Metaworld Chronicles

I have enjoyed most of parts of this novel and as it is my first find on RR I'm pretty happy I managed to find something readable right out the gate.

My problem with this novel comes down to pretty much one or 2 things

- Descriptions of what people are wearing, at first I though it was an ammusing inclusion but when multiple paragraphs are consistently devoted solely to describing someone's outfit, I was like (CLAP)WHERE(CLAP)IS(CLAP)THE(CLAP)STORY?(CLAP)

- YES WE GET IT, she has LONG WHITE LEGS and apparently people find that feature attractive. I don't know if I'm using the word appropriately but I thought it made sense but I guffawed (not in a good way) and eye rolled so hard when great pains are taken to ensure that physical feature is mentioned EVERY SINGLE TIME fashion is involved.

- regarding the MC, how unrealistic the MC is as a "30 something" grown woman in a teenage body. She is able to anticipate and counter any attempts at disrupting anything that would get in the way of her BIG ASPIRATIONS. She uses her OLD WORLD knowledge to advance her goals which included intense long winded lectures that involve said knowledge. So I almost believe her character and personality. But than we hit the back and forth internal dilemna of I can't kill them or they are intelligent beings to. Cut immediately towards end of arc after MC killed or wiped out entire city and this happens EVERY SINGLE TIME. Lets not even get into wearing mini dresses that show of the LONG WHITE LEGS to a batlle scene. I really struggled to pair an intelligent, knowledgable and mature 30 something year old woman with a character that has a virtually obsessive compulsion to wear highly impractical clothes into a dangerous situation. My ONLY conclusion is that the MC is in reality not Gwen Song but ELLE WOODS.

- Lastly as a queer person I barely tolerated the queer relationship baiting as the MC's habbit of leading other characters on really started to grate on my nerves anytime a possible love interest appeared. In a sentence the MC, No we can't be in a relationship but you can totally touch me inappropriately, kiss me, hug me and I wan't to touch you, hug you, smell you, kiss you. And this is dismissively explained away as the MC's tendency to be masochistic. I think it was at that point I started to serously wonder if this novel is worth following. But then again the Romance genre is not my cup of tea so I'm highly biased against romance novels which I thought this wasn't because I didn't see it in the catergories. So the Catergories NEED TO BE UPDATED

Written on ch 55.

This isn't a reincarnation story.

Why?

Because the MC who is supposed to be a 30 year business woman with a difficult past and strong character has all the wit, resolve, and social ability of a 16 year old girl. 

Now, this isn't to say this is a bad story. It's fairly good for a pretty standard wuxia, which it is. Just because the MC is a woman and the world is more magic, less cultivation, doesn't make the plot armor any less thick nor the characters any more deep. Personailty is literally affected by elemental affinity, leaving about 12 or so character templates, NoM are general simpletons, and everyone thinks the MC is the best thing since sliced bread, not to mention she gets a power-up every fifth chapter. But, all-in-all, it's totally readable, downright binge-worthy, if it wasn't for the false promise that this was a reincarnation story, because it isn't. The MC is supposed to be a business-savvy mature woman so why is she as clueless as an already pretty stupid teenage girl? Why can't she handle awkward social situations with the 15+ years of emotional maturity she has over nearly everyone around her? Why is she so needlessly reckless in a world she barely understands? There are so many holes in her character backstory, you could pass a truck through them. She thinks and acts like a teenage girl constantly and only pretends to be mature by stealing famous lines from authors in her old world. Just because she dresses fancy and reminds the reader every chapter of how secretly old she is doesn't mean she acts like it. It's more like "Upgrading Specialist in Another World," where the soul that was supposed to travel to another world gets destroyed along the way and the actual MC just gets his power; the story would be more honest if it was written that way. But it wasn't, so now I have to read about a 30 year old woman whose never been in a relationship and can't handle horny teenagers, thinks she can beat evil Magus with her less than a year of training, and wanders around slums in stilletos. 

The grammar is great, the style is above average, and the story is okay, but the characters, especially the MC, just leave too much to be desired for me to give it a good score.

Not that you need care. 

Almost 4,300 pages long, this story is as engaging and interesting years in as it was on page one.  

The author does an amazing job of maintaining continuity, resolving plot points, and introducing fresh and new ideas and characters to maintain the impetus of this world.

Gwen has become one of my favorite MC's, and I have this novel on push notification so that I can read the chapter as soon as it comes out.  And I'm still never able to comment first!.

The 'extras' the author adds, like wardrobe photo examples, character lists, and photo's of main characters, give it an extra dimension that other novels miss.

What's amazing to me, is that almost 4,300 pages in and there is still so much of the story left to conclude.  Gwen still needs to graduate college, win the UICC, move back to Australia.  Visit Japan and England.  Import her business ideas to her home country.  Establish her tower.  Save the house of M.  Improve the quality of life and create a better and more effective government for the NOM's, and kill the void sorceress and the cult of followers that continue to snipe at her wherever she goes.  I won't be surprised if the book reaches 20,000 pages!

First, you may like this story. I started off binging this story and I thought it was good in large parts, but the whole "MC alone against pretty much everything in the world" was growing more and more exhausting to me. Usually you would intersperse some "growth arcs" or something, this story just constantly feels like everything on the edge of disaster. Instead of repeating what some other highly rated negative critiques pointed out (relatively shallow characters etc), I want to say that these may have contributed, but were not the deciding factor in me dropping this story.

What got me was how the MC drops from one nightmarish scenario of betrayal and gore into the next, I might have been able to enjoy the tension if it were not for the author giving us a PoV chapter of the villain in each arc of the story (in plain text, we know who the villain is). Many many chapters before the MC realizes that they're chilling with an abomination of endless evil. We have to endure the MC being clueless and being on the verge of being betrayed. Again.

In general I don't like PoV chapters that give us story-significant content of which the MCs are completely unaware. That may be justified in very rare occasions, especially when it just adds some perspective or is completely divorsed of the MCs for world building, or to introdue characters we will meet at some point. But here it's just a stress inducing spoiler, that doesn't add anything to the story other than anxiety. The MC knows these people, she just doesn't know that they're secretly super evil / possessed / brain washed / power hungry.

Feel free to give it a try, but be warned. If you think it will change, it won't. At least not for the 200+ first chapters.

This story most certainly has a good premise, and it definitely delivers some good moments. However, at some points, it really falls through.

So first of all the thing that really rubbed me the wrong way was the style. Damn, I can't count how many times I've read how the side-characters admired Gwen's legs or her amazing features. It REALLY does get tiring to read about her amazing legs. And this is not only limited to her, every single time we meet a new character in the series Wutosama needs to tell us exactly how attractive their features are. I swear practically everyone in this series is supposed to be a walking model. 

Not only their appearance I also cannot imagine how much time I have spent reading what sort of CLOTHES they are wearing. I mean seriously why do we need to know what their attire looks like at any given moment right down to what their shoes look like.

Anyway, this is not the only problem I have with the style. Perhaps it is only me, but the amount of complicated and academic words in this story is just crazy. Perhaps the author is just really educated but this really frustrated me since I constantly had to look up words. (perhaps this is just because I am not a native English speaker). 

Apart from these problems, and the fact that some of the characters lacked a bit of life, I did actually enjoy the story. The idea of a clever protagonist who actually uses her brain to get through the different situations was indeed quite nice

Anyway to summarize I would recommend this story to people who like a well-developed modern fantasy world and can ignore the aforementioned faults in the style. The story really does have a good premise, and I really did enjoy a lot of it.

Wish fulfillment fantasy that promises but doesn't delivers. lets start the the good points:

- dialogues: some of them are on point – adult, clearly conveying the characters personality or pov.

- characters: initial characterization gives each one almost a unique voice, but that’s it. But it feels like their stuck into their sidekick role without any unique voice of their own. The biggest problem is though with the female lead, a self proclaimed 30 year old behaves like a teen.

- filler and gratuitous erotica – pages and pages of small talk, shopping, dresses, getting from point a to point B without any meaning full events.

- erotisized description that serve no purpose beyond fan service. e.g. a shower scene with an erotic tone that did not even connect to a internal dialogue to make it meaningful.

- world-building: despite being initially intrigued by the world political and magic system, it become very much apparent that the author just slapped a half-assed dungeons and dragons (1^st edition) rule book over the current geo-political system, and just went along with it without giving serious consideration to the ramifications of having magic. We have all the modern conveniences of a technological society photocopied into a magical one without a single change, cars (“turbo boosted mana core engine), phones, etc. In one of the fight scenes someone casts “detect evil”? Wtf – does it mean that a first level spell can make philosophical ethical judgment, when even the author magic system does not have the d&d distinction of evil vs good.

- cartoon villains with their obligatory pre-death monologue of justification and clearing of plot points.

- mary sue badassary – where the characters sidekick animal is a lovecraftian horror wurm that is just there to make the protag onlookers shit in their pants, when she makes her entry. And even when that horror nightmare gets kicked in the butt losing a few of its legs. Two minutes later its back on the scene brand new carapace.

- fight scenes that a literally characters calling out spell names like some bad version of japanese kid anime.

I could go on and on but in chapter 121 I gave up.

Author writes very well, has good imagination, world building is very good. Beginning used to be shaky but after the edits it is now fine. I have now read 255 chapters but had to drop it.

My main gripe is his need for the protagonist to solve everything (Marry Sue). I think it is due to the format, it is really hard to do edits and writing it chapter by chapter probably forces the author to concentrate on the "main plot", however it simply does not make SENSE for her to do everything. The amount of "admirers" who are in her thrall now is huge, people much stronger/more experienced than her amongst them.

I would suggest thinking hard how to make her only a minor player in parts of the plots. It would make it all more believable. And adding more cases where she fails. If not everything is on the line, it is easier to sneak this in. Because as this is now, it is getting ridiculous.

Overall I would recommend trying this, it was fun for me most of the time. Not a literary masterpiece, but a somewhat fresh take on the genre.

A great twist on common D&D spells that U know by heart. Is the first thing that grabbed me to the story, after that I stayed for everything else. 

The Grammar is very well done, quirks in names and nouns when the point of view is that character are used, which I was interesting. Very nice descriptive writing style. Everything is easily understandable and laid out well, making it a treat to read.

The story is great but has some hit or miss moments, missed opportunity, here and there. While this does give it a more realistic feel to it than just a story written to please the reader. While the story is kinda hit and miss, the characters are very well done and believable. Every character is fleshed out and has an obvious identity. For instance, while Yue and Alesia are extremely similar almost identical character types they are obviously different people. This remains to be the same for every main character and even temporary side character or villain. 

This is currently my favorite story here on Royal Road and I enjoy reading every single chapter. Which is currently being released on a regular basis, by the way. If you enjoy a good story, well-done characters, and a solid fantasy world. give it a read.

Honestly, I'll try to keep this short, the characters and their lack of growth really killed the potential of this novel. 

Once you get to around chapter 70 the most boring uninteresting arcs start and continue on until I dropped it around chapter 110.

The main character, Gwen is a 30+-year-old woman who is transported/reincarnated back in time to an alternate world where she is 16 again.

Throughout this whole story, she acts more like a 13-year-old and very rarely does she act like someone who is an adult that owned a successful business or a person with an average level of intelligence. 

I think the worst part is the fact that her being an reincarnatior was unneeded and actually makes her characterization worse. If she was a regular 16-year old I wouldn't fault her as much.

You will see her make the same dumb choices each arc, always trusting everyone and pretending to learn from her idiotic actions and then repeat.

Her friend Yue, hot-headed dumbass that acts like an 8 year throwing a tantrum every chance she gets, never once thinking about her actions that screw everything up and almost no one calls her out on it.

Elvia her other friend, acts and is treated like a little kid to the point where it gets a little creepy.

The author is obsessed with constantly talking about how pure white the MCs skin is like this is a generic cultivation novel, which it starts to feel like after a while. 

None of this changes from the start to the point I dropped.

the author tries to force comedy a lot but it often falls flat or just misses and you don't even realize that there was an attempt until you read the comments.

Around chapter 70 there is an additional 20 POV characters and it gets old fast, the plot becomes full of filler, the Mc is always getting kidnapped and is a damsel in distress too often.

The world is so unique and cool but everything else is just not written well which sucks. 

Not a fan of MC's personality.

Prior to changing worlds, she is portrayed as a strong and successful adult woman who has been through difficult times. After changing worlds, I expected there to be some confusion and panic at the early stages but what we're shown is not much better than a teenage girl with mommy issues and constantly in panic at every small unexpected event. I understand that the alter-ego sort of takes over when she is interacting directly with her mother but what about at other times? Especially when her mother becomes outright hostile, she doesn't seek help and goes like "Oh well I'll just wait for her to screw me over". 

For me, it's just another novel ruined by a contradictory main character.