Spellhacker

"For such a beautifully built world with an intricately woven magic system that plays alongside futuristic tech in all its sci-fi glory; it's a real shame that this book was so difficult to get through. There are two cardinal sins a book can make- being boring and making a main character so completely insufferable that reading the book feels like a self-inflicted punishment. This book has one of those two problems to an extreme degree. Dizzy is so utterly emotionally constipated for seventy-five percent of the book that they are beyond frustrating to follow. The fact that they are intentionally written to be completely intolerable, to the point it is directly called out by another character over halfway through is baffling to me. When another character complains "We can't hang in limbo until you decide you're ready to actually have an emotion," and then the lack of self-awareness to realize that despite being in Diz's head, the reader likely feels the same way, and then to leave it unaddressed until the last fourth of the book when you realize your main character is intended to actually have an arc of growth is a confusing choice. The last quarter of this book delivers wonderfully, the magic system is beautifully written and descriptive, the way tech is incorporated manages to be seamless and feel natural, and the world is fantastic in the way it is built. However, it's a shame that none of these things make this any less of a frustrating story to read. It feels as if the world and magic came far before the plot or characters written. I wish we had gotten more of the heists promised and less of its only conflict for half of the book being "character refuses to use their grown-up words"."