YMMV / Ruination

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Soraka's cameo comes clean out of nowhere, serves little purpose besides her giving a vague prophecy about the coming Ruination, and then she's gone for the rest of the book with only a couple of mentions of her in passing.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Readers ate Vennix up from the word go. A snarky, badass, very attractive, canonically lesbian, and quite amusing Vastaya captain who joins in the adventure. She quickly became the newest member of the "Make them a playable champion!" list.
• Evil Is Cool: Erlok Grael. The book wisely uses him as a Villain Protagonist since it's hard not to be impressed by the sheer cleverness and ingenuity he displays. Grael is sadistic, cruel, coldhearted to the core— and is just as much The Chessmaster as he'll become as Thresh, not to mention he achieves his many feats of evil with no supernatural powers.
• Jerkass Woobie: Viego starts the book as a fairly kind prince who makes genuine attempts to aid the populace, but the manipulators around him easily take advantage of his pride and decaying mental state, his sanity completely crumbling when his wife dies. While he's an incompetent and destructive king who eventually takes an eager leap into being a violent conqueror, it's impossible not to pity him after seeing him come tumbling into madness.
• Love to Hate:
  • Erlok Grael is just as sadistic and evil as he'll become as Thresh, but that's what makes his scenes as a Villain Protagonist so fun.
  • Hecarim may be a smug brute who's in over his own head, not as smart as he thinks he is and even escalates to Stupid Evil territory at times, but his combination of sheer strength and malice mean that the book really sells him as Kalista's Arch-Enemy.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: The novel's interpretation of Viego was agreed to have struck a balance between his undercooked original counterpart and his more detestable Ruined King counterpart— by emphasizing his pre-existing mental issues and toning down— but by no means being rid of— his Love Makes You Evil tendencies, alongside focusing more on his internal conflict and showing it as more of a descent that has plenty of tragic moments, it overall transformed him into the Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds he was clearly intended to be in the first place, while avoiding Ruined King's divisive choice to escalate him into an unsympathetic Domestic Abuser.
• Salvaged Story: Ruination is generally agreed to have taken the poorly-received plot of Rise of the Sentinels and turned it into one of the most beloved pieces of Runeterra lore in the canon, kicking off 2022's lore with a bang.
  • Focusing much more on the origins of the Ruination was extremely well-received, as it was what many found interesting compared to the awkward Sentinel plotline— a plotline the book does its best to keep minimalist. The book takes its time to flesh out a lot of the events and characters.
  • Centering its narrative around Kalista and Erlok Grael (Who will become the fan-favorite Thresh) rectified the common issues of the story's bloated cast, and narrows the focus to characters proactively involved in the events rather than random champions.
  • While not without humor, Ruination is completely bereft of the off-putting comedy that many agreed to have diminished the plotline's tragedy. The entire cast is given plenty of dignity and seriousness, while maintaining enough optimism to avoid the book falling into Too Bleak, Stopped Caring.
  • Viego and Isolde's relationship is elaborated on significantly, providing a full depiction of Isolde's kindness alongside Viego's gradual descent into madness (Which the book depicts as starting before Isolde is even harmed) which many agreed led to more investment in the plotline. Viego in particular was much better-received with how much more complex the story makes him, depicting him as a loving but twisted husband with plenty of good qualities to accompany his descent into madness and eventual leap into villainy.
  • The more contrived and out-of-character elements of the story are removed (Minus the deliberately incompetent and unwell Viego). Many of the characters are much better-adjusted and the events being elaborated on makes the characters seem far more competent, making their flaws seem deeper and avoiding the original plotline's issue of rushing through characterization.