Heh, yeah, I have people whose recs I avoid for just the same reason. But our tastes do tend to be more convergent (I'm really interested in looking up that Benjamin January series you've mentioned!) and yes, I rather love this series. Don't read it expecting great literature, but if you're looking for fun action-adventure fantasy...
The hero being an ass is...misleading? Artemis is a pre-adolescent->teenage supercriminal with a major Spock complex who is slowly growing up into a hero. So he's maybe not a likable guy at the start, but that's the whole point of his char. And "likable" here is relative - I loved him from the beginning, because he's just my sort of ice-cold ultra-rational asshole - and at 12 years old! only he's not a brat kid; "precocious" doesn't begin to cover it - but he's got a hidden heart from the beginning, and watching that grow is one of the major draws of the series.
But putting that aside, the series has two protagonists; despite the name it's as much Holly's story, and I'm very fond of her. And there's a bunch of other chars who I like as well, much of them in spite of themselves...okay, see, they do the nakama thing where they all squabble and don't seem to get along until it comes down to the wire, and then they all immediately dive in to help each other out. Which you know how much I'm a sucker for... ^^
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Heh, yeah, I have people whose recs I avoid for just the same reason. But our tastes do tend to be more convergent (I'm really interested in looking up that Benjamin January series you've mentioned!) and yes, I rather love this series. Don't read it expecting great literature, but if you're looking for fun action-adventure fantasy...
The hero being an ass is...misleading? Artemis is a pre-adolescent->teenage supercriminal with a major Spock complex who is slowly growing up into a hero. So he's maybe not a likable guy at the start, but that's the whole point of his char. And "likable" here is relative - I loved him from the beginning, because he's just my sort of ice-cold ultra-rational asshole - and at 12 years old! only he's not a brat kid; "precocious" doesn't begin to cover it - but he's got a hidden heart from the beginning, and watching that grow is one of the major draws of the series.
But putting that aside, the series has two protagonists; despite the name it's as much Holly's story, and I'm very fond of her. And there's a bunch of other chars who I like as well, much of them in spite of themselves...okay, see, they do the nakama thing where they all squabble and don't seem to get along until it comes down to the wire, and then they all immediately dive in to help each other out. Which you know how much I'm a sucker for... ^^