Hazel Young‘s Katalepsis novel strongly brings Otherside Picnic to mind. They’re certainly not identical… but do share a certain atmosphere and character resemblance. Personally, my problem with this book ended up being how the protagonists keep having their strengths talked up or developing nasty abilities only to somehow continuously end up struggling on the back foot.
The fourth of K.D. Robertson‘s Mob Sorcery novels starts out and ends decent enough, but the entire assault on the vault (and in particular the monologue bonanza that caps it off) is pretty bad. The protagonist is all kinds of awkward with his abilities and power-level all over the place and the expository deluge is just insane. The post-job recovery at the end aside, that it went as low as it did is a bad enough sign that I’m leaning toward dropping the series here.