Nothing of Any Particular Importance

8. Osvald

This dude is miserable. And I get it, his wife died horribly, he thought his daughter died horribly, his friend betrayed him and stole his research, he spent years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, and now that his daughter is back she doesn't remember him. Still, the other protagonists are dealing with some pretty hefty issues as well, but all of them can crack a smile once in a while at least. I can't believe I'm on the internet telling a fictional man he needs to smile more, but the fact that the bookish nerd isn't in my top three favorite characters really tells you something.

7. Castti

No hate to Castti at all. She was my chosen protagonist, and I would choose her again. I thought her storyline was fascinating for the most part, although some of the middle parts felt a little, I don't know, bloated or unnecessary or something. She's the best healer in the party and extremely necessary to have around. She's kind and self-sacrificing. Her story had almost equal parts darkness and light. But personality wise, within the party, her only consistent trait was being the overconcerned mom figure. It made her seem a little boring in comparison to the bigger and more dramatic personalities in the group. Still, I do love Castti.

6. Throné

As much as I liked Throné, she just couldn't compete with some of the other characters in this list. I always felt like I really liked her when I was playing her storyline, and then when she left my party I couldn't remember exactly why I had liked her so much. She's cool. She's tough. She's super useful to have in the party. But honestly her storyline is one of the darkest, and I think in the end it was a little too dark for me. It didn't help that her individual quest ended on a pretty bleak note. But I did really enjoy her crossed path quests with Temenos.

5. Hikari

I like Hikari a lot. His story always felt like one of the most engaging because you always felt like you had a concrete task to achieve every chapter, and you knew all along exactly what you were building towards. He's also just a fun character to play as, since you can customize his move list with whatever powerful or ridiculous moves you want. Even though he can be very serious and intense, you can see in some of the party banter that he can be fun and loveable as well. His story is pretty laden with common tropes and is largely predictable, however, and the fact that he claims to hate killing so much while running around with the party murdering people and creatures left and right kind of takes away from his story.

4. Ochette

I'm not sure if Ochette really deserves to be rated so highly in my list, honestly she's a pretty one note character, but that one note is a note that worked for me. She's mostly motivated by food and honestly who hasn't been there? She keeps fighting and never seems to lose hope, much like other higher rated characters in this list, although I think she keeps her hope less through a concerted effort and more just because it never occurs to her that there's any other way to live. I mostly like her because she was just so fun to play as. I always felt like she had so many options in a fight, and once I picked her up I wished I could keep her in my party all the time.

3. Agnea

Agnea is just pure delight. She's bubbly, she's kind and helpful, and she's astonishingly brave. She never backs down from a challenge, particularly if it involves helping someone else, even when she's going against someone she should have no hope of defeating. Though her story was one of the least relevant to the overall plot, I found it to be one of the most emotionally impactful, perhaps because it wasn't draped in the brutal violence and death that many of the other stories were.

2. Partitio

It's funny because during Partitio's first chapter I was kind of bored. I don't know if the rest of the world has been as bombarded by tales of the wild west as Americans have, but his story seemed like just another story of miners giving their all in an attempt to strike it rich and then failing miserably due to some source outside their control. But Partitio won me over. He has a kind of charm that could come across as corny, but his voice actor makes it work so well. He's ceaselessly hopeful in the face of some of the most seemingly impossible tasks in the game. And as much as I didn't totally buy his premise of the merchant who will solve poverty, I gotta give the guy credit that he at least never becomes corrupted by his own personal and financial gains over the course of the story. He's kind, he's funny, and he's one of the warmest personalities in the game. I love this man.

1. Temenos

It's been almost nine years since Kristin Cashore's Jane, Unlimited was released, and to this day I can't believe how poorly reviewed it is on Goodreads. For those not on GR, books are rated out of 5 stars, and I generally trust the average ratings with some exceptions based on specific circumstances. I do usually like books that are rated 3.7 or higher and have some issues with books rated lower than that. If I happen to look in advance, I almost always completely avoid anything rated below a 3.5. Jane, Unlimited currently has a paltry 3.37 rating. Which is crazy because I considered this a five star read back in 2017. It's not perfect but it is awesome.

If you're not in the know, Jane, Unlimited is a full fledged novel while simultaneously being a twist on the choose-your-own-adventure story. It's a twist because after the introductory section, there are five possible endings, but you're really supposed to read them all. The story starts with the protagonist, Jane, visiting a mysterious mansion on an island. She notices some weird things there, and eventually there comes a moment of chaos where she has to choose what to do next. That's where you as the reader step in. This part is so cool because even though you really should read all five parts, you can legitimately choose to read them in any order. (And you CAN choose not to read them all and still have an ending.) Each part has clues and references to the other parts. It was so cool to repeatedly notice things that stuck out and finally have them revealed three stories later (or to see the little hints and be like, "Ha! I already know what that's about!)

The other amazing thing is that each of the five endings is a completely different genre. (And, like, when I say different genres, I mean entirely so. Some end in the house. Some end on other worlds.) I won't spoil too much for the uninitiated, but I will say that the horror ending low key ruined a classic childhood story for me. I don't even completely remember why anymore, to this day I just have a lingering feeling of being disturbed when I think of it.

I think there's two main things going on with the ratings. One is that this was Kristin Cashore's first book after her much beloved original Graceling trilogy. People wanted more of that and when Cashore put out something so completely different, her fans (many of them teens or young adults at the time) didn't know what to do with it and were upset it wasn't more of the same.

The second issue, I think, is also tied into the first issue. This book is legitimately weird. Other than just the premise, some weird things go down. I think a lot of people just don't like unexpected weirdness.

First, we have Signy Home-Wrecker. This one is funny enough on its own, but when you consider the fact that she was part of the gang of women who were doing the old Cyrodil Catfish on local men and luring them away from home for good times, then robbing them instead, it's extra hilarious. Like, there were at least some people in town who knew generally what was happening and were trying to track down the perpetrators. And no one thought to just follow around the chick whose literal name is Home-Wrecker?

Then there's Agnete the Pickled, which is pretty self explanatory. I started taking pics of the names after Signy, and for some reason this is the only one I got of Agnete:

Next up is Else God-hater. She really hates the gods. So much so that she joins up with a Daedric Prince instead. Which like, okay, maybe your hatred for the useless immortal beings of your realm should also extend to the more openly involved evil beings of the realm, but whatever. Go off, I guess.

Last but not least is Gable the Traitor. (I first read it as Gabe the Traitor, which was somehow funnier.) He's a wraith. There's tons of wraiths that attack you in this quest, but he's the only one with a name. I guess the game just tells you his name for quest purposes, and he's labelled as the traitor because that's relevant, but I like to think this was actually his nickname on the ship where you find him. And then he started the mutiny and everyone was like, "Wait, Gable the Traitor is mutinying? I can't believe it!" (And in the pic below the journal calls him Gable, the traitor, as if it's not his name, just a label, but you can see his name in the background when I was looting his remains, and he is, in fact, called Gable the Traitor.)

Like, it starts with the typical RPG idea that this lady has a rat problem in her basement. And there are in fact several giant rats chilling in there. Then I talk to her, and she's like, "Those are my beloved children. But something is killing them. That's the real problem." So I go down there, and there's just a mountain lion casually strolling around. (Also, at the time, I hadn't met any other mountain lions in the wilds. I was like, "There's mountain lions in Oblivion?) I kill it and also notice the GIANT HOLE IN THE WALL through which it obviously snuck. And I'm thinking, "Well, we probably have to tell her to fix the hole and that's the end of this quest." Boy was I wrong.

Instead of trying to repair her crumbling infrastructure, this chick jumps to the next most logical solution: hire a hunter to conduct a mass slaughter of the local mountain lions. And at first I was like, "Mountain lions are usually pretty solitary. So there can't be too many nearby. But this a video game, so I'll accept that there might be a few roaming around."

I go to the hunter. We set off. We get to the area he decided would house mountain lions. And he's like, "I can't imagine there's more than four here. Let's go." And I was like, "That's oddly specific, but okay."

Now, just for some background, I did an earlier quest where you had to hunt bears. And they were scattered individually across a large area, so you mostly found and fought them one at a time. I assumed that would be the case again. I saw a couple of plants I wanted to pick, figured this dude could hold his own for one minute, then I hear a scuffle and turn around, and this dude is being attacked by EXACTLY FOUR MOUNTAIN LIONS all at once from every direction. A veritable gang of mountain lions. I go over to help. We kill the improbable four mountain lions. Now I understand why he's considered a famous local hunter. He immediately found and estimated the size of the mountain lion pack in this exact spot without any obvious evidence to lead him to that conclusion.

So I go back to tell Rat Lady the news. And she's like, "Oh, you got them all, huh? Too bad there's one in my basement killing my precious rats even as we speak!" Which, I'm gonna be honest, I don't have giant pet rats, but I do have a dog, and if I knew he was currently being slaughtered by a mountain lion I like to think I would at least do SOMETHING to ATTEMPT to drive it away, but whatever. So I go down there, and sure enough, there's a SIXTH mountain lion. I kill it and assume that's it. (Also, this all could have been prevented with some cement and stone. For real.) Once more I was wrong.

Rat Lady goes, "I know what the problem is. The Argonian next door is sabotaging me!" And, like, this woman's logical leaps are insane to me. How could your neighbor be causing a mass outbreak of mountain lions? Is she capturing them and lobbing them through your giant hole in the wall? So I go talk to the Argonian next door, and she's super defensive. Which is fair. If I was accused of sabotaging my neighbor's giant rat population via mountain lion, I too would probably be pissed off. So, I follow her. And doesn't she go to the giant hole in Rat Lady's wall and dump a pile of meat there. I confront her and she's like, "Mountain lions? My bad. I was only trying to lure the rats outside so the guards would slaughter them indiscriminately. Now I feel bad. Please don't tell Rat Lady."