I have a ticket to file against fantasy authors who think "epic" means "bloated." This book is 17 hours long. Seventeen. For a single POV fantasy novel? That's unoptimized code.
I picked this up because I needed something long to survive a week of Caltrain delays, but I almost DNF'd at hour six. The pacing has serious latency issues. There are entire chapters of travel and internal monologue that feel like infinite loops. If I were the editor, I would've refactored about 30% of the text to improve the runtime performance.
But—and this is a big "but"—Erin Bennett saves the deployment.
I don't say that lightly. Usually, when the plot drags, I zone out and start mentally debugging my team's Jira board. Bennett kept me hooked because her character differentiation is actually useful, not just performative. She gives the dragons this specific, ancient haughtiness—they sound like Senior Staff Engineers explaining pointers to a junior dev. Arrogant, immortal, and tired of your nonsense. It works.
Bennett pulls off the same trick in Identicals, where she keeps distinct voices sharp across a cast that could easily blur together—she clearly does her homework on character differentiation. ### Why Flicker's Voice Arc Actually MattersThe way Bennett voices Flicker (the dragonet) evolving from a squeaking hatchling to a slightly more articulate (but still sassy) companion is the only reason the emotional payload lands. The bickering between Hualiama and Flicker isn't just cute; Bennett adds a layer of grit to it. When Hualiama gets stubborn—which is often—Bennett drops her pitch slightly, giving the character a spine that the text sometimes forgets to emphasize.
### The Ra'aba ProblemWe need to talk about the "traitor" subplot. Ra'aba. It's predictable. You see the betrayal coming from the first packet exchange. And the ending? It's a hard crash. A cliffhanger that doesn't feel like a natural pause, but more like the server connection was severed mid-upload.
Exit Strategy is what a tight, well-paced plot actually looks like—that one never made me reach for the speed controls.If you listen to this at 1.0x speed, you have more patience than I do. I cranked this to 1.75x during the middle sections just to clear the buffer.
### Who's This Build For?Dragon enthusiasts who want their scaly companions to have actual personality—and who don't mind a slow burn. Skip it if you need tight plotting or hate cliffhangers. Seriously, that ending will frustrate you.
### Final CommitThe dragon architecture is solid, the narrator is S-tier, but the codebase is bloated. Listen for the dragon sass, not the plot velocity.
