User blog:General Khor/Laws of Awesomeness: A Review

Hello and welcome to another review blog by General Khor. So in my mid year review blog, I was gonna include this story, but then I realised, there's a lot to talk about, which is why I bring you this blog today about Laws of Awesomeness. Yeah, I have very good reasons for calling it that, in fact my rating for this series is...

EXCITING!

So why do I give this rating? Let's get into it.

Overview
So when fans first saw the title Laws of Attraction, they immediately thought: "They'll definitely focus too much on the Attraction part and neglect the Laws part." In other words, they think the story will make the same mistake as Passport to Romance, which focused too much on the Romance part and neglected the Passport part, which led the series to end up as a standalone. But when the book came out, fans got a pleasant surprise, as the book puts equal weight on the Laws as well as the Attraction. In fact, the story made me think of lawyers as courtroom ninjas, as I learned that doing cases for your law firm is like doing missions for your ninja village. Yes, I'm talking about Naruto, and I even came up with a case ranking system based on the mission ranking system in the world's most famous and popular ninja show. But then, I noticed this book kinda reminds me of Open Heart, due to the following similarities:


 * 1) Zero to hero plot
 * 2) Boss as forced LI
 * 3) Sharing a soundtrack
 * 4) "Keep playing to find out!"
 * 5) A competition for promotion in Book 1

Yeah, you guessed it, especially the 2nd point. It seems our boss, Gabe, is gonna be Lawyer Ethan, and to be honest, he's not that great of an LI, unlike our other LI Aislinn, I'll talk more about them later. As for the plot, we got a lot of wholesome courtroom ninja action, and we get to choose our personality in both books, similar to how we get to choose our reality TV persona in America's Most Eligible. And now, without further ado, let's get into it. Oh, and there will also be spoilers for Rising Tides, so you might want to finish it first before reading this blog.

Book 1
So, we start off as a new lawyer in the big city (NYC, in fact), and upon setting foot in our new firm, we're thrown into a competition to be the next junior partner. Our first mission is a B rank one, concerning water pollution by a chemical company that led to several people getting sick (see where this is going?). After we hear the clients' complaints, the CEO decides to do nothing about it. The next case is a C rank one about child vaccination, and well, that one's an easy win (the mom was in the wrong right from the start about vaccination). In Chapters 4 and 5, we face our first challenge in the form of a Survival Exercise, which in a law agency's case is a mock trial, and let's just say, I never expected Martin to find the smoking gun in the case if we don't take the diamond option to discover it. Still, that didn't tank my ranking, but later, I dropped two places just for refusing dinner with Gabe, which is a clear sign that the writers are setting him up to be Lawyer Ethan. In Chapters 6 and 7, we have our first A rank mission, and it concerns... family issues? I expected a big business dispute involving millions of dollars, but since our client is a VIP, it's still considered an A rank mission. Long story short, it turns out the VIP found out the guy his daughter wants to marry is a con man, and we have to go to great lengths to end the relationship.

Then comes the big S rank mission, which spans the entire second half of the book: a celebrity murder, and the suspect is said celebrity's boyfriend who had been living with her, except he moved out sometime prior to the murder occurring. The fact that he's got gun training doesn't help the case. So, the CEO decides to cook up a story about the boyfriend cheating on the victim, but needless to say, since this goes against the code of ethics, we decide to dig into the security footage of the victim's house, and we end up finding new leads that point us to our first ever mission, the B rank case that was shelved.

Specifically, the new leads point to the CEO of the chemical company, Peter Koenig, and we later find out this wasn't the only murder he's committed, and his previous victim had tried to expose him and his company for everything they have done, so yeah, you can say that Koenig is Warner Rafferty 2.0. In Chapter 15, we also find out the CEO is in league with Koenig, which is why I nicknamed her Shadie McSnake (her name's Sadie McGraw, by the way). In the end, we expose Shadie, Koenig is arrested and his company is shut down for good, not to mention we win the competition for junior partner. But then, Martin reveals that he bribed the senior partners to make him one of them, and that he's taking over the firm, which made me think of him as PB's version of Danzo Shimura, who became acting Hokage after Tsunade was incapacitated in Pain's invasion.

Book 2
Apparently PB got the message that fans had had enough of forced boss-employee romance, which is why they came up with a granny-napping plot and shifted the focus to Aislinn, which is a good sign that the devs do listen to their fans. Anyway, McSnake Burn's acting CEO Martin turns out to be a huge jerkass, and he does everything in his power to ruin our career, first by giving us a lost case in Chapter 1, and culminating in him setting us up to be humiliated by the other senior partners in Chapter 4, including the deputy CEO, Eli Burn (his name's actually Byrne, but you can see why I gave him that nickname). In response, Gabe, Aislinn and us quit in protest and set up our own firm, with Gabe as the CEO. Over the next few chapters, we get to sway several staff members at McSnake Burn over to our side due to Martin's tyranny.

Chapter 4 is also when the big S rank mission of the book is first brought up. Apparently, Aislinn's grandmother is kidnapped, and the captors are refusing to let Aislinn contact her poor Nana. We later find out that Martin and McSnake Burn are representing the captors, and in Chapter 7, we find out that the local assistant district attorneys are involved, which means the kidnappers must be powerful figures. We later find out from a secret contact that the kidnappers are indeed powerful and dangerous, and that he suspects they're running a con job, as their victims are all rich elderly people who later had their assets taken from them. That's when Gabe starts to suspect Calvin Colby, Martin's client and New York mayoral front-runner.

Then, in Chapter 12, just when our secret contact is supposed to send us some vital information, he is reported dead, and we immediately deduce that he was murdered on Calvin's orders, a deduction which is proven true in Chapter 14 (and I thought Calvin was just gonna frame him and get him arrested). In the end, we finally get Calvin imprisoned for kidnapping, theft and fraud, Aislinn's grandma is freed and Martin is humiliated. To be honest, there should have been one more chapter where we see McSnake Burn collapse due to all the scandals Shadie and Martin got the firm into, and everyone who represented Calvin be blacklisted from the legal profession. And even though we get to make our relationship official in the grand finale (another similarity with OH), the devs should have had our LI propose to us. After all, we get to play this game called "Screw, Dump, Marry" in Book 1, Chapter 12, and we get to do a lot of screwing, so where are the "dump" and "marry" parts?

The Characters
Now let's talk about the characters. We have dedicated Gabe, sweet and caring Aislinn, cunning Beau, bookish Gigi, jealous Martin, corrupt Sadie, inept Eli and in Book 2, there's also mysterious Joaquin. Yeah, Eli's kinda inept, in fact I think he hand-picked Martin when the guy was recruited, and he was all too willing to accept Martin's bribe for senior partnership, not to mention he just let Martin run the show. In fact, his ineptitude is one of the contributing factors for McSnake Burn's downfall (which is why I prefer to call him Burn). As for Joaquin, what can I say? He's an enigma from start to finish, as in, is he really an enemy, or does he have good reasons to help us? Turns out he was really acting as our mole and he despises Martin. In fact, who wouldn't despise Martin? Sure, he may have Ivy League credentials, but in the end, his lack of skill and jealousy towards us are clear to all, no wonder even some senior partners from McSnake Burn defected to our side. The big bads are great too: as mentioned above, Koenig is literally Warner 2.0, in fact I'm sure Warner would also have resorted to murder to stop anyone who threatens his business. As for Calvin, he's one of the kinds of villains I like: friendly, popular politician on the outside, granny-napper and thief on the inside.

The Official LIs
So officially, there are only 2 LIs, and like I said, Gabe's actually kind of bland, yet the devs tried to force him on us in Book 1, simply because he's our boss. And worse, your ranking can drop if you refuse dinner with him in Chapter 6. The most obvious case is in Chapter 7, when we're looking for ways to end the marriage we tried so hard to prevent. Instead of letting us choose who we want to bring with us to the chapel, the devs had to make us go with Gabe, not to mention he wanted us to agree with Shadie's horrible plan in Chapter 11. Needless to say, fans must have been really pissed off.

And Aislinn? Now there's the kind of LI I love. She's really sweet, helping us in our times of need, and also supportive, standing by our side no matter what the others throw at us, not to mention caring, not only towards us, but towards her grandmother as well. And let's not forget her determination, as she never gives up on a mission once it's assigned to her, whether it's solving the celebrity murder in Book 1 or rescuing her Nana in Book 2. No wonder fans love her so much.

The Others
This series saw quite a few characters being added to the LI wishlists of many players, including Beau, Gigi and Joaquin. Maybe the devs were planning to make Gigi an official LI, but then they decided to give her a new boyfriend instead. As for Joaquin, we can have several flings with him, so fans were hoping he becomes an official LI too, too bad that never came to be. As for Beau, while he also didn't become an official LI, the devs compensated for that by allowing us to screw Sadie for real (yes, we can actually say we want to screw Sadie, which makes him embarrassed).

Conclusion
All in all, you can see why this series deserves the nickname I have for it. After all, it isn't all romance, and when you have lawyers and court cases, what else do you have? Mysteries, of course! Who doesn't like solving mysteries? In fact, I would consider this PB's first successful mystery series, even though it's officially listed as romantic drama.

So what do you think of LoA? Let me know in the comments. That's all for today, until then, this is General Khor. The end, and thank you for reading.