YMMV / Cradle Series

aka: Blackflame

• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Sopharanatoth, invoked example twice over. For three books she's been the last roadblock in the way of the main party. She defeated Mercy in a one-on-one fight, and defeated Yerin two times in the Uncrowned tournament. Then when Yerin merged with her Blood Shadow to become a Herald she was immediately trounced three times back to back, and finally when Sophara faced Lindon he'd been grinding so much that he literally used her as a sounding board to find advancement revelations before unceremoniously killing her. Just like he'd killed her sister.
  • Li Markuth the second time around, as he was still at the same level Lindon first met him. In the seven intervening years Lindon had: killed all four of the Dreadgods (and turned their bodies into armor), advanced to a point above Monarch without any of the drawbacks (at that time), and received training directly from Ozriel of the Abidan. Li Markuth didn't stand a chance.
• Applicability: The series works surprisingly well as a morality tale about the hoarding of wealth; replace "awesome magic powers" with "money," and the broad strokes are about the same. The rich keep getting richer while everyone else can barely survive, sometimes the poor drag themselves up from the gutter but are outnumbered and outvoted by the existing establishment, and the wealthiest individuals are causing massive environmental damage through all their selfish hoarding while insisting it's necessary.
• Growing the Beard: General consensus is that the book series started fairly well with readers generally enjoying the first 3. The fourth book Skysworn is largely considered to be the worst of the first half of the series, both due to length and content, but the fifth book Ghostwater is considered by a large portion of the fandom to be the gold standard of the series that even later top contenders like Wintersteel are compared against.
• Iron Woobie: Lindon. He was beat down almost his entire life, told that he was less than human, forbidden from learning any Sacred Arts, forbidden from ever marrying or siring children, and yet he has come out as one of the star geniuses of his world.
• Memetic Badass: Mu Enkai only appeared in one chapter and was quickly killed by Lindon, but you won't see a single discussion about who the most powerful character in the series is without mention of him.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The Points Sage! ^Explanation Lindon is so obsessed with points that even after he reaches the Sage advancement level he can't stop himself from thinking about turning his points into Akura Fury
  • Core-Splitting! ^Explanation Popular fan theories for each new book always have Lindon splitting his core again for something new, the arguments about whether he should and what it should be for are lengthy.
  • Lindon's Harem ^Explanation Every woman that looks at Lindon is speculated to end up in his harem eventually. This is because harems are fairly common in cultivation stories.
  • "Top ten ___, easy. Maybe top three." ^Explanation  Larian "fights" Lindon and Yerin by plucking her bow and making arrow noises with her mouth, then lies to Reigan Shen's face about it being an epic battle. Her excuse turned into a fandom catchphrase within hours.
  • Best-selling erotic fantasy novel. ^Explanation  For some inexplicable reason, Amazon put Dreadgod in the "Erotic Fantasy" section upon release, at which point it immediately became the top-seller in that genre.
• One-Scene Wonder: Mu Enkai, see MemeticBadass for the reason why.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Akura Pride. His first appearance in Uncrowned painted him as a prideful asshole, and the majority of the fandom wanted him to be quickly put in his place. Come Wintersteel he became a fan favorite for his serious attitude and the weird idea that he was helping Lindon with his sister Mercy.
  Lindon could literally kill Pride with a word. Strangely, he was less irritated now that he knew Pride would keep the same attitude no matter how advanced Lindon was.
• Signature Scene:
  • Suriel saving Lindon, as it came out of nowhere halfway through the first book Unsouled and completely changed the dynamic of the entire series.
  • The first time that Dross provides Lindon with a combat simulation in Ghostwater is often cited as one of the most exciting in the entire series.
• Take That, Scrappy!: After two books of being a thorn in the side of the main characters, after betraying the Akura and getting multiple members of Lindon's team killed including Akura Grace, Lindon finally got to fight Seishen Daji with no restrictions and proceeds to beat him almost to death.
  Dross: Why didn't you kill him?
  Lindon: My name isn't Mercy.