The supporting cast is also interesting, with strong female characters and a main character who is sassy. The author does an excellent job of revealing their backstories throughout the series. The series is described as excellent, compelling, and life-changing. Neil isn’t a sympathetic character; neither are his new college teammates. These guys don’t have baggage, they have an entire luggage train. It was initially difficult to keep track of everyone, especially when the full team was introduced, but by the end of the story, I both had it down and was fascinated by the multiple layers of interaction and dynamics between them all.
Rereading with what I knew would come made me see all the little clues that I missed the first time. And in every TV show where there is a tension and attraction between the main characters, the audience is lapping that like a cat would lap a bowl of cream. Because everyone wants something to happen between these two! The novel makes a significant shift to Neil arriving back in South Carolina, choosing to leave out the things Neil experienced during his time at Evermore.
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Neil may be the hero of his own story and a knight or bishop for the leaders of his team, but we are forcibly reminded that he is ultimately still a pawn in the greater scheme of things. Flipping between the tension of winning or losing a game and genuine survival for the main character only enhanced my immersion in this narrative. When Coach Wymack tells the team that they'd found the Foxes another table, Jean beckons him and demands that he give Riko a few moments of his time later throughout the night, by threatening to reveal him as "the Butcher's son"[3]. Once back, Neil goes to Wymack’s apartment and Wymack calls Andrew, demanding him to come over and explain his actions. Once over Neil, realising he will have to give Andrew information about himself and his past, tells Andrew a half truth, that his father worked for the Moriyamas, who had executed his parents after his father had stolen their profits. Neil had escaped and taken the money with him, which was the only reason he was alive now, and why he knew Kevin and Riko.
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Neil soon discovers that Andrew is an incredible goalie and asks Nicky how the foxes can lose with someone like Andrew in goal. Nicky replies that Andrew doesn’t really care if they win or lose. One night Neil heads to the stadium to find Kevin practicing and Andrew spectating from the stands, he talks to Andrew and discovers that the reason Kevin recruited him is because he believes he can make it to court. Neil has a flashback to the moment his mother died, and believes that the life he was living now was “a dream he’d have to wake up from eventually”. Later in the novel Neil hears Kevin distraught inside Wymack’s apartment, and discovers that the Edgar Allen Ravens, Kevin’s old team, and the team of Riko Moriyama, had transferred districts to play against the Foxes that season. Kevin is hysterical that Riko and the Ravens will force him to return to them.
I do know that I have no idea what will happen next, whether I want or don’t want any sort of romance between any of the characters to appear, and that I can’t wait to read the next installment of this trilogy. Now if you’re balking at that idea let me reassure you – I am not sporty. I don’t watch it, play it, or generally have anything to do with it. Our characters play Exy, which is a fictional sport and therefore doesn’t require any existing knowledge. The game scenes are fast-paced and dramatic, and I found myself getting really involved in rooting for the Foxes. The final book in this fascinating trilogy escalates, well, everything.
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The rape scene was so dark that I realized this trilogy was nothing like yaoi, although I had read it hoping it would fulfill the same purpose. The majority of words spoken by the main character, Neil, are just explanations of the plot. When Neil speaks, he sounds like Watson answering a Jeopardy question. Despite this, when Neil interacts with other characters, he usually tries to have something resembling a conversation — one person says something, the other person replies, you get the idea. When Nora Sakavic gave her explanation of how Exy is played in the epilogue of the first book, I even skimmed it.
I always see people talk about it, and some say it's not even a romance. I already know there's no smut, but is there really any romance, or is it just that people ship the characters together, and it's very implied that the relationship is canon? Is there even a pairing or two characters that are implied to be together? I also know that there are a whole bunch of AO3 books about them. I want to read it, but these are a few things I want to know first.
The backstories of a few characters are shown in a brutally raw light, which can get emotional, especially when you’ve already gotten emotionally and spiritually attached to every single one of them. There are some characters you’ll hate too, which includes this other Exy player from the Ravens, the Foxes’ rival team, who is also involved in the whole mafia situation (it’s complicated, like I said). And, I know I rated it five stars on Goodreads and all, but I understand why it might be off-putting for some people, especially if they choose not to go through with the other two books. For me, at least, the writing style takes a while to get used to, and you’re put through some unnecessarily dragged-on passages of description at some points. Most stories that include the found-family trope have a certain layer of warm fuzziness, but this story flips that premise on its head.
They appreciate the creative foreshadowing, subplots, and intricate friendships. The book is described as a thriller with great battle scenes. In addition to the triology, Nora Sakavic has also published further information about the characters and their stories. This is widely referred to as the Extra Content, and is considered canon by large parts of the fandom.
We follow The Foxes, the lowest ranked team in the college Exy league, made up entirely of misfits and outcasts. I’ll admit I found it a little difficult to remember them all to begin with – the first book is the weakest, and the team has ten players plus their Coach and physician. It’s a lot of main characters for a story to have, but each has a well-developed and unique personality, and by the end I loved them all. It’s a lot of characters to get to know, but they’re worth knowing. Everything about sports — going outside, getting sweaty, talking to people — is bad for me. I don’t like watching them, I don’t like writing about them, and I usually don’t like reading about them.
Most reviewers on Goodreads give the trilogy’s last book five stars, but it contains such a ridiculous deus ex machina that I’m pretty sure those people just gave five stars for the gay stuff. The plot is so convoluted that the conflicts are basically impossible to solve, and then there’s this ridiculous deus ex machina game review that comes out of nowhere. The book mainly reads as a sort of prologue for the rest of the books as we learn more about his teammates at Palmetto and also his background trying to escape from his dad.
The premise of this trilogy makes one aspect of the conclusion inevitable. Part of me expected the author to up-end that expectation, but that result would not have done justice to everything Sakavic has developed for this team and the greater conflicts surrounding them. However, even when the final result was unsurprising, the winding road to get there kept me enthralled. Do I still understand much about how Exy is played or how the college tournament system works?