User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
4.5/5 stars
Started a bit stale for me but it ended up being a gripping and entertaining story with Dungeon Crawl element.For this review, let’s start with why I haven’t given any books in the series a full 5 stars rating, shall we? If you want to know what the premise is about, read the official blurb at your own risk.
Ghostwater is the fifth book in the
Cradle series, and it didn’t start off as smoothly as I hoped. Don’t get me wrong, I have enjoyed the series very much and I continue to do so; my rating for each installment pretty much speaks for themselves. However, I want to love it more, if I were to be brutally honest,
Cradle has been missing one crucial aspect that’s, more often than not, is very necessary for me to love a book even further: an empathizing main character. Up until now, the side characters—Yerin, Eithan, Orthos, Jai Long, Little Blue—were the characters that made the series shine for me. This notion of mine was proven even further with the inclusion of a new character in
Ghostwater, an A.I named Dross which I loved ever since its first appearance. I don’t think I need to explain further how much I loved Eithan, Yerin, Mercy, Orthos; I have enjoyed reading about all the side characters more than I enjoyed reading about Lindon.
“And I can see your face so much clearly now! It’s…well, at least you have a wonderful spirit. Yes, indeed. That spirit of yours, wow.”
Lindon himself felt like a ‘platform’ merely used to show the gradual advancement of power in the series; he made the Sacred Arts and the side characters shine but he was lacking in characterizations. With that info in mind, many action scenes throughout the series—especially the first quarter of this novel—that involved Lindon became stale and non-reactionary to me. Don’t misinterpret this as me saying that the action sequences were lacking in quality, they’re not. The actions have always been well-written; the anime-style display of power and magic system were all superbly put to the series, and they totally worked well when they involved the supporting characters of the series. However, at the end of the day, if an action scene involves characters I don’t care about, then the actions were exactly just that, cool flashy fight scenes that don’t spark emotions in me, and that’s what happened with Lindon. Throughout the series so far, Lindon’s sole motivation has always revolved around getting stronger, there’s no complexity to his character motivations other than that. Thankfully, the second half of
Ghostwater finally started to fix this issue. Wight showed Lindon’s depth of relationship with the other characters; there’s more to life than Sacred Arts advancement and this was incredibly effective in improving my enjoyment of reading his chapters.
“The prize is an illusion…The mountain has no peak. You keep climbing and climbing until you fall and break yourself at the bottom. Highgold is one step, Truegold is another step, but there’s no end to it. You could walk forever, but every Path ends in a fall.”
I noticed that many people were disappointed with
Skysworn—my favorite of the series so far—because it didn’t have any training or advancement stage for Lindon. There’s still no training per se here, but Lindon’s advancement is back, and it’s back stronger than ever by involving an interesting Dungeon crawl method. The advancement’s scenes in
Ghostwater actually became my favorite in the series since
Blackflame; I found it to be intriguing. Within these advancement pages, we also get to see Lindon’s relationship development with Orthos, Dross, and Little Blue. As for Yerin, her and Mercy’s story were utterly impressive and badass. It’s a bit unfortunate that Eithan didn’t have many presences here, but the few chapters he appeared in, as usual, stole the highlight of the novel for me.
“Just focus on doing your best. Don’t think about the massively improbable odds, or what will happen if you fails.”
I did fear I wasn’t going to enjoy this one at the beginning of this book but by the conclusion, I ended up feeling incredibly positive for the sequel. I continue to enjoy reading
Cradle.
Ghostwater was exciting, full of destructive anime-style action scenes, and most importantly, it gave the series the much-needed characterizations for Lindon that I’ve been craving for five books. Because of these, I have a good feeling that the next book,
Underlord, will finally earn the first 5 stars rating for the series from me. Let’s find out.
You can order the book from: Book Depository (Free shipping)You can find this and the rest of my reviews at Novel NotionsSpecial thanks to my Patrons on Patreon for giving me extra support towards my passion for reading and reviewing!
My Patrons: Alfred, Devin, Hamad, Mike, Miracle, Nicholas.
Rating: really liked it
3rd reading:
For me, this is still a highlight of the series. It's my 3rd read and I still love the pocketworld setting. I didn't know such a thing really existed and so it's all new to me. I love the concept. Will is amazing how well he guides this story and he's great at bringing the new and big ideas. Although, it does seem that when the plot needs Lindon to be weak, he can't win so that later, Lindon will blow all of them away. It sort of comes and goes at Will's whim. Mostly, he gives good reasons, but there are times, it simply because Lindon needs to win. Anyway, I love this story and I was going to slow down, but I just want to keep going.
The beginning is okay. It's the last dregs of the horrible 4th book. I just hate how the Skysworn treat Eithan's students. It's so boring to read. It might be tension, but not good tension and it grows so old. Then, the story becomes the gem it is.
2nd reading
I thought I read this last year, but it was only this past April. This year feels so long. After reading all 8 books, this is still one of my favorite of the series and I stand by the 5 star rating. Lindon gets to leap 2 stages in this book and it's great how it goes down. This is unique to the series and it holds up well to re-reads.
Previously,
Holy fried giant fish, this story was amazing. I mean, this book had me. This story brings it and it’s the best in the series so far. At first, I didn’t think this bubble world would be a good story but once I got going with it, I mean I could not put it down. I mostly read this story in 2 days. I do wish the books in this series had more information. It needs to be a bit longer and give us more information.
This was Lindon’s story. We also see perspectives from other cultures and Underlords and even Monarchs. We learn so much about this world and how it works and how much power people can really attain if they are lucky and work hard.
My last story, I complained that no one seems to have any sense of life, love or down time. Here, several characters try and tell Lindon that he needs to live a little. The mountain never ends and there is always another level to get to and he needs to rest and spend some time enjoying life. Lindon doesn’t listen.
We see Eithan again being awesome. It’s time he goes from Underlord to Overlord. He needs to up his game now. Mercy does not level up in this book. She is still Lowgold. Yerin finally levels up to Truegold from Highgold. Lindon has the book and he has to fight with Truegolds with Orthos and he finds potions and water to drink to help him. IN this story he goes from Lowgold to Truegold. He is set up to learn about Soulfire and learn to be an Underlord.
There is some big competition coming up for all the kingdoms to compete in and we see Eithan wanting to set up his disciples to fight in that competition.
Another cool thing Lindon did was he finds this construct that is self thinking and he helps it progress and become a thinking entity and then attaches it to his body. Lindon is getting to be amazing in power and he’s learning to fight.
My one complaint or critique about this story is we see so little of Yerin and Mercy bonding. They spent about a month in the woods together, camping together and having each other’s back and we see so little of that. Will should have take some more pages and shown us an emotional bond that started to form or at least respect. I am beginning to think he is writing these too fast with all the other series he is doing and he’s missing some moments. I know showing character growth will slow down an action story, but I love character development. I feel he pushes his story too hard and he doesn’t really give us enough character development when he can. Take a breath and let us see some vulnerability or some tension between them or some bonding, something. There were in the story so little that this is a little thing.
This book had everything and this was amazing. I love it. This is some entertaining stuff. It is non-stop action pulse pounding thriller going on.
When can I start Book 6!!!
Rating: really liked it
4.5 stars.
Ghostwater is a worthy winner of the Reddit r/Fantasy 2018 Stabby Awards for Best Independent Book; I am now a huge fan of the Cradle series.The author kept on surprising me with his inexhaustible imagination and the ever-increasing, mind-blowing, magnitude of magical and martial power in this series. All without ever making me think that it was ridiculous. Well, okay, it was - just ridiculously fun and exciting, that is.
I have mentioned in my previous review about the monstrous leap in power and ability that would be required to achieve Eithan's mysterious grand plans. And also that I was uncertain how many books that would take for our main characters to get there. Ghostwater provided quite a leg-up in that respect. The amazing part was that with the foundation of the worldbuilding and magic systems in place and all that was possible, it didn't even seem improbable anymore. This was due to Wight skillfully seeding and nurturing these two key elements into the story over the past few books. As a reader, I did not feel that I needed to suspend disbelief when a huge advancement occurred. While on this topic of worldbuilding, Lindon's story in this book predominantly took place in an underwater pocket world created by one of those insanely powerful entities called Monarchs. How cool was that?
Character-wise, Lindon took centre-stage in this instalment, given that he had the most to catch-up on in terms of growth in power. Fortunately, I have progressively grown to enjoy his characterisation more with each book. He continued to push himself to the brink and one had to appreciate how far he had come from sheer determination. Granted that fate was on his side, but ever one to seize an opportunity against the odds, the gifts did not simply fall on his lap. It took some serious hard work, a lot of suffering, and savvy to get there. And where Lindon was, there would also be Orthos, the fire-breathing turtle - a partnership that had been gone through many trials and was ever the stronger for it.
While Yerin was almost shoved to the sidelines in Ghostwater, she continued to shine with her grit and tenacity in the fewer pages alloted to her POV. An interesting new character introduced in the previous book, Mercy, was also gaining importance in the story. Coming from an immensely powerful family, her pleasant disposition contrasted starkly against the supreme arrogance of her relations and was probably the cause of her estrangement. Mercy was a great addition to the team together with Lindon and Yerin - a team that Eithan was now most eager to train and groom for whatever ends he was planning for.
While I had a fantastic time reading Ghostwater, I was quite disappointed that Eithan did not appear much in this book. He was so brilliantly manipulative that he lent himself to be underestimated by peers and opponents alike. Whenever it was time for him to show his cards, the scene would inevitably become one of my favourites. I still wondered how much more of his powers, ability and knowledge that he was keeping a secret. All the same, you get the sense that he was doing all this for some greater good, or at least I hoped that is the case.
And now, I wait.
PS: Not much longer now, as Underlord will be released on 1st March.You can purchase a copy of the book, or read it free via Kindle Unlimited on
Amazon US. You can also find this and my other reviews at Novel Notions.
Rating: really liked it
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“Truth does not care for your feelings”
I slightly enjoyed Skysworn more than Ghostwater. If you look at my reviews for the whole series, it is still a great series with solid 4 ratings. I think Ghostwater was good too but I had a few criticisms which I am trying to explain here.
The writing is as good as usual, I find the writing quality to be consistent which is awesome. The characters voices is the same and there is a mix between comedy and seriousness. I enjoyed the bloopers at the end of the book because it was a creative addition that I never countered in any books I have read so far.
I think the characters are the most important factors when it comes to rating these books. I like Lindon and I love his development but I am mostly someone who likes secondary characters and actually in this book the same applies. I am a bigger fan of Yerin, Eithan and Mercy than I am of Lindon. I love the interaction between those different characters with the main character and how they all keep growing and moving forward. This book has the characters separated and we have Lindon at the main spot, I think the secondary characters got less pages than I wanted, I really wanted more Eithan and I also miss the iterations throughout the books which were not found in this entry. To be fair, the book adds a new AI character called Dross and he is just funny and lovely! Lindon relationship with Little Blue and Orthos were more deepened in this book and I thought it was a good thing. I am not complaining that it focused on Lindon but I am disappointed the other secondary characters were less explored.
The world building is as strong as ever, I don’t know how the author can keep coming up with ideas to develop the world. In this book we have pocket worlds which are literally what they sound like, whole worlds contained in a small space. The book takes it name from one of those which is Ghostwater. The magic is cool too. There was so many advancing happening in this book and although it made sense, it was a bit too fast and convenient for my taste, I wish things were slowed down till next books.
This book was still short which makes these books addicting and easy to fly through. The books are full of action. Ghostwater starts with a good scene but then the beginning was a bit shaky and things improve later fortunately but those first chapters decreased my overall enjoyment of the book given how the last book started!
Summary: Although I had a few problems with this book regarding the pacing and characters. The books are still addicting and I enjoyed it pretty much. No doubt that I am continuing the series!
Rating: really liked it
Easily my favorite in the series so far. I did not realize how much I had missed the leveling aspect of the story until it was back! And back in spades. I'm impressed with how much progress almost everyone makes, even Ortho and Little Blue. I love the new addition of Dross. That has some great implications for Lindon's future advancement. I wonder if they'll be able to take Dross's learnings and help enhance everyone else too. Hmmm! Must read the next book soon.
Rating: really liked it
Hmmm. I am a huge fan of Will Wight and the Cradle series. But, Ghostwater, left me a bit satisfied and a bit annoyed.
The good parts of the book are classic Will Wight. The battles, the world building, the characters, the levelling up. The bad part of the book (only one but it is big) is that there is zero plot in this book. Sure Lindon achieves more levels and he manages to find the next big bad. But, this book is clearly a set-up for the rest of the series.
Overall, go for it. It is a good addition to the series but definitely not the best.
Rating: really liked it
High end 4.5 stars.
If you like action packed Dungeon Crawlers, you will really like this book!
Rating: really liked it
Buddy read with
SnezanaGhostwater is the fifth book in the Cradle series. What I love most about this series is the pace and character development, each book focuses on a different idea and this one is about Ghostwater. The fight scenes, magic system, dialogues, great depiction of friendship and amazing characters are some of my favorite things about this book.
Ghostwater is a pocket world created by Northstrider,(a monarch). The world was abandoned 50 years prior to this book, after the brief wake of the Phoenix, Ghostwater’s anchor is no longer solid and the world is said to collapse in a couple of months. The Skysworn were sent to investigate and what they saw is more than they expected.
“The difference between perceived strength and actual strength is smaller than you would believe” This book also show more insight on the magic caste, the ones initially mentioned in the previous books are Copper, Iron, low gold, high gold, true gold, under lord, over lord and arch lord in ascending order. There was a few mention of Monarch and Sage, I know they are higher than the aforementioned ones but I don’t know which is higher, and now we have Heralds, another powerful magic caste, I don’t know where they fit yet, I hope I get a better explanation in the next book.
Moving on, I love this book as much as I do the other previous ones, the world building is beyond average, it’s awesome. Will Wight literally have a different world building for each book because each book is set in a different location. The book is written in third person multiple POV.
My favorite character remains Lindon, he remains true to his beliefs, he is humble, kind and courageous. He is brave but not arrogant.
Yerin is so cynical and realistic, I like that about her, it makes her friendship with Lindon all the better, they compliment each other.
Mercy Acura is the daughter of the Acura monarch, details on why she left her family is still vague but I like her already. She is such a good person.
There are lots of new characters in this, my favorite is Dross, a sentient construct, his opinion of everything is hilarious. Then there’s Kiel, he’s still sort of a mystery, can’t wait to read more about him in the next book.
Rating: really liked it
Lindon, Yerin, and Mercy are once again under the employment of the Skysworn. They are still treated as disposable and as enemies by Skysworn leadership. The team is sent off to investigate the pocket dimension Ghostwater, created by the Monarch Northstrider. The pocket dimension is collapsing due to the rising of the Bleeding Phoenix. Lindon and Orthos find themselves trapped in Ghostwater while Yerin and Mercy struggle to save them.
Ghostwater is the book I've been waiting for. I felt like the story really came together for everyone. Lindon and Orthos are trapped without any clear means of escape. They are forced to rely on each other. Lindon has often been protected by plot armor, but he really grew and developed in this book largely thanks to Orthos. He wasn't reliant on luck in Ghostwater. Orthos really shined in this book. He showed off his physical prowess and took a mentoring role with Lindon. He had his typical lines regarding what dragons do, but he also taught Lindon much more mentally. He also called him on areas he was ignoring in his overall development. Orthos was simply stellar.
"Once, you were weak. That boy is long dead, but his Remnant still haunts you....Your weakness, Lindon, is thinking you are weaker than you are." - OrthosYerin and Mercy's story was more straightforward. We learn more about Mercy and Yerin continues to have more memories from her master's remnant.
The world as a whole expanded in this book. We see other factions such as the Akura Clan, the Gold Dragons, Redmoon Hall, The Beast King, and the Monarchs. All their plans are far from clear, but they are all intriguing in their own rights. They of course don't all get along even when they have truces with one another. Each of these factions seem to be stronger than the Blackflame Empire as a whole.
Eithan takes a bit of a back seat and even he gets to show off a bit. It's interesting to know that he doesn't want anyone to know the extent of his abilities, especially considering how powerful he is whenever he demonstrates them. All with a smile on his face. He loves to irritate his opponents.
Ghostwater is a really excellent book and I'm excited to see how the series continues from here.
Rating: really liked it
So delicious. I loved the pocket universe dungeon. Yes, almost the entire novel is made up of a few fights and a whole lot of training and exploration, but damn, it was FUN.
This is rapidly becoming one of my most favorite, rather more original than the normal-run, LitRPGs.
Powerful? Did you say POWERFUL? lol, and still so much more power to go. *chortles in glee*
Rating: really liked it
Well that was fun. But I really should have tried to savour it a bit longer. Maybe stretched it out to another day. But as it stands, I couldn't put it down. Classic Cradle, Classic Lindon, and oh so many powerups. A few little tid bits about the wider world mentioned, but mainly focused on progression as usual. And it's just so much fun that way.
The only issue is I now have to wait for more.
Rating: really liked it
Executive Summary: Another strong entry in this series. It started a bit slow, but got really good by the end and now I'm stuck waiting for the next book to come out.
Full Review I made the mistake of starting this book right before Battle for Azeroth came out. That was unfair to this book. It sat unread for basically 2 months because my reading time was sacrificed to my WoW addiction.
Once things finally settled down, I jumped back into this book and really enjoyed it. I wasn't sure how I felt about the pocket world of Ghostwater. It felt like a side story. However by the end I came to see that it's likely going to have some very implications on series moving forward.
I continue to enjoy the way Lindon approaches things, and this book didn't disappoint on that front. The supporting cast continues to be great. I didn't like nearly Skysworn as much as Blackflame, but I loved the addition of Mercy. She continues to be fantastic in this book. I'm really hoping that Mr. Wight has some more great stuff for her in store.
And that's adding to an already great cast in Yerin, Eithan and especially Orthos. Plus this book added another new character I have about a million questions about in Ziel. I hope he continues to play a role moving forward as well.
Overall this series continues to be a delight. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys Shonen.
Rating: really liked it
4.5 stars!
This series is as addictive as chocolate!
Rating: really liked it
"Once, you were weak. That boy is long dead, but his remnant still haunts you. Your weakness, Lindon, is thinking you're weaker then you are."
Another book done. Really loving where the story is going. Lindon finally getting some legitimate wins under his belt was great. It felt earned and he really needed it after five books of getting kicked around.
Reread: just as good the second time around. Loved how this felt like the culmination of the previous five books.
Rating: really liked it
Dross & Orthos were the highlights of this show! The setting was fascinating as well.
The bloopers are a nice touch; the last one - LOL!
We got to meet a few other clans/families as well, which was interesting, but I'd be lying if I said I could tell you which was which. Plus, I still don't understand Ziel, so I hope we get to see him again.
Oh, and the scene at the end (before the bloopers) - cold!
All in all, it was a good read.
