The Power of Ten: Book Seven: Biracial Edgelord Can't Make Immortal – R.E. Druin

Edges towards self-parody

I’ve enjoyed all the books in this series (is ‘series’ the right word?), but some just work better than others.

What’s good about this book is common to the series: The author is thoughtful about the tropes. The author roots the book in someone’s earlier work and explores implications. (Sometimes that’s partly being thoughtful about the tropes, sometimes it’s being thoughtful about what is different in the earlier work.) The author has fun giving the characters every possible exploit.

What works less well in this book: The ‘edgelord’ theme (e.g. skulls and roses as the visual component of spells) is amusing at first, but doesn’t carry its weight. The protagonist goes well past the line between “Good people are willing to do what it takes to smite evil” and “Kill them all”. (The author has, in past books, had demons who got tired of being evil. Here we have entire sapient species that are inherently evil, and have no relevant free will.) The protagonist is so much more powerful than those with whom she interacts, that all interactions are jokes.