This book doesn’t start bad and I hoped for a read maybe not very intellectually engaging but at least fun but it gets worse and worse and worse with each chapter and after the midpoint it’s just shit. I rarely not finish books even if they’re bad but honestly the only reason I didn’t throw it into the bin in the middle of that power of love speech is goodreads challenge. I have two to go and very little time considering Christmas and New Year’s Eve celebrations.
Nah, no. Sorry, but no.

After many months I must admit that I still think about how toxic and fucked up is the "love justifies all" thinking (and some other ideas promoted here), so at least it's not one of those book you forget about even when you're still reading it. I recommend it only if you need to induce vomiting.