I read the second book with a very critical mindset throughout. It was fun to be terribly critical for once! But I think ultimately I was trying to enjoy this series the wrong way. I'm used to sci-fi that takes itself more seriously. This series should be enjoyed as mindless fun instead!

Anyway, no way to fix that now. So, what did I dislike in particular?

Finally we are out of school. School was dumb. Having to master sword fighting. Like anybody does that on spaceships!

Actually they do. Swordfighting is the singular way of combat in this series, no matter if you are in a spaceship or underwater. I have to call out two examples to illustrate how it gets.

1) Spaceship vs spaceship in orbit around the Moon. Solution: put people in very very hard armor and shoot them at the other spaceship. The shots penetrate all the way to the command bridge and the heroes lay waste to the enemy. Why did we even need to put people in the armor if we can shoot it into the enemy bridge? Why not just shoot sacks of potatoes at that point? (The answer of course is the Rule of Cool.)

2) Dropping an army on Mars from orbit. Every man in one of those very very hard armors. Enemy aircraft ("ripWings") intercept them. No worry! Our hero has a sword!

Enemy ripWings followed us into the atmosphere, but here we’re more maneuverable, and we kill the big fighters with ease. I swoop in on one from behind with the Howlers hot on my tail, and slash it with my razor. I fly off as it spirals down through the clouds into the ocean below.

Even in Star Wars the Jedi fly spaceships to combat spaceships. They don't generally attack aircraft with lightsabers. Here, it's as if firearms never existed. Our hero holds a roomful of generals hostage with a sword. Nobody considers shooting him.

Months have passed since I read Golden Son, and I cannot stay angry about swords in space for this long. We get to visit a few planets/moons and they all have air and swordfighting. In a nod to science, gravity can be slightly different.

But my opinion of the plot structure has not improved with time. The hero was super at everything in school. But a few years later in the real world he gets beaten in space combat, he gets roughed up by a bunch of kids. No longer so invincible. He goes on anyway to challenge the best fighter in the universe to mortal combat. The duel is off to a bad start. Then we learn that he's been taking lessons in secret and is in fact the best fighter in the universe! Yay! This is not how books are supposed to go!

Normally the reader gets some hints in advance. It would be pretty easy to fix too. Like, in one scene an EMP disables all the tech. But surprise! Razors (swords) are not affected. Their control is "chemical". This would be fine by me if it had been mentioned earlier. But as it's just pulled out of thin air to save the hero in a seemingly hopeless situation it just feels like the author is messing with me. If razors are chemical, did the people with the EMP not know this? Why didn't they shoot something that disables razors too? (Like a grenade. They just wanted to kill everyone anyway.)

I found great satisfaction in the ending though! The hero walks into a clear ambush and everybody gets killed.