I don't recommend starting this series with this, the seventh book in a frenetic, action-packed series. It comes after a semi-cliffhanger ending to book six, with a huge cast of characters and in-world terminology with no effort to set the scene for newcomers. But, this is the book that was offered in a Goodreads Giveaway earlier this year, so I and ninety-nine others found it on their Kindle devices one day. I'm probably the only winner who has read and reviewed the previous six books, making me (as dubbed by the author) a Sky Fighters Superior-Fan, so I will take this opportunity to provide some essential background information:

-There are many characters, and they often have multiple names. The central character will variously be called Ross, Rehn, Henry, Muggins, or any of these preceded by "Hippie-". In prior books he has also been called Brian, Storm, and Spiral Storm.
-Sky Fighters are beings who can access various powerful attacks and weaponry and become giant size, possibly with wings and tentacles called wickwires, and their enemies are the Python Demons who have many tricks of their own. Sky Fighters sometimes act independently, and sometimes are summoned and commanded by other Sky Fighters.
-Action takes place across at least three worlds: Earth, Evensongland, and Sky Fighter Land.
-Many real-world celebrities and musicians have roles in the adventure.
-The whole series has a very personal nature, with many of the author's family and friends (and enemies) appearing as characters (for one, his mom is cast as "My Mom"/Sky Queen Crunchazora XIX), as well as specific places and timelines drawn directly from the author's real life. Honestly, I think it's sweet that the author gave his mother a prominent position in his fantasy creation.
-The author has commented on my review of the series' first book, "I tend to see and interact with the world differently than many people." One can't really apply typical fiction evaluation schemes to this body of work; it has its own nature, which you will either enjoy in spite of (or because of) its oddities, or not. I say, just go with it, abandon any expectations, and enjoy the ride if you can!

It makes much more sense to start with the first book in this series, and offering that in a giveaway would have stood a better chance at generating interest. This is not the series' first marketing problem; the books are all overpriced at $10-15 each for e-books. A $2.99 or even $0.99 price point would be more fitting. Without a Kindle Unlimited free trial I would have steered clear away. This seventh book in the series is inexplicably not also available on K.U., so this giveaway produced the only circumstances under which I was at all likely to read it. For this, I am grateful.

Here's what I especially liked about this book, which also applies generally to all the prior books:
-The flow/framing of individual scenes. For example in this book, some characters visited others in their apartment, and the TV was on, and the narration transitioned to the news report of a recent climactic Sky Fighters battle caught on film. It was effective.
-The humour. I find myself lightly tickled by the intentional gags and goofy character reactions.
-The e-book formatting; thank you, Ross, for correctly writing and formatting paragraphs, all indented and without extra line breaks like so many self-published work gets wrong.

This book jumps around a lot in time. It's a departure from the otherwise mostly-linear narrative of the prior books (even though they also shifted between a couple of storylines, but with clearer chronology), and introduces multiple new POV narrations from the three Traductus brothers who have until now been minor characters. It's a little hard to follow, even for someone who read all of the prior books in this series within the past year. But I took my own advice and just went with the flow.

The only coherent plot through the book as a whole is a quest to collect three sacred items which then allow the Sky Fighters to create three new top-tier elemental attacks; each is then put on display in the finale of one of three stadium battles. In the midst of all this are side stories that fill in story gaps that I didn't know existed from the previous books, and that introduce even more new factions and world elements to an already saturated landscape. It would be great if these clearly went somewhere narratively, but as in past books, it will probably take another book or two to see them rear their heads again. I particularly enjoyed the origin story of the Sky Fighters' age-old enemies, the vicious, evil Python Demons. At the risk of spoilers, this is their origin: they were always dicks.

An analogy for the book and series occurred to me as I read this volume: the experience of reading the books is similar to someone explaining their home-made tabletop role-playing game system to you, in great detail and in scattershot manner, in the form of fiction. And, every time you see that someone, they tell you about the next twenty player character power levels' worth of new abilities, spells, and equipment they invented in the interim.

Another attempt to describe the books is to imagine a mashup of Power Rangers, Naruto, 90s/00s music charts, Silverhawks, puzzle/adventure/fetch-quest video games a la Tomb Raider, Pokemon, Dragon Ball, and more. The series constantly re-invents itself, expanding character abilities, re-organizing and re-naming previous conventions, adding new worldbuilding elements, and always upping the power levels. Combat scenes are increasingly massive and over-powered. In past books they have tended to drag on; this tendency seems under better control here.

How did it come about that the word "that" has been replaced with "th**" throughout this text? It makes it seem like a censored curse word, which is fun to imagine.

*Buddy read with my friend and accountant-extraordinaire Karen. I predicted she would be compelled to bail by the second chapter; I think she made it perhaps twice that.