The Founders Trilogy

The Founders Trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett.

My YA novel moratorium lasted all of two weeks

In my defense, I'd just finished Homo Deus and wanted something light after the inevitable depression brought on by thinking about the future. I really liked the main hook of the magic system; being able to just argue reality into giving up and letting you do what you want is cool. The protagonist's ability to then argue with the things arguing with reality, and exploit their single-mindedness to convince them to do things they weren't designed for, lead to some highlight moments which gave me high hopes for the series. Unfortunately after 2 books and a few chapters of the 3rd, those hopes were dashed.

I quite enjoyed the first book; it was a somewhat grounded story about people trying to make a positive difference in a messed up world and had a manageable scale. There was a somewhat reasonable progression in what everyone could do, mysteries to uncover and compelling characters to learn about. If the series ended there I would've definitely been a fan.

I wonder if a trilogy was planned from the beginning or simply tacked on after the success of the first book, because the author didn't seem to know how to escalate things. God like characters were revealed and promptly handicapped by apparently having room temperature IQs (unless needed to set up a story beat), the protagonists also joined in by putting on their dunce caps and a lot of things happened which didn't really make much sense. I still enjoyed it a bit, there were some cool set pieces and aura moments for the main protagonist, but definitely not as satisfying as its predecessor.

The 3rd book kinda jumped the shark, suddenly spilling out from a conflict based in a single city (apparently the only one that matters) to introducing an entire world of (seemingly still irrelevant) cities and hand-waving the fact our heroes somehow held our for 8 years against the even more god-like entity they inadvertently created in the second book. The writing style was also really starting to grate on me by this point, and when I started another Discworld book as a palette cleanser I was reminded of that intangible sense of 'quality' you get from a great author compared to others.

I didn't end up finishing the last book (barely started it to be honest), but if you want to read the first and pretend it's the sole entry there's an interesting world to be found.