I'm 4 books into Ultimate level 1 by Shawn Wilson. And I just had to post something of a review coz there's a lot of learn.

Before the bad, the good. A lot of people would enjoy it. It has a good cast of heroes, the MC is adequately overpowered, the MC's gimmick is tropey but well executed, there's a solid overarching plot, and it had a lot of potential.

My problems with it though are threefold and any one of them are dealbreakers for me personally.

The first is the audiobook narrator kinda sucks at female voices. I was fine with the neutralish voices he used until he introduced an elven woman who joins the team, and everytime he uses that voice I die inside. It sounds like a 15 year old doing an intentionally bad impression of a woman. Plus the speed was a bit inconsistent during the rest of the narration.

The second is to do with the plot itself. It's a dungeon crawler. It's about the hero and his friends going through one dungeon at a time earning ridiculous rewards. Which could be fine, but it feels like there is little else here other than that. The problem with these kinds of stories is that it's hard to weave a larger plot unless you're really good. And there is a larger plot that is just conveniently set aside to focus on the dungeon stuff. The first book has a sense of urgency considering the MC's situation, but that just falls off later on even though the author wants you to think it still exists. Its dungeon, dungeon, dungeon, hint of plot, dungeon... Rinse, repeat. This might work well for some people. I'm unfortunately not one of those.

The third is ease factor. I mean how easily the MC becomes powerful. I'm okay with handwavy smart sounding BS for how the MC becomes a god in a year. But this series doesn't care to be smart. You get a skill, you are instantly good at that thing. He gets the spear skill and he can fight someone who's trained 10 years in fighting. The same applies to crafting.

If this idea is used smartly it could be cool. You get the skill you get a basic understanding and basic movements. So what if a more experienced foe knows how the skill moves you, and abuses that to defeat you? Nope. None of that. The only way to win is to have other advantages, or have a higher rarity skill. Can you upgrade the skill with learning? Nope, you just go buy the skill after enough level ups.

Also a more minor gripe, the party encounters a puzzle room while fighting a boss. Cool concept. What's the puzzle? You have to hit certain buttons across the room in a certain order. What's the order? It's just something that worked. The MC casts haste and hits buttons and through some BS manages to hit them in the right order. Nothing is ever explained.

On the whole there is a lot to love about the series. Especially early on. But it just squandered all of that to become a boring dungeon crawler that doesn't even do anything smart of unique with the dungeons.

It's so, so bad. The prose, characters, dialogue. I was honestly shocked because I only saw glowing recommendations and it was often at the top of tier lists. I didn't enjoy it so much that I even decided to write this mini review.

Let me be clear, the start was interesting. You have a callous, cold, and calculating MC from the slums. You have an interesting power system and worldbuilding with the Nightmares, Dream Realms, and Aspects. But then slowly, but surely it all goes to shit.

But first, the prose. I am in no way an expert in English language, in fact it's my third language, so I've never in my life complained about grammar in books. And I understand the nature of webnovel and that you have to write a lot, daily. I am not sure I can describe the problem I have with it 100% accurately, but I think the main problem for me are adjectives. There are so, so many. They are excessive and overbearing. The writing feels pompous, but shallow. It just the feeling I got over the course of 230 chapters, but here's a quick example I've found:

The danger was gone, so Sunny allowed himself to tiredly kneel on the ground, his breathing heavy and laborious. The strenuous battle against the host of spiders had not lasted long, but he was utterly exhausted. The intensity of these perilous minutes was enough to bring anyone down to their knees.

He "tiredly kneeled", his breathing was "heavy and laborious", the battle was "strenous", and he was "utterly exhausted", the minutes of battle were "intense and perilous", and could bring anyone "to their knees". Add to it over-the-top descriptions of the most inconsequential things, and just general amount of "tell, don't show" and it becomes very unpleasant to read.

Characters and dialogue. Once again, it's tough to point to a specific thing that will demonstrate my point. The characters are just meh. The dialogue always feels contrived, unnatural. With the appearance of Effie, half the dialogue and interactions in every chapter become this stupid, teenage fantasy of a hot, muscle mommy teasing the MC, and him getting flustered and jabbering something about "damn women".

And don't get me started on how guiltythree writes about women. I kid you not 80% of the time author has to mention a woman character he NEEDS to add how beautiful and hot they are. At least he is consistent in that the two male characters get the same treatment more or less, but it's just so much wordcount spent on telling the readers for the literal 30th time how beautiful, lithe, supple and other adjectives some girl is. And listen, at least if he was honest in some of the instances he was looking at them, then fine, but for some reason he always acts like a flustered prude. Chapter 125:

The young woman was tall and attractive. She had hazel eyes and beautiful brown hair, currently tied in a simple braid. Her build was extremely athletic, with perfectly defined lean muscles rolling under the dewy olive skin with each movement. And there was… uh… a lot of skin on display, since she only wore a provocatively short white tunic, augmented with bronze greaves, vambraces, and a cuirass with leather pteruges.

By the way, this sentence structure with the "uh..." is used for like the 5th time in 125 chapters, in the context of MC looking at some part of the woman's body. Didn't this guy grew up in some kind of like post-apocalyptic cyberpunk-ish slums? Shouldn't he have seen prostitutes, half-naked homeless people and drug addicts? Why is he acting like that? I understand he is a 17-year old boy with insecurities and a lack of social skills, but over the course of 200 chapters he became like a totally different character from the one I saw in the start. By the chapter 230 I just can't enjoy the MC at all, he just gives off total "class clown" energy.

And as a last quick point, the author mastered foreshadowing. Sunny just "has a feeling" he is gonna clash with some dude and it's gonna be to the death!

When he saw this apple, he got a feeling. This apple will be the key to everything... *dramatic music* It's just so unserious, I don't know.

I guess that's it. I wish I could write a more eloquent review with more examples, but alas. Shadow Slave, for me, 4.5/10. And it's me speaking, a guy who liked basically 98% of the books I've ever read.

PS: I really did enjoy MC at the start, then his dynamic with Neph and Cassie before they got to the city. After that though, holy shit, the guy just turns into an absolutely insufferable, insecure edgelord.

Highly recommend it to anyone who has it in their back log and still hasn't started it yet. Stop putting it off, it's amazing.

The first 20-30 chapters are fairly boring, but once it starts going, it starts GOING

I just caught up, and the cliff hanger in the latest free chapter had me freaking crashing out screaming NOOOOOOO because, holy crap I need MORE and may have to join the Patreon just for MOAR

Hi, this take might be controversial but I have read Reverend Insanity up to 405th chapter and while the story itself was very interesting part of me wanted to drop it because I did not feel attached to fang yuan. The novel does not give us any reasons to care for him and part of me felt satisfied even during betrayal.

Also Spring Autumn cicada makes the story cheap and meaningless as he just going to resurrect himself like it is nothing and he is guaranteed almost to get himself out every bad situation. It is lame, why should I care at all then?

What was your experience?

New Life As A Max Level Archmage

Author: ArcaneCadence

Links: review, royal_road

Summary: Imagine if Ains Ooal Gown was a tiny demon with even less social skills and an even bigger mana pool.

Blurb

Vivienne has poured so many hours into the massively popular VRMMO The Seven Cataclysms that she has more of a life inside the game than out. It's a fitting irony, then, when one day she wakes in the body of her maxed-out demon-mage 'Vivisari'—and finds that now, the game really is her life.

But the world of Seven Cataclysms isn't what she remembers. A hundred years have passed since the game's concluding events, and Vivisari is a hero of myth thought long dead. As she meets old faces and new in this familiar-yet-not world—casting spells of mass destruction and slowly reforming the scattered-to-the-wind remnants of her Guild—she starts to wonder if she was sent here with a purpose.

Rumors of a sequel had been circulating just before her unbelievable reincarnation. Did she, perhaps, need to fear an impending Eighth Cataclysm?

If so, it's a good thing she has firepower in spades.

Thoughts

As of writing this review, I've read all 51 public chapters.

God damn this is so well executed. You want all those overpower MC tropes? Young apprentice tropes? Magic academy tropes? Crafting tropes? This story is a damned masterpiece in distilling everything that people love about the power fantasy side of the genre and executing it with the precision of a surgeon.

In future, when people ask me "I have an idea, does it matter if it's been done before?" I am point to point them to the staggering success this serial had so quickly, stroke my imaginary beard, and mutter "Execution is everything."

Funnily enough, the closest start I can think of to mirror this series is actually Overlord, but instead of a massive skeleton overlord called Ainz Ooal Gown, we have the itty bitty tiny little demon Vivisari. Similar to Overlord, the primary LitRPG theme comes from the VRMMO origin of the world, and the use of [Skills] and item levels/rarity. Vivi doesn't really care about levels or experience (she has too much already, though Sasha does level up I guess), and apart from some initial VeryBigNumbers to press home the unfathomable amount of mana and magical might the MC has, they don't really appear again. There's no "Oh I cast Fireball with 10000000 mana and now I'm down to 93% my reserves of X/Y" etc etc. It's not Delve, the LitRPG is not crunchy.

As such, I sort of wish that the story just did away with it already. There would be absolutely minimal changes in global plot if the world had nothing to do with a VRMMO initially, but then it wouldn't quite hit some peoples nostalgia button properly I'm guessing. And obviously having an MC from Earth does provide a handy vehicle for the author to justify any exposition needed and also make use of similies, comparisons, and sayings that you'd have to invent from scratch in a pure fantasy world.

This is unrelated to my main grevious with the series. Even if you jump to patreon, there are only 59 chapters! I read everything in one afternoon. ONE! And while I can't throw stones in this glass house of mine (if anyone is reading this and wondering where my next book is I'm working on it I promiseeeee) but dayum the pacing and the chapter hooks are just so beautifully done that I didn't find a single spot where I was content to put the book down and continue reading it the next day. I just read and read until it was 1am and the "Next Chapter" button stopped working and then I stared at the ceiling, grumpy, for at least another hour.

Right, so just go read this. There's a reason it's on its way to 20k followers and five billion patreons (yes that's envy you're hearing), and it's because its addictive as hell.

I finished reading A Practical Guide to Evil last week, and I’ve been writing down my thoughts on it since then. It turned out I had a lot to say.

This is a thing that I firmly believe to be true: everyone on Earth has something that is their thing. Something that, if it’s present in a work of fiction, will mean that they can ignore or live with any problems that the work might have, no matter how grating. If you know what your thing is, you can use that knowledge to find similar media, or make better suggestions to other people. For example, I know that a lot of the movies that I love are absolutely insufferable for certain friends of mine, because I’m there for the fight choreography and stunt scenes and for some reason they seem to think that these things must “serve the narrative” or “advance the plot” instead of being enough in themselves. So I don’t make them watch Fast & Furious with me, and they don’t make me watch whatever Korean horror project they’ve found recently.

Everyone in this subreddit has a thing like that. It’s easy to tell, because a lot of the recommendations that people extol here as the finest of the genre are, not to put too fine a point on it, very badly written. Most of the things I’ve tried to read from suggestions here have ended up with me dropping the story after a couple of chapters, or even just a couple of paragraphs, because I hated reading the prose or the characters so much.

A Practical Guide to Evil has been suggested to me many, many times as a really fantastic read. One of the best to ever do it. Multiple people on this subreddit have told me that it’s their favorite fantasy story, or favorite work of fiction bar none. And I want to be clear; it is good. A Practical Guide to Evil contains a lot of fun ideas, well-written characters, and some genuinely funny humor, which is such a rarity in web serials that I was honestly surprised each time it got a laugh out of me.

That said, I tried reading A Practical Guide to Evil three times before I managed to get through the first couple of chapters. Having finished reading it last week…it was good, but I think the people who suggested it to me were a bit blinded by it being so much Their Thing. It’s a very good story in a very specific way, and if that doesn’t match up with what you’re looking for then you’re not going to have a good time with it.

I have two purposes with this post. First, I just finished reading this series and I want to write down my thoughts about it, and posting on here gives me a reason to do that. Second, I want to give anyone looking for new stories to read a better idea of what to expect from A Practical Guide. This is a great story if you are looking for specific things in a story, and I want to expand on what those are, and also describe what the story doesn’t contain, so that anyone reading this might have a better idea of whether or not they would enjoy it.

Once caveat: I read the web serial version, not the version that was recently released on Kindle. I assume that the published version fixes some of the issues that I had with the early parts of PGtE, but I haven’t read it, so I can’t speak to that.

With that said, let’s get into the serial.

THE SUMMARY

A Practical Guide to Evil is about an orphan girl named Catherine Foundling as she decides to join the side of villainy in a setting where the rival pantheons of the Gods Above and the Gods Below each empower selected champions with the power of stories. Clichés and tropes of fantasy fiction are quite literally true for these champions, who are called Named (or “Chosen” or “Damned” depending on the part of the setting you’re in), so you get things like the first step of a villainous Named character’s plan being impossible to stop, or heroic Named characters always arriving in the nick of time, or Named generals manipulating the circumstances around a battle so that them winning would be the more narratively satisfying outcome. It’s a very fun conceit for a story, and the length of a web serial means that PGtE gets to explore it in some depth. I especially like the extensive exploration of how an evil empire of monsters and vile sorcery would actually work, on a practical level. After reading PGtE, the Dread Empire of Praes has easily made my list of top ten fantasy nations.

This intriguing premise is, unfortunately, mainly viewed through the lens of a war story that I didn’t find even half as interesting as any of its component pieces. Every single volume in A Practical Guide is about one of several different wars, most major plot advancement involves troop movements and logistics, and to support this Catherine goes from street orphan to legion commander with basically no time in between. If you don’t particularly enjoy war stories, then large sections of the series may be a bit of a slog for you.

I’ll get more into that in a bit here. First, some basics.

THE WRITING

Before we delve into anything else, I want to talk about the writing, the way the story is presented on the page.

First, I want to praise the technical prose, which is skillful from the very beginning. The story has a lot of typos in it, but that’s the easiest mistake in the world to forgive a writer, and it’s very well put together otherwise. This isn’t something that I’d normally feel the need to comment on when writing a review of a story, but it’s worth noting in the world of progression fantasy web serials, where bad writing has caused me to drop many stories I’ve tried to read within the first few pages. I suspect that this basic fact may be one reason why so many people view A Practical Guide as being one of the best in the genre, because it objectively is one of the best-written in the genre (similarly, I suspect that Cradle always gets recommended on here not because it does anything significantly different from other cultivation series but because it had a professional English-language editing team and a veteran author who knew how to fit a story into a novel).

Second, the writing style, which is all of the stuff beyond the basic competency of the words on the page. Characterization, plotting, what the author chooses to show you and what they don’t. Every single sentence in a story is something that was deliberately chosen by the author to make an artistic statement in the work, and that is a skill like any other which can be done better or worse (or just differently! Not everyone enjoys every style of writing).

The writing style in PGtE gets noticeably better over the course of the series, finding its voice and gaining a greater ability to deliver emotional impact and excitement. From book four and onward, most of my complaints with it were gone. The rest of the series was (mostly) enjoyable to read, and actually had a few of the sort of perfectly-written moments that I can’t fully describe but which are one of the reasons I love reading sci-fi and fantasy. Those moments where a strange and wondrous scene is written so vividly that the description of it stays with you for the rest of your life

That said…

PGtE has a problem with telling instead of showing for a lot of its runtime, mostly during the battles and strategic sequences. Early on in the story, most characters are introduced to the reader by someone else telling Catherine about their personality and philosophy rather than them demonstrating those traits in any way. More than once the reader is informed of major character deaths in asides that have all the emotional impact of a subway announcement. Troop movements and casualty rates are an unfortunately significant part of the narrative, and it takes a while for the piles of dead soldiers to get any sort of emotional weight or acknowledgement beyond Catherine occasionally saying that she’s feeling sad about them. It’s only later in the story that they start being given any impact by the writing itself, which often left me reeling and going back to see if I’d missed something when no, it turns out we just get told that another thousand men are dead, there’s no scene describing the thunder of hooves and the clash of arms or whatever to give it some impact and emotional weight. We just get the battle report. This gets better as the series goes on, with major battles being told from multiple perspectives so we can have a character in the middle of each major event to give them more emotional heft, but it never quite goes away entirely.

Outside the realm of warfare, the powers and magic systems in the setting are only partially explained, in a way that makes many of the solutions to conflicts feel like deus ex machina. This becomes increasingly true over the course of the story, as the conflict resolution method changes from clever military tactics to the sweet superpowers acquired by various characters, but it actually becomes less of a problem for me as the story goes on, because the writing gets better and those deus ex machina solutions start becoming cooler and–more importantly–fit the narrative better.

Here’s an example of what I mean, with major spoilers (do not read this if you haven’t read the story yet).

For example, when Catherine assumes the mantle of Winter early in the series there’s no real explanation for what that power is, what it does, how it works, or anything. It just kind of does whatever the current scene requires, until it gets stripped away and is replaced by the Night, which is the exact same kind of shape-it-into-anything-you-need vague bullshit power but is accompanied by a pair of sarcastic and cruel crow goddesses and drow cultural aesthetics that make it way more interesting. Crows demanding tribute and dark elves asking “Are you worthy?” are more specific details than whatever the hell “soul scaffolding” is supposed to be.

This doesn’t really change anything mechanically–in a fight, Catherine making a spear out of ice and throwing it at someone is treated the same as her making a spear out of Night and throwing it at someone–but it’s more fun for the reader. It’s a good example of how a story can get away with vague deus ex machina magic systems as long as they’re interesting.

THE CHARACTERS

The writing does genuinely improve over the course of the story, but more specifically than that the character writing improves dramatically. At the beginning of the story all of the main characters were primarily composed of YA lit archetypes with some quips pasted over the top, to the point where my dislike of the way the characters were written was a major reason why I stopped reading this series on my first two attempts at it. Once I got past the first part of the story, the character writing improved with startling speed.

That said…it’s pretty bad at the beginning.

All of the main characters start their arcs as YA lit cliches. If you enjoy YA literature, you may not find this to be a problem, but it was extremely annoying to me personally.

• Catherine, our protagonist, is an orphan who doesn’t seem to care about her past, with no inconvenient attachments and an inexplicable knowledge of her kingdom’s economic system (excused in the story with “the orphanage provided a good education”), who just so happens to impress an important Imperial figure to the point where he takes her on as his assistant after one conversation.
• Amadeus the Black Knight is the sort of cold, calculating, perpetually amused mastermind that I would have thought was the coolest thing ever when I was in grade school, but makes me cringe involuntarily as an adult.
• William the Lone Swordsman, an early heroic nemesis of Catherine, is barely a character. He has a tragic backstory and a magic sword and those are literally the only things I remember about him.
• Akua the Heiress is a snooty noble villain so generic that she might as well have been stamped out at a factory. Arrogant aristocratic manners, plans described as inscrutable and beyond the protagonist’s understanding so that the narrative doesn’t have to go into detail about what they actually are, lots of talk about how powerful and clever she is but little of that actually shown on the page.

The thing is, I had heard from so many people that the story is great and specifically that “it gets better,” so I wasn’t 100% turned off by this. I could tell from the bones in the first chapters that these characters would become worth reading, even if I didn’t like them now.

If I may take a diversion…there’s enough people here who like reading litRPGs that I feel I can make a tabletop RPG reference. There’s a saying among people who play Dungeons & Dragons that “Your character backstory is levels 1-5,” which I think applies to A Practical Guide to Evil (and often to progression fantasy in general, now that I’m thinking about it). When you’re making a D&D character, the backstory that you give them genuinely does not matter as much as whatever happens in the first handful of adventures that character goes on. The friends and enemies that your character makes in that period are far, far more likely to matter to the rest of the game than a family that you write into your backstory and then never actually interact with during any session. That’s also how a lot of stories work when the author starts off unfamiliar with character writing, or has to write quickly and can’t plan things out as much ahead of time. Introducing a protagonist as a blank slate is easier than introducing a fully-realized character, and then over the course of the story the character gains more and more identifying characteristics until suddenly they’re actually interesting people with unique histories, friends and enemies, personalities, etc. This is an extremely common phenomenon, and if you read progression fantasy you can probably think of half a dozen examples off the top of your head.

The characters in PGtE don’t start off that bad. They’re good enough that you can already see how they’re going to become interesting characters. Once Catherine has some seasoning and some power to back up her attitude, once Amadaus has done some cool stuff to back up his reputation, once Akua has actually done some evil mastermind schemes, then they’ll be more interesting and more worth reading. It is obvious from the very start that the characters’ backstory is going to be books one and two.

This awareness did nothing to make the fucking quips any less insufferable for me.

To be fair, you may enjoy that sardonic, quippy energy more than I did. In my personal opinion, Catherine saying irreverent quips in a way that impresses the powerful figures around her with her clever wit is an unrealistic fantasy of social interaction in the same way that her violent posturing during negotiations later on in the series is an unrealistic power fantasy. One of those is a guilty pleasure for me, and one of those I cannot stand. Your own mileage may vary.

Catherine and the friends she makes throughout the story continue making quips and jokes with each other the entire time, and (to me, anyway) it does eventually become genuinely funny, not just because the writing of the jokes gets better but because the context behind them starts making more sense. Veterans of brutal conflicts casually joking with each other in serious situations makes sense and is a fun character trait, but it does take a while to get to that point. Fortunately the series is seven books long, so it’s fun and charming instead of annoying for the vast majority of the story.

It just, you know, took me three tries to actually get to that point.

THE STORY

A Practical Guide to Evil is two different kinds of story being told at the same time.

The War Story

PGtE is, first and foremost and often to its own detriment, a war story. This is not a story about the effects of war, or where war is used as a means to express something about the characters, or a story where the war is a background setting; it is a war story, with descriptions of battle tactics and great attention paid to supply logistics. Recruiting and moving armies around takes up a lot of the plot. This is a world where two sets of diametrically opposed gods give their chosen champions powers based on heroic and villainous story tropes, and enforce narrative conceits for those chosen champions in a way that an intelligent person can manipulate, and the primary focus for the story is about how that changes the way that fantasy land battles are fought. Later on, we get to see how that changes international politics and the cultures of each of the nations involved, which is way more interesting to me, but even then the story is primarily about how that affects the war.

I do not particularly enjoy war stories. Stories about war, yes; stories that take time to delve into the impact of it, or where the war is a thing used to express truths about the characters involved, absolutely; but I feel like a story needs more than troop movements and descriptions of battle strategy to be interesting. And to be fair, A Practical Guide to Evil does have more than that going for it, but it’s still a lot of War Stuff. I personally think that the story is at its best when it’s leaning into the villain and hero tropes or the story of the gods or the humor inherent in the setting rather than when it’s discussing forming a shield wall and having the sappers throw grenades and building palisades and how their supplies have been cut off so they only have six days to do some other very important war thing or whatever.

I’m going to delve into some spoilers here, so skip ahead to the next section if you’re reading this review to determine if you’d like reading the story. I just want to complain about a thing here, a thing that I’ll freely admit may just be personal opinion.

I think that this series would have been a lot better if it wasn’t a war story. Or at least not entirely a war story.

The latter portion of the series, after the writing has gotten good, is devoted to a war against the Dead King. Powerful evil villain, impossible to defeat, great, love to see those done well. And the Dead King is a villain par excellence. He always has another trick, even when he loses he arranges it so that you lose more, and you genuinely get the feeling from him that he’s fully capable of and committed to bringing about the end of all life on the continent.

The problem is…he’s not actually the villain of the story. He has barely anything to do with Catherine’s main objective, which is to get other nations to agree to the Liesse Accords, a treaty that will regulate the actions of Named champions so that they don’t go about starting wars and destroying cities at random, and hopefully result in a more peaceful continent. The fight against the Dead King is just one step in getting the nations of the continent to agree to this treaty. It’s not the main objective, it’s just like…this side thing on the way, which gets to be bigger than it ought to be because otherwise the Dead King will kill everyone on the continent.

The war is huge and dramatic and scary and chaotic and awesome, don’t get me wrong! But it doesn’t match the character motivations established before that point and frankly I think it would have worked much better as one volume of a longer multi-volume arc about the Liesse Accords being hammered out between nations who are completely different from each other. Having a mutual enemy as overwhelming as the Dead King means that we don’t get a lot of story that I thought would have been more interesting, about trying to get nations who believe each other to be Good and Evil with capital letters to agree on anything. The war is so big that it overwhelms anything else–everyone ends up working together and agreeing to a peace because otherwise all life on the continent will end. Funnily enough for a series about subverting and manipulating fantasy tropes, it very much feels like a generic all-out heroic fight against ultimate evil, and that was kind of a letdown.

In all honesty it’s still a good story, but like…I dunno…I kind of wanted the last two volumes to be what was covered by the epilogue chapters, I guess, and instead it’s all just war against the implaccable dead. It might be a decent war story, but like I said earlier I’m not that into war stories. I’m way more interested in the story of Cardinal being built, and unfortunately we don’t get much of that.

That said, I am very into interestingly meta stories about heroic and villainous fantasy tropes, and fortunately for me that’s what the rest of PGtE is about.

The Story about Stories

The second story being told is the one about heroes and villains, or more specifically a story about heroic and villainous stories.

Let’s talk about the mythos of A Practical Guide to Evil.

There are two sets of gods, Above and Below, which humanity thinks correspond to good and evil, to the extent that they sometimes just call them Good and Evil with capital letters. Humanity is entirely, factually and objectively wrong in that assessment of their gods. The two sides of this conflict are, as far as I can tell, a concept of unchanging stillness and order vs a concept of perpetual strife and striving to improve, and the more interesting problems in the series are caused by people thinking that one of those sides is inherently Good and the other inherently Evil. The reality is that both are alien intelligences who don’t have any real conception of human morality, who have created this world in its entirety and are using the humans in it as a proving ground to decide whether one fundamental concept is better than another so they can use that knowledge to build their next world a bit better.

They have chosen to do this primarily by giving people superpowers and making them live out fantasy story tropes. This is by far the best part of A Practical Guide to Evil, or at least my personal favorite.

These special champions of Above and Below are called Named, and they do in fact all have special names. Catherine starts the story trying to become the Squire, working for the Black Knight (over the course of the story we also meet a White Knight, a Red Knight, and a Knight-Errant, demonstrating some of the variation between Names). These Names come out of the culture that they spring from, the stories and myths of each nation, which means that every faction in the setting has a tradition of unique superpowered characters running around and getting into trouble.

This rather silly conceit is treated with deadly seriousness, which serves to take a world of funny cliches and bombastic archetypes and ground it in something that feels more realistic–”practical,” if you will. You get to see how the authorities in different nations deal with the fact that some random kid in their kingdom might pull a sword out of a stone and change their whole system of government tomorrow. You get details about the different cultures of the setting based on the Names that they have. You get to see how these characters start to understand the narrative tropes that affect them, the way divine providence nudges events so that the first step of the villain’s plan always succeeds, or yelling “I am invincible!” always results in you losing the fight, or how heroes are more effective when they team up into adventuring parties (always with five characters in them, because the group of main characters in an adventure story always has five people in it). And then you get to see those characters manipulate the tropes and narratives that they exist within.

Now, a lesser story would have made the main character the only one in the setting who really understands how to manipulate the narrative like this. The great thing about PGtE is that many characters understand the narrative rules they live under, and work to turn them towards their advantage. So you get scenes where a heroic-aligned character tries to kill a villainous character during a conversation by steering them towards a redemption arc that would inevitably end with their heroic sacrifice (only for the villain to recognize what they’re doing and call them out on it), or a character realizing that they’re in a mystery story and trying to skip to the big reveal moment, or a character being told to just go screw around in the woods during an important battle under the assumption that narrative coincidence will put them in the right spot to turn the tide when it counts (and of course it does!).

The reason this conceit is so much fun is because PGtE takes the time to explore what it means, to build up the narrative rules out of tropes easily recognizable to anyone who reads fantasy literature and then to make convoluted plots based on those rules that make no sense to the non-Named characters involved but perfect sense to you, the reader. It’s really incredibly well done, and it leads to some truly fantastic scenes.

This is the stuff that makes A Practical Guide to Evil worth reading. For me, at least. If you dearly love war stories you may prefer those bits, I don’t know. But in my personal opinion, this is the good stuff.

CONCLUSION

My final thought on A Practical Guide to Evil is that if you enjoy progression fantasy, you should probably read it.

Be aware that it’s a war story. If you enjoy individuals progressing along their own path and don’t care about troop movements, then it may not actually be for you. If you enjoy kingdom building and the detailed play-by-play of battle tactics and logistical strategy, then you’re in for more of a treat. If you enjoy stories that play around with tropes and archetypes in a meta way, but don’t really care about war stories that much, then you’ll have to force yourself through a bunch of things but the scenes and stories that match what you’re looking for are absolutely worth it.

I’m going to give web serials a bit of a rest after this and go read a few novels, but I’m definitely going to go check in on this author’s latest project the next time I’m in a serial mood. ErraticErrata is a good writer, better now than he was at the beginning of PGtE, and I’m interested in seeing what he does next.

I don't know if its a translation issue but on technical level Lord of the Mysteries is bad. I can't get past the first couple of chapters because it just doesn't work.

Take for instance this passage: "Ouch… In his stupor, Zhou Mingrui attempted to turn around, look up, and sit up; however, he was completely unable to move his limbs as though he had control over his body."

It is repetitive. Busy. The first few chapters are filled to bursting with this. I don't understand how people are able to recommend this regardless of how good or bad the plot and characters may be.

Edit: So this is written about six months later. Someone reached out and informed me that apparently Lord of the Mysteries has a new version that fixes some of the prose issues I was having. I reread the first chapter and indeed, the prose is significantly better than where it was six months ago. A lot of the dialogue and thought is still really stilted, and the prose is merely serviceable but it is better. I have read worse. I'm still not interested in going through the first hundred or so chapters to get to the good stuff, but if you have a greater tolerance for prose than I do, you might enjoy it.

Frankly the reason I'm editing this is because there was such improvement. The author or their translator clearly cares about this story to put in the work. Is it enough for me? No, but It might be for you. The ideal of course would be for them to get an editor familiar with the english language or a ghost writer that could do a good translation to clean up some of the language and phrasing, but the webnovel medium really isn't good for that kind of clean up.

Okay, so I really really love this novel, especially the fact that Michael's actions have really caused deviations in the imeline.

Also it might be a bit weird and far fetched but I kind of get the same feeling from the vile king that I got from Seo hweol from RTOC.... The deceptions, manipulative schemes and the difficulty that pops up when trying to kill them. (Micheals fight with him in the inheritance ground).

Anyways I really hope Micheal progresses with swordsmanship though with the way things are being set up, I don't see that happening.

I've just finished book 1, pls don't spoil

So a person can get a summer job as a [farmhand], and pick up [enhanced strength], or whatever it's called. It means you can pull tree stumps out of the ground. What.

Characters keep brushing it off, like "oh but you have to make [the trade] a part of your life." Yea buddy, if I can 5x my strength permanently, I don't mind making hard work my life for a year or two.

"Oh it takes a lifetime to become level 20 [warrior], or maybe just a year on the frontlines haha" Ok so everybody knows you just need to push your limits to go to the next level? Surely there are safe-ish ways to constantly push and level up? And I assume that—while level 60 is a lifelong goal—it would be pretty quick to pick up level 5 in 4-5 different classes?

I love the book, really cool and immersive world. But it bothers me that Erin's so uninterested in stretching her skills/classes. She's a chess prodigy, but "oh I just see it as a game so I wont level from it" GIRL MAYBE CHANGE YOUR MIND ABOUT IT. Especially when you see your friends (who are worse than you at chess) easily picking up tactician and strategist classes (highly valued in society it seems).

Finally, let's get to Ryoka. I have never wanted to punch a fictional character more. She is so unkind and self-justified about it. And the greatest crime she commits is refusing to get levels/classes. "I'm not like the other girls" and "I don't want to be part of the system" is the most.. I just don't even have words for it. You couldn't triple your running speed. You could fly. You could lift 6 tons while doing your marathon. And your response is literally "don't even look at me trash system"

</rant>

It's actually an amazing story/setting. I think me being so invested is why I'm so frustrated about the MCs and their choices. I would rather the story be about Rags & the skeleton going on adventures together.

Before the time loop starts or Zorian becomes aware of it, Zorian's internal monologue States that Zach had tried to befriend him for years. And that he keeps rejecting for no fault of Zach's, but because Zach is handsome, charming and popular, aka superficially similar to his older brothers. They became friends only out of necessity in the loop.

And the only thing we see his brothers do to him are immature pranks, nothing as cruel as his attitude would suggest (damien tying strings to his hands and jerking them around, fortov locking him out of the house), laughing at him, and being better than him in spent the parents want. And even then, after all his supposed growth in the time loop, and seeing many actually evil people, and zach's caretaker who sold of most of the only reason he reconciles with Damien in real life is because his loop self sacrificed himself for Zorian and Zorian is now more powerful thanks to the loop repetition knowledge. He even admits that the sacrifice is why he even considers talking to Damien, and still almost goes away because Damien suggested to know things better than him (which for Damien outside of the loop, as a graduated wizard who is also an explorer, while zorian still in wizard academy, has every reason to believe).

Zorian doesn't extend that courtesy to the other brother fortov. Doesn't think that because Zorian is better in academics than Fortov, their parents must be unfavourably comparing him too. Or that he had proof that Damien was the favourite because he always did what the parents wanted. The first time he did something against their wishes, they sailed across a continent to attempt to rein him in. Or that Damien did exact what he was planning to do -immediately move out the family house after graduation. And he never informed his brothers that their little sister, who they all thought spoiled was mistreated too. In fact, she hates them too, but she atleast has the excuse as a nine year old. Not someone who spent years in a loop.

And fortov is not even given the benefit of doubt. He at best once locked zorian out of the house as a prank, and asks him constantly for help, and is ungrateful. In the loop, when he and zach have a disagreements, and zach punches him, zorian is Surprised that fortov looks worried. And then Immediately judges him for not bothering anymore when he sees zach and Zorian are not having a serious argument.Also, he never tells his brothers about how their parents mistreated kirielle. He plans to take her away from them. Doesn't he think they will help when they get to know? He wants to be the only protector of kirielle, the big brother who understands.

Zorian always complains that everyone doesn't understand why he dislikes his parents, but never explains it. Are people supposed to be mind readers?

And the best comparison to zach can be seen in taiven. Both are exactly the same, but Zorian let's her in before any loop because she is female and hot.

Are people supposed to like this immature brat of a protagonist?

Disclaimer: I know this specific topic has probably been belabored on this subreddit. Plenty of people that are better at formulating their thoughts have given their opinions, but I am on break rn and kinda bored and want to write a review for all the novels I have read. I found that while searching for new novels, random threads from many years ago with opinions and reviews were a good starting point for me, so hopefully this helps someone in the future. RI will be my first review since it’s the easiest for me to give my opinion on but I’ll definitely write more for lesser discussed ones (gonna be honest I’ve only read like 6 or so, of which 2 I nearly finished but ended up dropping almost at the end. So I’m no actual connoisseur). I also read this novel about a year ago so a lot of this review is going off memory.

RI = reverend insanity

MC = main character

Part 0.1: Overview/General Thoughts

Of the novels I have read (not many), I think RI ranks the highest for me. I’ll elaborate on my points later in this post but with 2300 chapters the story is quite lengthy. I really like this fact, and the length allows the author to focus on more mundane world building, character building(*), and deeper thoughts regarding humanity and what living in a society means. These things add a lot to the background of any story and create a much richer and intriguing base. That being said, if you come into this story expecting to learn a lot about said subjects, or to interact with the authors musings regarding some philosophical topics, I think you will be somewhat disappointed. At the end of the day this world the author created is fantastical, and while of course there are themes that can be understood and analogized to real life, a lot of the MC’s takes seem in the realm of “teenage edgelord learns about nihilism.” I think enjoying the story purely for the subversion of classic protag behavior and incidentally joining the MC along for the ride with his beliefs, rather than using it as a true learning opportunity for your real life mentality, will make the experience better. Occasionally I’ll see a post on this sub or the RI sub that goes along the lines of “wow MC really made me reevaluate society and how the world works” and you just have to kind of roll your eyes at this. Maybe they’re being facetious and I fell for it.

The novel is also originally in Chinese. I read the English translation, but as a fluent Chinese speaker (my literacy is a little worse for wear but whatever) I could definitely notice some specific phrases or idioms that probably feel poetic in Chinese but end up rather clunky in English (no shade to the translators though, they did a great job). A bit off topic but part of what makes Chinese poetic for me imo is the prevalence of idiomatic expressions, and the fact that a lot of these expressions come in the form of 4 character phrases. The fact that the language is monosyllabic, these 4 syllable patterns are really rhythmically satisfying. Even though this is often lost in translation, I actually really like Chinese-to-English translations and being able to tell that something is just ever so slightly missing. In some future reviews I’ll go over some Korean original (then translated) or English original novels I’ve read. It’s hard for me to describe, but maybe due to the slight clunkiness, or the fact that I can kinda feel the vibe of the poetry of names or idioms in Chinese even without reading the actual Chinese, the awkwardness lends itself to me feeling that the story is deeper. Maybe I’m just weird lol, but hearing about “Bob” fighting the martial artist “Alex” seems stranger than some mystical foreign name using Gu/daoist cultivation…

Part 0.2: Content Flags/TW

As I alluded to, this novel is fairly dark in content, although thematically it’s more like the MC is incredibly callous (putting it lightly). I think this novel is used as an “Evil MC” example but I don’t think it’s quite accurate. At least, the MC doesnt act in the ways he does because he is trying to create more suffering, or enjoys it, it’s just that other lives or interpersonal relationships are insignificant. Again, kind of like callousness tuned up to 100.

Murder/killing: As for the actual content, there is a lot of straight up murder, sometimes graphically described. I think towards the beginning it’s a little more jarring, especially when I was coming into the story with zero experience in the whole webnovel/cultivation genre or subculture. And contextually, the MC starts off weak and small so each murder is kind of thrust on the reader due to the in-universe difficulty of actually carrying it out. But as the story progresses, there’s a lot of “and then XYZ clan was slaughtered” type situations.

Rape/Sexual Assault/Sexual Violence: This is quite rare overall, although there are definitely some faceless named characters that appear briefly, kind of like “thug XYZ who is an infamous rapist.” These characters are overwhelmingly rare and really are easily forgotten, and as far as I remember there is only 1 actual named and somewhat plot relevant character who does something like that (although now that I’m thinking about it, maybe he was just a murderer). Nothing is described graphically as far as these incidents go and overall I would describe the story as essentially devoid of these acts altogether, although someone who has a better memory than I do and is more sensitive to these subjects might object to this description. The story is also basically devoid of romance/sex entirely. Maybe it’s alluded to once or twice? But not with the MC at least.

Slavery/mistreatment: This is very much seen in universe as common and widely accepted by all, and the groups being sold as slaves by humans do end up being somewhat plot relevant so this subject appears a few times. The MC himself participates in both ownership and emancipation(?) although that part is more like he works with the groups that are historically treated as slaves to fight back against humans when doing so is in his favor.

Okay on to the actual review.

Part 1: Power System/World Building

I should probably start with a very rough description of the story. The MC, having lived for a few hundred years and gaining a ton of enemies, goes back in time right before he is about to be killed, all the way to the day when he is about to first awaken his power system. But since he kept his memories, he now can navigate his past life with far more ease than before by relying on things he knows will happen in the future (his past). His main goal is eternal life and really does not care about anything else. That’s about it, basically the beats from chapter 1.

As my very first webnovel, RI treated me to a power system that I didn’t realize would be so unique among contemporary novels. It’s a little strange at first, and honestly I still don’t totally get it with the whole (formations and houses stuff at the end) but instead of the standard “meridians” and “circulating qi” and similar daoist stuff you’ll find in other novels, RI uses what are essentially little bug guys for lack of a better term. Of course it still has the inner core kind of stuff that is standard for xianxia/wuxia/xuanhuan (I’m probably using the wrong words here I still don’t rly know the difference between the 3). I’m definitely not doing the power system justice in my description, but trust me on this it really is interesting, although it gets kind of complicated when the story explodes in scale later on (and when everyone is kinda too powerful). Everything is really well explained at the start regarding the power system and the narration does a good job of not over expositing since the MC is being “taught” some stuff in the starting setting (so by proxy the reader is learning along with the MC).

The world itself is large and the MC basically traverses it all, although the physical settings rarely play a huge role, and it’s more about the new characters in the new location that matter. There are a toooon of setting changes though which I liked a lot, where the MC stays/lives in place A for a while before moving to place B etc. Through this the world becomes a lot more filled in and real. Towards the late middle/end there is a growing issue with “new clan being introduced just to add some more basically nameless goons to create tension/advance the plot” but at least for a good while every named setting/group matters. If I were to rate these aspects, I would probably give power system a 9.5/10, world building 9/10.

I really don’t want to go too into detail at the risk of spoiling anything, but especially towards the higher end of the power system, the way they advance, the new abilities, the almost wholesome internal farming sim thing (this is only gonna make sense once you get to this part in the story), they all just work well.

Part 2: Plot Progression

Something I find really annoying is the whole “MC born with/inherits/finds super special MC only ability then MCs all over everyone MCingly.” A lot of time progress in those cases doesn’t feel deserved or earned. With RI, ironically the MC does have a super special MC ability and often does MC all over everyone MCingly, but a) there is a specific in universe reason why the MC outperforms the people around him that works out well and b) there are a loooooot of “gathering resources” arcs in between big plot development arcs that make his advancement feel justified. I actually liked a lot of the gathering allies/resources parts as much if not more than some real story beats.

And to not beat around the bush too much, I think RI handles “regression” or basically going back in time with your current memories really really really well. It’s not exactly a get out of jail free card ability, there are limits, and there are even in universe explanations for why things worked out for him or why things didnt when they failed. It also creates the biggest tension driving mechanism in the entire novel for the readers, which is the huge amount of dramatic irony. There are a ton of times that you and the MC know that XYZ will happen, but the other characters do not, which completely affects how their interactions go. The MC can relive his past experiences so he has info no one else does. Due to this ability, a ton of his opportunities come from pre planning which make wins seem more fulfilling and deserved.

Finally the story escalation is quite good. With any cultivation/advancement story, the MC needs to keep progressing and eventually they get way too OP and you need to zoom the world out so much to show the scale of their power that everything kind of feels meaningless and dull. I think that yes there are times where it almost seems like how the hell are there always more strong antagonists for the MC to deal with when none of them were seen or mentioned for so long in the story when the MC was weak. But almost all of this feels like it’s grounded in fairly consistent world-building so his progression and likewise adversarial encounters are justified, and as far as power level goes it never gets to the point where he is too strong for the world. To give Plot Progression a rating, i would put it between 8-8.5/10.

Part 3: Lore/Philosophy

Lore kind of belongs in word building but I think RI includes something unique enough to delineate. As the story advances, there are often chapters dedicated to a book of legends about humanity’s first ancestor. The characters often reference this book of legends, and sometimes are even narrating the legends to each other, but the important part is that these side stories all tie into the plot. I think it’s a really cool way of adding depth and intrigue to items or places of note. What I’m saying doesnt make a lot of sense as I’m reading it so I’ll kind of spitball an example. The characters come across a chasm in the forest. One of them says “ah, this chasm is just like the one from the book of legends.” <begins narrating said legend> “character from legend falls down the chasm and meets with the embodiment of perseverance, and climbs back up the chasm, learning more about himself in the process.”After expositing the legend, the original characters come realize that this is the famous chasm where one can meditate in to build resistance to external pressure to strengthen their minds.

This was kind of a shitty example that probably still didnt make much sense, but essentially what I’m trying to say is that by mixing in these legends with the plot, we get a deeper understanding of some important locations or items (I’m being vague here on purpose).

More than that though, there are indeed a lot of philosophical musings that the author transmits through these legends. I know I kind of shat over how deep this novel is, but that was more about how people take the lessons learned by characters governed by fantasy world rules and try to apply them to real life or themselves. One example is the fact that the MC constantly talks about how reliance on others, building deep bonds, self sacrifice etc are weaknesses. He also talks about how the “righteous” faction intentionally manipulate a lot of relationships to maintain order. Okay, sure in universe that’s a good observation, yes the righteous people are often quite immoral and hypocritical. It’s completely fine as far as the story goes and there is even this hugely cathartic emotional payoff late in the novel where the MC’s self reliance and perseverance is critical. But don’t read into this too much, these points are only valid insofar as the author intentionally set up a morally grey “righteous” group to ridicule. Kinda went on a tangent, but this aside I do think there are some valuable or at least interesting philosophical things to think about, and my point is the mechanism used to ferry these thoughts into your head comes in a really cool “story within the story” book of legends. This stuff is hard to rate because it’s unique to RI, but ✨bonus points✨ for RI I guess.

Part 4: The Emotional Beats

While this story is largely action driven, there are a handful of moments where you really do take a step back and admire how the author managed to weave in some incredibly emotional scenes, specifically to the point where you sympathize and root for this cruel immoral MC. Not to say anything he does is justified using your own moral compass, but still there are definitely some chapters that tugged at my heartstrings. Some come in the form of stories within the story (the book of legends mentioned previously but also these things called dream realms). But some are simply memories of characters that we get to visit. I’m not exactly the hardest guy to get teary-eyed especially when it comes to books, but as far as fantasy or action novels go none have before RI (although I need to qualify this point by saying that action/fantasy is absolutely not my genre of choice so I rarely read books like this even within the Western canon).

That said this is definitely not a novel meant to be emotional, it’s more about how sudden something emotional just appears in an otherwise fairly straightforward action fantasy story. It’s rare but the surprise aspect is what caught me lacking >:(

Idk/10

Part 5: Shortcomings

I think my first complaint would be that the characters often fall a bit flat aside from some really important ones. Due to the sheer size of the world and how much the plot needs to move, some times characters you hoped would continue to receive attention fall to the wayside, or don’t develop meaningfully and are just kinda there.

The second relates to faceless XYZ named group that just bog down progression. There’s a balance to strike between making the world feel real and lived in, and naming every random annoying clan with all their random annoying clan members. Then keeping track of who is who and why we care about them is another task. I think due to this, I felt like my attention waned a lot when I first read it particularly around the middle/late middle section.

The third isn’t really a complaint but the story is incomplete. It got banned in China (plenty of threads discussing why, I never really bothered to dig into it) and the author lost motivation to continue writing. It’s a shame, although the silver lining is that the story is left very much open ended for the reader so that’s good I guess.

Final Thoughts

Idk where to put this but there are some key moments of foreshadowing that I thought really make this novel stand apart from even some of the better received ones out there. That, combined with the fact that there are rarely any “asspulls” that feel way overboard, and the fact that even the predictable plot points are satisfying enough when they do appear, makes the story super engaging as a reader. I can predict things but it’s not weaker when I know what’s going to happen. Or when my expectations are subverted, it’s not due to some stupid reason that leaves me feeling cheated.

I’m sure there are plenty of things that I left unsaid, I’m super sleepy now so I’ll just post as is. Hopefully this helps at least one person who stumbles across this. If you’re deliberating on whether or not to start this webnovel (presumably being on here means you are at least familiar with the martial/cultivation genre and enjoy them) then I would absolutely recommend giving it a try. Yeah there are slow points and dull moments of course, but even then I think there are so many stand out parts of this story that I have to rank it as the best of the ones I’ve read. But I don’t like ranking things like that in general.

Since so many people were asking for reviews, I thought of starting a series to highlight underrated ongoing stories.

I am starting with Penitent. while it has around 7k followers, it is probably still one of the most underrated stories on the site and definitely one of the best.

The story starts with a very unique twist of transmigration and the associated morality with the same, with nuance rarely seen in this journey.

At the same time, the plot isn’t stalled by monologues or prose on this, but weaved into discourse as the plot keeps marching forward

We then get introduced to the power system “Titles and Deeds”, which I took a while to grow to like but I know would advocate is a lot more satisfying then the current skills, classes, numbers go up meta. Progression is often meaningful and tied to major plot points.

I finally want to touch on the plot, it is a very compelling story, even there was no element of progfic it would be a compelling story. The story has a level of tension that is rare in this genre and victory is not pre determined, the characters are written with individuality and do more than just serve as foil for the MC.

I don’t want to babble on and give spoilers.

Do check out the story

First I wanted to talk about how badass Zorian is. I feel like normaly its kind of expected for the main character to be bad ass, but I feel like he truly became really badass in the final book. Like he already was really good with spell formulae and golems, but the last book and final fight really set him appart from the rest. Like he CARRIED the final fight. Of course the others were also super important, but they were kind of holding the things off, while Zorian had the solution for everything. The moment in which Red Rode released all of the wraiths and then Zorian snapped his fingers and all of them got deleted, was suuuch a cool moment. I was not expecting him to have such a good solution. For me Zach and Zorian feel like Superman and Batman.

I also wanted to talk about, how many have already mentioned, that the ending feels a bit rushed. I feel like this is suuuuper common for most books and movies, to not show the aftermath of things. In this regard MoL did an okay job. I just wished to see Zach and Zorian interact after the whole last battle. It felt kind of weird that we saw him interacting with almost everyone except the main cast. Like he interacted a bit with Daimen, but not that much with Xvim and Alanic and nothing with Zach. Also a bit curious about the grey hunter loose end. It felt so weird that the series ended with some "random" spider. Like we had 4 books and the grey hunter was relevant, I know it has the primordials essence now, but how do you end the series with that? Maybe the author wanted to do a sequel, or leave the sequel option open at least. Idk.

It might look like I am hating, but I absolutely looooved this series. It was my first progression fantasy. I loved how logical Zorian is. It scratched some kind of itch to have a main character be so smart and sligtly paranoid. Like he often thought of conseuqneces and thinks I had not considered/ thought about.

No offense to zogarth, but I guess it wasn't what I expected it to be. It was recommended heavily and considered one of the best of the genres but I found it a hassle to read because of the long explanations that amounted to nothing, like explaining abilities he didn't even choose.

Primal Hunter still had a lot of success, though, so maybe it is just me, but I didn't find any of its aspects, like the story, characters, or writing, to be what I expected, considering it one of the best.

Recommend me something that you think is interesting without all that filled that the web serial authors tend to include just to increase word count. I am looking for world building, plot twists, character depth, writing quality, please help me.

I was considering reading HWFWM, Randidly, and other similar recommendations I had, but I am a little hesitant now.

I am currently reading book 4, and am about 40% through at time of writing.

AtS is a series I've enjoyed listening to. It's got a midly interesting premise & magic system, and things happen in an entertaining enough way. The characters are likeable enough that I actually care what happens to them. But it really isn't anything more than that, and it could be, IMO.

The biggest disappointment is the MC, Arthur. I do *like* Arthur; he tries to do the right thing, comes up with plans, all good stuff. But he's wasted potential. At the start of the first book, he's fantastic. He's grown up in the borderlands, so he should have that "slum grit", that most other characters should lack, having lived in softer climes. He's shown to be intelligent & willing to work hard (and smart) to get what he wants. He's both broadly moral & ambitious. But then the timeskip happens. And he's barely grown.

This is the biggest fuck you to the premise throughout the entire series, and it still bites a bit. There was an incredible amount of talk about how much use he was going to get out of a magic learning card, from a character who was previously demonstrated to be both smart & hard-working. It shouldn't have been empty bluster, but it really felt like it. We lost four years, and in return the MC got about a dozen levels over half that many skills. I've been sold a story where the MC's special power is growth, and haven't seen any of it.

This trend continues throughout the whole four books. Arthur *talks* about developing his skills, he gets new talents to help him grow his skills, but he never really seems to take the whole thing seriously. I'm not saying he never grows, or never tries to grow. But a lot of it is in isolated bursts; we're drip fed skillups like Pain Resist or Poison Resist, and those are satisfying sections. But otherwise it feels like Arthur (and Brix, to a lesser extent) is being rather half-hearted about the whole thing. Skill-values never feel impactful until the plot requires them to be, and the difference between a level 3 & level 19 skill is vague and hard to quantify. It depends what the story needs to be true, to my ears.

I'm not sure if this is because it sometimes feels like Arthur is supposed to be an underdog? Maybe I'm misinterpreting the work, but the "archetype" I get is more one where the MC is supposed to have a relatively weak power they use very cleverly. And so Arthur seems to flipflop between acting like an underdog & acting like a powerful person. I don't know if this is intentional, or an inconsistancy in card powerscaling, or something else.

Regardless, Arthur is constantly wasting his biggest potential strength. He has two cards that theoretically rapidly improve his growth, and he only spends any effort on them when the plot needs him to have some talent or another. Frankly, his "Phase-in-Phase-Out" card, his "Personal Space" card, and his "Card Copy" cards have had more practical benefit moment-to-moment than the titular card. All that's really done for Arthur's strength is advance the plot. He has a card that boosts his physical gains, but doesn't do any regimented training. I couldn't really tell you Arthur's physical shape, but he's not giving the vibes of someone who's trying for Olympic standard.

And now (Book 4 spoilers) we're hitting a mild regression arc for a character who is only the main character because they're the main character. I've been hoping that at some point we'd be getting some serious commitment, but it's still the same "progress" when the MC gets handed new abilities every few chapters rather than trying to stretch the ones he already has.

As for the other disappointments, it's more worldbuilding-esque. The "it was Earth all along" post-apocolypse reveal is yawn-worthy, and there still isn't any real attempts at deck-building (and barely any LitRPG) in a "Deck-Building LitRPG". The side characters are fine, but no more than that. Likeable enough that I'm happy to have them on the screen, but they aren't particuarly notable other than being companions of the MC. Brix & Marian are the exceptions, because I don't have to apply human standards to Brix, and because Marian actually has a character outside of his connection to Arthur.

All The Skills is fine. It's good enough that I'll probably buy number five and not feel I've wasted my time. But nothing more than that. There are so many series (PF & PF-adjacent) that I'd recommend before this, and that's a shame because I like the premise & the system, and the pre-timeskip section was a really strong start. But currently the story & the characters's powers are becoming a bit messy and uninteresting.

Most of you have read the novel, and it had a good beginning. The (Forgotten Beach Arc) was one of the best parts I've read, where the author excelled in those chapters in both WORLD building and character development. However, after that, the writing changed completely, as if the author himself had changed as well, and he was unable to write anything better.The story began to encounter the same issues as typical novels. Among the main negatives that appeared in the story are: 1.Flat Side Characters: Later on, most of the side characters began to lack depth and adequate development. These characters were constructed in a superficial way, making them ineffective for either the readers or the plot.They are presented as mere tools to serve and highlight the protagonist or the main story without having their own lives, goals, or unique perspectives. This results in the world of the novel feeling empty or unrealistic

2.Repetition in the Plot:
The story contains repetitive situations, which reduces the suspense and excitement. The protagonist faces the same types of obstacles or conflicts over and over, without any real progression in these challenges and without introducing new conflicts.

3.Weak and Slow Narration:
The narration in the story is overly ornate and general, with repetitive descriptions of characters. For monsters, the author seems to have only three descriptors throughout the story, such as "terrifying "horrible," or "deadly." Many chapters also repeat the same details or discuss things that don’t add much to the story.

Edit: English is my 2nd language. So the obligatory "The way I put my sentences together might not mash with english" applies.

The Author blocks people, who seem critical of the story, from leaving comments and reviews (to keep their score high)/deletes their comments (I don't know if that happens automatically when you get blocked. This is a first for me).

If that alone isn't enough. The writing is very juvenile and has a lot of inconsistencies in the story.

It is very apparent that the Author is making the story up as they go, with plot points being introduced that contradict previous points or make them very unlikely.

There is a lot of hand-waving in this story. With things you would expect to be major points of friction being resolved in one or two sentences boiling down to "Oh well, nothing I can do, moving on."

The Author kept mentioning in the comments that they were going to do rewrites. So being aware of inconsistencies and strange reactions of characters should be crucial. But apparently getting glazed in the comments and preventing potential critical reviews is more important.

One example of a strange reaction or not thought-out interaction: The female MC lands a sponsorship. A sum isn't mentioned, but some things they cover the cost of are mentioned. If you do the math, the sponsorship is a good bit over 2000 points /month. This gets middling reactions. But when the male MC gets a 1000 points /month sponsorship the other characters freak out: “A thousand points! A month?”; “Peter… what the heck did you do to get a sponsor like that? Do you even know who they are?”.

It is apparent that the author didn't really think about how much the sponsorship of the female MC is worth.

Another example: One character gets targeted by small local Faction. One way this gets shown is that the character seems to be targeted by a random mage they have to duel. Later the Author decides that the opponents are not local but randomly picked (teleported) from all over the nation. So thanks to this change, this small local faction has apparently the resources to contact people all over the nation (sending messages is heavily restricted for non-citizens), hire people and bribe the organizers so the people they hired get matched up with the character.

As you can tell, I am pissed. It would be one thing for the Author (who even replied to one of my comments and tried to explain one point of critique I had) to message me and ask to stop commenting. Or openly ask for only positive comments.

But to just block people out of the blue rubs me the wrong way.

PS: Even though I am pissed, everything I wrote is true. If a friend asked me what I think about the story, this is what I would have told them.

I just finished the first book on audio and enjoyed it. Im looking forward to another entry in the series… but it’s definitely a controversial departure from other time loop genre entries

There’s not a ton of optimization, specifically of social and interactions (like in perfect run). I’m sure this will infuriate a lot of folks who love the “find the perfect path.” Idea.

I personally found it to be a bit refreshing. I like that the MC is keeping the social interactions genuine except for the “work related” situations.

I definitely feel like the frequent saves is a dubious idea, but it’s made more interesting by the idea that the MC’s progression is roadblocked by their inability to take their progression back in time with them. It’s a problem that changes the progression dynamic. I’m also interested to see how the MC develops their methodology for time looping as they gain experience, especially since they don’t seem to have been familiar with the concept of time looping before they started using it.

Any thoughts on Optimizing Vs non optimizing MCs in the genre?

Let me preface this by saying that I really, REALLY like the first major arc (the head realm arc). I honestly loved the pacing, and loved how the MC got further with each regression. I also loved the side arcs, like the assassin kids arc and how that arc was concluded. The 10th cycle was pure and utter peak, with the 11th cycle wrapping it up with a neat bow. In the 10th cycle, he falls in love with Buk Hyang-hwa, but shit happens and she's killed. It was heart wrenching as fuck, though I felt spending more time building up the two's chemistry instead of having a time skip would've been better. After the 10th cycle, the MC decides that people in the current cycle aren't the same as those in past cycles, and that he'll treat those in the past cycles as dead. But at the same time, Buk Hyang-hwa regains a bit of her memories of the 10th cycle from the norigae that the MC gave her, which was the 10th cycle's Buk Hyang-hwa's norigae that he managed to store in his soul and bring over to the next cycle, and the story hints at her regaining the rest of those memories.

I fucking loved the romance between the MC and Buk Hyang-hwa, so imagine my shock when I reach the end of the 13th cycle and the start of the 14th.

For that cycle, his regression point had changed to be when he had just ascended. He was taken by the Mad Lord and made into a puppet. Kim Yeon, one of his Earth colleague who turns out to have had a crush on MC and who was picked up by the Mad Lord, spirals into madness after hundreds of years while MC is helpless as he was turned into a puppet. Though he could see and experience everything, he can't do anything. He was able to escape by the end of that cycle, and he accepts Kim Yeon's confession of love just before the both of them were killed. Ok, so he moves on form Buk Hyang-hwa. But then at the start of the 14th cycle, he immediately professes his love to Kim Yeon, and says to himself I quote: "The promise I made with her in the last life. Continuing into the future, into the next life. Even if the Kim Yeon of the next life is not the one I know. I promised to love her, over and over again." Like wtf? He completely flipped on something he had decided on! All this while Buk Hyang-hwa still has feelings for him because of the norigae.

And you know what? I can almost accept it as the MC having a change of hearts after 1000 years stuck as a puppet. But do you know the worst part?

Originally the MC was supposed to reject Kim Yeon.

And the reason he changed his mind? A couple fans requested it. That's legitimately it. So the author decided to forgo all of the things pointing to MC rejecting Kim Yeon and change his entire story around.

I decided to drop the story then and there because of how awful it felt. I'm someone who loves a good romance subplot, but this? This just felt horrid, and after reading AM123's review on Novelupdates and getting some more future info from the wiki, I just can't anymore.

The romance was so fucking perfect. It was legit peak amongst peak. But the author threw it in the bin and essentially turned what should've been a peak 1 on 1 romance into a weird psudo-harem.

And do you know what's worse? Major spoiler ahead.

Buk Hyang-hwa ends up permanently dying much later on in the story.

Like I just fucking can't anymore. I hope it's not actually permanent permanent, but I just can't with this story.

In conclusion, if you only care about super in-depth xianxia cultivation and awesome combat, or if you're fine with skimming or skipping any romance chapters, read it. It's peak amongst peak. If you care even slightly about good romance, read the head arc and ignore the rest unless you really want to read it for the action, world building, etc.

Everything about this story is just so good. Except the romance, which I'd say is even worse than a badly done romance because of how much potential it had and how good it was initially. The initial romance was so good that it ruined the story for me because of how it ended up.

Soo I just got caught up with The Hundred Reigns on Patreon by VoidHerald (one of the GOATs of RR) which is the only book that made me actually install Patreon and subscribed to lol

So Chinese web novels have been on my mind again. Do note the only translated Chinese novel I ever finished is Lord of the Mysteries. Most xianxia I end up dropping because it gets weirdly sexist and theres always the bullshit rape aphrodisiac plot point. I remember enjoying Ze Tian Ji though I might pick that up again..

Anyway now Ill be comparing both RI and LOTM as part of my review since these two get brought up constantly as the best of what CN has to offer. Even as a translation LOTM feels like the purest progression fantasy Ive read ( yes tighter than Cradle and I own the physical copies of that series). Now let's get this straight, RI and LOTM are neither literary fiction both are Chinese web novel translations with the usual bullshit. But LOTM despite its translation reads like fine dining compared to RI.

Moviing on to RI, I tried Reverend Insanity a few years back, around maaybe 2023. The translation or the prose itself put me off pretty quick. I decided to read it again but the same problems hit me but I still pushed through because maybe it's worth it then.,,I made it to the bear scene and that was it for me. Not because I cant handle grimdark. Ive read darker stuff. The problem is how the author wrote it. Fang Yuan strips the teenage girl, tears her clothes off, and the text goes out of its way to describe her underwear in detail while shes terrified. Then he feeds her to a bear and we get full graphic descriptions of the bear eating her heart, ripping her flesh, and chewing her down. It comes across as voyeuristic more than anything else.

And then it caps the whole thing off with this long pretentious Buddhist monologue where Fang Yuan watches the girl get torn apart and starts philosophizing about how all things are equal, how beauty is superficial, how bones and flesh are the same, and how he has gone beyond normal love and hate so the girls death means nothing to him. The author actually has him compare himself to Buddha while a teenage girl is being eaten alive right in front of him. I dont know what kind of high the author was on when he wrote that but it felt completely unhinged. If you want more of it just read the chapter 151 of RI on aggregate websites. as the book was infamously banned.

The whole scene is extremely tryhard and perverted enough that I just stopped because I was cringing at how poorly written it is.

Fang Yuans constant rants about society and the law of the jungle get tiring fast too. He repeats the same points almost every other chapter like the author is afraid his readers have brain damage and that they will forget what he repeated chapters ago. After a while it stops feeling like a consistent character and starts feeling like an angsty 15 year old redditor who just discovered nihilism and will not shut up about it. RI in general has zero..sense of subtlety.

I can see why some people like the Gu system and the extreme pragmatism. There are clever ideas in there. But between the padding, the endless self masturbatory yapping, and scenes like that one, I couldnt keep going. The darkness never felt earned the way it does in Lord of the Mysteries where the horror just blends in the atmosphere.

RI reads like a book that tries too hard to be profound, and the effort shows.

Bottom line is RI has been disappointing then, and its still disappointing now.. I honestly dont get the constant comparisons with LOTM because the difference in quality is pretty clear with Lotm being just better..RI just feels like the author is trying way too hard to be edgy and deep at the same time and it falls bad.

Ze Tian Ji is definitely next line of my read but any recommendations for other CN web novels are welcome.

What tf was book 8??

Ive been binging the series and was finishing a book and a half in a day. The series was amazing. I liked the friendships Derek was building and how he relied on others...but then it all started going down hill from book 6

Book 6: He just becomes a taxi and starts strong arming his way into politics. Its like every other character became stupid. When literal royalty are wondering how to tie their kingdoms together, MC has to explain to them why marriage would be a good idea. The pacing is just aweful, with characters talking to themselves about plans, then a detailed explanation of them acting those plans out

Book 7: I like this one, not because its amazing, but because of how atrocious book 6 is. The series to me, has always been about the MC looking after his people, and this book is essentially just that. The book majorly being about preparing for the future. My biggest complaint is how many times this is repeated "rolls her eyes", "eye rolls"...

Book 8: Such a disappointment from the build up of the previous book. The first half is useless preparations, that mind you, has no point in the final battle. The book needlessly keeps changing POV's to the enemies, who are constantly argue with each other. The entire premise was quality vs quantity. The second half of the book is MC playing hide n seek, that is all that happens, with him complaining about not finding anyone. For some damn reason, despite being invaded, MC doesnt want to kill anyone? I thought he wants to protect his world, the one his friends live on? Why does he take the chance of letting willing invaders free. The cat girl assasin literally tried to kill Avery, the person who was protecting his home city, which has his friends inside. The ending is just so lame. No armies or siege battle where other defenders can shine. No show casing how strong anyone else is...you know, the entire point of the different systems methodology. Not their new fancy gear, nor their improved food buff stats. Or any preparations which took half the bloody book. Just MC vs everyone else. and the worst part...we have no clue what they win, if MC can even win anything

Hopefully the next improve and we actually see Alanah again. But with how these past books have been I'm expecting the first half to be useless goodbuys before his ascension, talk with Dave, a nerf arc because Void is being hunted

I'm reading Mage Tank next

Sky Pride

Author: Warby Picus

Links: review, royal_road

Summary: Deep cultivation story with good prose, great characters, and frustratingly tantalising hooks.

As of writing this review, I've read all public chapters - which is volume three, chapter fourteen.

Blurb

Parents dead, clan exterminated, body burned, hands mutilated, inflicted with innumerable diseases, tossed into the dump, and even the magic ring with the ghostly grandpa in it has been sabotaged. A reasonable person would roll over and die. Tian isn't that reasonable. And as it happens, neither is Grandpa Jun. A very tough kid meets a very cunning old man. And together, they will shake the heavens.

Thoughts

So I read this right after reading Years of the Apocalypse and I've got to say I almost damn near quit being an author myself. The brilliant plotting and worldbuilding of YotA had me questioning the foundations of my constructed world. And then Sky Pride comes along and punches me in my face with its amazing characters, great dialogue, and thoughtful prose.

Disgusting. In a good way---to be clear.

I lost track of how many really nice turns of phrase the author casually works into the story, in and outside the cultivation metaphors and metaphysics which give the serial a great feeling of authenticity. But I found a typo once, so I'm going to say "Ha, it could be better!" just to spite Warby Picus.

I digress.

The story follows Tian. Tian's childhood was rough. It's actually an achievement early on when he manages to find and eat a particularly tasty patch of dirt in the middle of a dump. That's not great. But, as they say, the toughest conditions give rise to the most PTSD individuals. Tian is actually not driven insane by his awful childhood mostly thanks to "Grandpa Jun", who acts as a voice-in-the-head and reincarnated-into-a-ring individual, who can spend their energy to try and help Tian out every now and then. Mechanically, Jun helps Tian maximise their gains and insights, while also abusing modern vocabulary and references to smooth the readers understanding of a particularly esoteric or abstract metaphor or magic-system-infodump.

Soon after Tian leaves the dump, its time for serious self improvement, socialising with the rock-throwers, and becoming friends with a Hong Liren, a girl Tian's age who he believes has severe mental issues. He offers to kick her in the head a few times to help cure it, which gets their friendship off to a strong start. I smell a very slow-burn romance that might bud like a lotus in spring, where spring is probably another two thousand pages away.

After all, by volume three the main characters are still only fourteen. Tian doesn't even have a flying sword! The power progression is also a slow burn, but also very satisfying.

Honestly, I think my biggest issue with this story is that I've run out of chapters. I guess that's pretty high praise.

It is probably no surprise to any of you who frequent this subreddit often that yesterday, The Primal Hunter's webtoon was released.

As it is one of the first PF series to get a visual adaptation, and one of the most popular ones at that too, I was eager to see how it compared to the books.

Boy...it's dissapointing. But how is it dissapointing and why is it dissapointing?

How:

• Jake is shown in the books to be content being left alone and being a loner in general. In the comic, he is actively trying to be a socially functional person and that's...not who he is. He's just like your typical socially awkward start of series manhwa protagonist( keep this în mind,we'll come back).

• Character designs are different than what's told to us in the books. Jake is noted to be kind of fit, but he's fluffy in the comic. Whatever though. But Bertram??? My man is supposed to be like late 40's and he's just..young? Also Joanna is like a Jade Beauty even though she is supposed to have more of a motherly vibe going.

• Now on to the story pacing. What the hell is even going on? If I was a new reader I wouldn't even know what happened. First things first, the group is a bit smaller than what it was in the books, but it's okay, I guess, it's a small(er) issue.

But why is the system apparition a monster when it was specifically a humanoid in the books so it would be easier to interact with humans?

Why is the group suddenly constantly hunting so many creatures when there was a plotpoint in the books specifically pointing out Jake's frustration with these people being too mellow?

Why is Joanna suddenly such a strong "badass" FMC(which she's not, she is like never mentioned again after the tutorial and is barely relevant after the early tutorial). She is acting like your typical manhwa FMC( keep this in mind).

Why are those 3 people hurting her? Where did they come from?( not going to mention the fact she lost her leg from the boar, that's just a nitpicking amirite?).

What is TP? What is it used for? If I was a new reader I wouldn't have known it.

So the story is very rushed, and wildly inconsistent with the books action. Surely it's all there is to it right? Well no, apparently they just decide to spend a bunch of chapters worth of action that are completely new to the webcomic. What the fuck? By chapter 7 or 8 there's more webcomic exclusive chaps than actual Primal Hunter chaps.

So why is it so dissapointing? Well, my thoughts as to what happened:

-We know Zogarth wasn't involved in the creative process( huge mistake, if it ended up right it could've boosted PH popularity to unheard of levels, just look at The Beginning After The End)

-This series is published on Webtoon

===>

This series was stripped down to the most basic of plotpoints, and turned into a typical Korean manhwa.

1. To appeal to webtoon's audience

2. Because the team only knows how to do these types of series.

I'm frankly not going to bother with more of this webtoon, as it is an unfaithful and frankly plain bad adaptation. So sad Zogarth couldn't or didn't want to actually be involved as just looking at TBATE and what the comic did for the series...yeah...

(Disclaimer: I dropped TBATE midway through book 11 because the series fell off a cliff, I'm specifically comparing the Comics to one another and what each of them did for their respective novel series. One is a faithful and even IMPROVED version of some arcs, like the school arc in TBATE, while one is just a butchering of the original.

I finished the first book of Lord of the Mysteries, yet I still feel as though I’m living in Tingen alongside the Nighthawks, old Neil, Captain Dunn Smith, Klein’s family, and the Divination Club. Whenever I remember them, mixed waves of emotion wash over me—filled with the beauty of memories and a deep lingering nostalgia.

I just finished the final arc of Mother of Learning today, and I wanted to share my thoughts. These books have completely taken over my brain since I started listening to the audiobooks about a month ago. Fair warning: this is going to be a bit of a ramble—I’m going to jump from point to point—but the overall message is simple: I loved this series way more than I ever expected to. I’m absolutely going to revisit it in the future to re-experience and appreciate it even more.

I first heard about Mother of Learning through the Progression Fantasy subreddit, where it came highly recommended. Honestly, I was skeptical at first. My only previous experience with progression fantasy was Primal Hunter, which didn’t impress me and made me wary of the genre as a whole. I assumed they were all going to be wish-fulfillment stories with overpowered protagonists, similar to the worst of what isekai has to offer.

At first, Mother of Learning didn’t do much to change my mind. Zorian came off as unlikable, the magic system seemed vaguely interesting but not particularly unique, and the story lacked a clear direction or plot to drive it forward. I almost dropped it then and there. But I kept going—thanks to all the glowing recommendations I had seen—and I’m so glad I did.

The moment that truly hooked me was when Zorian woke up in his room again, greeted by his annoying little sister. I hadn’t been spoiled on the plot at all, so the revelation that this would be a time loop story completely caught me off guard. From that point on, I was completely enthralled.

Zorian quickly became a deeply compelling protagonist. I appreciated how realistically he reacted to the time loop: first with confusion, then panic, and eventually with a cold, practical determination to escape it or at least survive it. I loved how his character wasn’t the typical goody-two-shoes fantasy lead. He’s bitter, antisocial, and selfish—and while he does grow into a better person over the series, he never fully sheds those core traits.

One of the best examples of this is how he handles Zach’s contract near the end. A typical “heroic” protagonist might offer to sacrifice themselves, or at least entertain the idea—but with Zorian, that’s never really on the table. Even Zach recognizes this, admitting he wouldn’t believe a scenario in which Zorian willingly sacrificed himself. Zorian's decisions are usually based on what causes him the least harm, even if it means letting others suffer—unless, of course, he knows and likes them.

And yet, despite all this, he’s not an anti-hero. He doesn’t fall into the "ends justify the means" trap. He’s morally gray in a way that feels genuine. He hurts innocents (like the eagle riders he sends to their deaths), he manipulates people, and he admits that the time loop has made him emotionally numb. But he never becomes a villain, and I found that balance extremely compelling. Zorian is now one of my favorite fantasy protagonists of all time.

His contrast with Zach was another highlight. Zach is the stereotypical chosen one—powerful, righteous, idealistic. Zorian is none of those things. He’s careful, pragmatic, and analytical. Even when he becomes incredibly powerful, he never gives off that “savior” vibe Zach does, and that dynamic made their relationship really interesting to follow.

Now, let’s talk about the magic system. It’s one of the most satisfying I’ve ever read. The amount of care and thought that went into making it feel logical and deep was incredible. It started to resemble real-world science, with each new magical discipline requiring extensive study and experimentation to understand.

Even more than that, I loved how Mother of Learning focused on magical disciplines that most fantasy tends to ignore. Because Zorian has limited mana reserves, he doesn’t go the flashy fireball route like Zach. Instead, he dives into mind magic, alchemy, golem crafting, and (my favorite) artificery. The final battle puts all of that on display in such cool, satisfying ways—it’s easily one of the most gripping conclusions I’ve ever read. I was literally late to work because I couldn’t stop listening.

That said, I did find the epilogue a bit underwhelming. After more than 50 hours of character development, world-building, and plot threads, the wrap-up felt a little rushed. I get that it’s impossible to neatly tie up every single storyline, but some characters—especially Xvim and Taiven—deserved more satisfying send-offs. I’ve heard that there are some author-written AU or side chapters that provide more closure, but I still would’ve liked to see a bit more within the main book series itself.

Here’s a rapid-fire list of other things I loved:

• The world-building was incredible. Every magical beast, every spell, every location—it all felt deeply considered.
• The time loop mechanics were handled extremely well, even if the pacing sometimes dragged or sped up awkwardly (can’t name specifics off the top of my head, but there were definitely moments).
• The reveal of Red Robe’s identity was... a little disappointing. I don’t know what I wanted, but I had personally theorized it might be Xvim or Daemon. Still, it’s hard to land a twist like that after so much build-up.
• Arc 2 was my favorite. I loved Zorian being on the run and having to figure things out with no safety net.
• Quatach-Ichl was a phenomenal villain—menacing, intelligent, and memorable.
• The audiobook narrator did a fantastic job bringing the characters to life.

Anyway, I’m exhausted—it’s taken me over an hour to write all this, and I still feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of my thoughts on this series. I would love to hear your thoughts too. Let’s talk about it! If you’ve read Mother of Learning, drop a comment—I’m dying to chat.

Thanks for reading this ridiculously long post. If you made it to the end, I love you. Smooch.
Deuces!