YMMV / Destinies of Blood and Stone

• Ass Pull:
  • The nature of the Heretics is completely changed with no warning in the last two books of this trilogy; previously depicted as the incorporeal undead spirits of a race of Abusive Precursors who sought to return to mortal life, with very little build up A March into Darkness and Rise of the Blood Royal reveal them to be a Romanesque Empire who are still very much alive on the other side of the world from the setting of the previous books. Despite the fact that this reveals large chunks of the plot of previous books, especially The Gates of Dawn, to be nonsensical, everyone treats this revelation as if it's a logical conclusion of what they already knew about the Heretics and never think much on it.
  • On a related note, the introduction of Rustannica and Shashida in the final two volumes, and the fact that as the Chosen One Tristan's purpose is actually to reunify and become the ruler of these nations rather than his homeland of Eutracia, essentially renders the entire first trilogy and Savage Messiah a mostly-irrelevant sideshow to the real story (which itself was never concluded because the series was Cut Short).
• Narm: Rustannica is heavily based on Rome. So heavily, in fact, that the author seems to just grab the names of random historical Roman figures, mix them up a bit, and use them for naming Rustannican characters (the emperor, for example, is Vespasian Augustus). If the reader has even a casual knowledge of Roman history, it's incredibly distracting. Also, the Rustannicans are supposed to share a common heritage with the Shashidans - Rustannica and Shashida were originally one country that split in a civil war. Shashida is Japanese themed. How, exactly, a Rome-expy and a Japan-expy sprang from the same people is never addressed, and is jarring to an immersion-breaking degree.

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