Reclusive Mage by Inadvisably Compelled
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

While I still enjoy the magic system and its exploitation, I have grown to realize this series has gone rather downhill.

I read a comment somewhere on these books that I wanted to disregard, but unfortunately, it stuck and grew until I just couldn't un-see it for my own enjoyment.

The characters being... so much less paranoid, even downright trusting and friendly--based on extreme power and scariness--is a plot problem I might have ignored.

The inherent racism, not so much.

What? Racism? It's vamps and werewolves and humans and fae. Wouldn't that be a no-brainer, who cares? I'd say sure, and even got behind all the vamps being relatively no good because they do just prey on humans. But when I take a step back and think about a True Blood mapping of supernatural races to ugly stereotypes and internet-ugly talking points, it's kinda hard to ignore that this prepper West Virginian white boy with a fetish for 40's style chicks has never had much thought about the ease of murdering a whole class of people because they've never, ever, ever had a damn good thing to contribute to society, and will never even open up a single line of dialogue to that effect. Just massive firepower from a hidden location.

Now, it may never be explicitly said, but vamps and the Night Lands portal might rather easily be interpreted as blacks, and intensely sending all of them back to their homeland, and if they can't go, to just murder them all on Earth's soil. There's never any introspection on any of this. It's just assumed they're bloodsuckers despite working hand-in-hand with the authoritarian gov that everyone's now seceding from, a-la very Maga-like, only now to make their own gov that gets rid of all the undesirables.

And let's make this also clear: there's no definition of undesirables. It's "whatever I say is undesirable" and "I'm not going to get into semantics with anyone. No debate. Just a show of power."

This is a far cry from the running, hiding prepper, but now that he has a bit of power, he's showing himself to be the mob boss he always wanted to be.

I'm getting tired of this. He's a third-world-king and it looks like he's going to be a full-world king by the next book. His whole claim to righteousness is "I go by my gut. If someone is preying on the normal folk, I'll kill them." Only he decides who is normal folk. And it can change on any whim.

Screw this slippery racist slope.


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