I promised this a little while back, so it’s time to deliver. I’m going to review a book. Really most of a series, but I’m not going to read the last one.
Why? Because I want to start picking apart books from a writer’s POV. It’s an exercise to learn what works and what doesn’t.
Other than being a very long-term reader, I have no qualifications. Feel free to disagree with me and leave a comment saying you do. I don’t mind.
Today I’m reviewing Betrayed by the Hero’s Party, I Summoned Their Replacements.
This is a four-book series by someone named Ethan Gale. Ethan (I’m just going with the first-name basis) has 8 books on Amazon. Ratings range from 4.4-4.6. Seems respectable. The first book ranks well on Amazon. 2423 in the Kindle store, #16 in Men’s Adventure Fiction (Kindle), #22 in Men’s Adventure Fiction (Books), and #25 in Fantasy Adventure Fiction. Those are not bad numbers.
The genre here is LitRPG with harem and revenge tropes. LitRPG, in case you’re not familiar, takes role-playing game mechanics and puts them up front in the book’s world. It’s usually fantasy, as this series is. People in the world have stats, they know they have stats, they actively try to gain experience points and level up.
I’ll give the series one thing: the title isn’t obscuring what’s happening here. Low-level adventurer is paired with a party of serious jerks who don’t respect him. His unique ability lets him summon objects, almost all of which are junk. After he pulls something actually awesome, he doesn’t want to give it to the party leader. For his (failed) rebellion, they drop a dungeon corridor behind him and leave him for dead. When he doesn’t die, the world system grants him an achievement that massively boosts his summoning. And most of what he summons next are legendary women.
It starts well. The main character has real grievances. We get the crisis that breaks him out of his routine and it’s believable. The character is built well in the first chapters. We get good interiority for his thoughts and we’re following along. The plot starts out clear, with clearly defined goals. The first woman, a famed swordswoman who died holding a mountain pass, has a distinct personality and point of view.
Notice I said ‘starts’ a lot. Yeah. This starts to fall apart by the middle of the first book and spirals from there. By the third book, every character is speaking in the same cadence. Short, chopped sentences. Structured the same. Over and over.
I had to force myself to get to the end of book 3. There’s no way I’m reading book 4. I found it to be bordering on incoherent by the time I tapped out.
The first thing I noticed as it went downhill was a serious need for beta readers. There are continuity errors. Someone who’s an adventurer in book 1 is a clerk in book 2. And it seems that they always were,. There’s a reference in book 2 to them working with the main character as a clerk, when someone else did that in book 1. Also, they may also be running the tavern in book 2; it was unclear.
The story stops holding together. The worldbuilding just sort of stops happening. The dungeons get repetitive and they lack any sense of danger. The first woman he summons has a level so far above his she’s just babysitting him on experience runs. Any time he’s in danger she steps in.
By the time book 3 rolls around we’ve got an entire chapter which seems like it was just a repeat of the previous chapter. The party literally discusses the plan they just discussed in the last chapter.
As I considered the series, I realized one other major problem: there’s no antagonist. The party leader who ordered the protagonist killed is nominally the bad guy, but he’s never around. He shows up maybe two more times by the end of book 3. The protagonist isn’t even taking him seriously by then. The real antagonist is completely off-screen until a minor appearance in book three. Ethan pivoted the series from ‘revenge against those who wronged him’ to “hero against the corrupt system.” The problem is you have to personify the system for readers to get into it. James Bond didn’t fight the faceless minions of SPECTRE; every one of them had some personality and weird quirk, and they all led to Blofeld. Catniss Everdeen was up against a system but that system was made of people who were on the page. In this book? Nada. System-generated automatons in the dungeon. Even assassination attempts against the party are done off-screen.
And again, no consequences or even the threat of consequences. One of the summoned women is a ridiculously powerful healer. She detects the assassin’s poison by touching the main character and instantly cures him. Another of the women is also an assassin who can gather any information the party needs.
Gale (we’re no longer on a first-name basis) did publish these in rapid order. The entire 4-book series came out in 2026: March, April, May, and the last one today (June).
As a publication strategy, it’s interesting. Your reader won’t have time to forget you.
What did I get from reading the first three books? It confirmed that I’ll need beta readers. And it did change the way I’m structuring my book. My antagonist was the townspeople, who would be split over the main character moving in. That’s not enough. She needs someone she can push against and who pushes her. There was one guy who was going to try to push her out, but I envisioned hum working behind the scenes. That won’t work. He needs to be more in her face. It’s going to mean re-writing, but it’s going to be worth it.
Anyway, if you’ve read the series Betrayed by the Hero’s Party, I Summoned Their Replacements and have something to say about it, hit me up in the comments.
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