Azarinth Healer

There is no crisis to be resolved, the mc is op but not to the point where she will have to step forward to save the world. This is more the easygoing, slice of life of a battle-junkie grinding out her skills and levels from the system.

I actually prefer stories that are just about batttle junkies (or other eccentrics like crafting-maniacs or mad-scientist), which this story seems to be. It's not a tense story about a hero with the weight of the world on thier shoulders, not about offending young masters and then exterminating their clan, nor about facing the entire world. It's not just a humourous slice of life without any action either, though I do find it funny.

This is the simple adventure of a slightly op battle-junkie type girl. The fighting scenes are great and entertaining. The slice of life is light, funny and refreshing. The system is grindy, straightforward and(for her)power progressive(fast). 

Edit(chapter 36): Changed score after reading detailed reviews abit(especially oinos and ninetails). Though I have a different view on scoring, the minor errors are there, though not very impactful to the quality of the work and are becoming rarer. MC will hopefully pick up interesting long-term companions/side characters soon.

Edit: I think I'm kinda dumb to just realise she has a job that treats magic like qi. She literal has most the skills qi cultivators do. A healer monk type class.

April 2020: I have been reading this story for two years. Perhaps i should have updated this review in that time but other reviews are available. The author has written 450 amazing chapters in those two years (okay, two years and a couple of months). The author detailed use of style, grammar and characters have improved progressively in that time. Still, how to describe the protagonist journey over thar time to carry on from the earlier review and hopefully encourage more people to read, while not spoiling. Well...

Considering the people she met (creature, machine/golem and humanoid), the monsters she has fought (creature, machine/golem and humanoid) and the places she has grown attached too. I'm not sure I ever should have called it a simple adventure, though it is still light on drama. That is thanks to our easygoing protagonist (and ofcourse thre great author), not the lack of plotlines or her lack of motivation.

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Read and rate other reviews if you aren't convinced to read from mine! Upvote reviews that make you want to read, I just love this story, I'm going to upvote reviws that i think are accurate now.

I started the adventure with this story 2 years ago, when the first chapter was released. It is the only one that was able to keep me by its side for so many chapters and such long time. Others either ended prematurely, or lost their appeal. I think this is the best proof of quality of this book, as well the best reason for reading it I can give.

Just read the first 5 or so chapters, if you liked it, then it is almost guaranteed that you will love the rest.

The best part of this book, I think, is its ability to build up an excitement no matter how much already was written. The MC achieved a truly ridiculous level of power, yet I found myself eagerly awaiting the next fight, next milestone. The world is vast, there is always another challenge, without ascending to another level of existence or unnecessary waffle. Just marvelous adventure.

The story is not only about fighting and gaining power. Many mysteries make the world much more exhilarating. There is much to learn, even about the system. Also, the MC is interacting with almost every part of the described world, so not much is left as only dry, background information, untouched worldbuilding block. This is rare and creates a feeling of freedom, simultaneously making the world feel more real.

I spent some time thinking about which category I was least content with to withdraw half a star so that my review doesn't come off as "I indiscrimately give 0 or five stars to everything I like" But I couldn't decide, so I just left it like that.

I first encountered this story when it was trending, read two chapters and was put off by the (then) mix of present and past time in the story. So I put it on my "Read later" list, because it had promise and sometimes the author comes back around and fixes such things. Well, the author did.

This is an amazing story and even better, it gets updated very on a very regular basis. The characters feel alive, you can understand everyones motivations, the MC is relatively OP, but earned it the hard way and the combat is intensely satisfying.

I went in expecting a pretty great novel based on the reviews, but I have to throw in the towel. Hardly anything is offensively bad about the story, but I do not understand how any of the reviews put any category as 5 stars.

Grammar: This is one of the biggest issues for me, and unless the author has massively improved in the later chapters, it baffles the mind that anyone considers this aspect good or great. A good chunk of the beginning chapters mention in the author note box that they were editted and someone else even proofread them, but it is still so bad. The wrong words are constantly being used, and so often it's the same mistake over and over. Two examples that stuck out every time they occured, which was usually at least once a chapter or two, are "chose" instead of "choose" and "thought" instead of "though". I don't know if the author put the proper word for either of those even once by accident. Reading a chapter is never a smooth experience as you are constantly rereading sentences or paragraphs when you realize a misspelling or the wrong word changes the meaning that was supposed to be gotten across.

Style: Probably one of the better aspects, but nothing to write home about. There are random points when this takes a massive dip and the novel basically reads like someone giving you the cliff's notes version of the story because the author cared more about fitting all the set up into the chapter rather than telling it in a compelling or more interesting way. It's a lot of fighting and grinding, but the majority of it is told differently or vividly enough to not feel like it's just copy pasted. The way they handled showing what skills leveled up got much better in the last 50 chapters or so. Just waiting for a bunch of them to level up at once and then showing the first and last notification for each skill was much better than when it would just show the status screen with the updated skill levels.

One thing that does absolutely drive me insane is the author seeming to think our suspension of disbelief will be shattered if he doesn't throw in sentences every now and then of Ilea having to stop what's happening to go to the bathroom. She's talking to someone? Randomly in the beginning or middle she'll mention she has to go, than it'll say she goes, and right back to talking to the person. Same thing happens with food. Probably 80% of the chapters reference her getting food multiple times, but that rant will be continued in the character section.

Story: Ilea doesn't care and neither do I. She stays in one spot for a few hours to maybe a couple weeks. She makes it to her destination, and if it was to be with people, she realizes she is bored and itching to fight more things, and dips. If it's a place she can punch things, she stays there for a bit until she has thoroughly punched everything around, gotten her levels and skill ups, and then dips for a better place. Throw in some vague references to greater things happening in the world and a whole bunch of mysteries that don't amount to much or seem particularly thought out. A lot of the mysteries are so vague they seem more like the author threw them in incase he needed something he could expound upon later.

For example: the dwarven city/dungeon. She meets some people who are in there for reasons. They must reach their destination at any cost, being happy to use this stranger they basically kidnap, Ilea, as a trap activator because their thing is super important and the vaguest line imaginable makes it seem like they suffered worse so what they're doing is justified. Ilea asks multiple times what they're after. They don't answer. Reasonable. She's a disposable person they don't really care about, why would they tell her. Then, the big reveal:

The hands arc so far was the closest thing to an actual arc, with everything before that having the barest of stories to get her to places she can punch things. The story is so barely a factor as to not really be bad or good.

Character: Some characters are perfectly fine, others are one note and completely forgettable, others are downright horrendous. Ilea sliding more and more into that third category is one of the things that got me to drop this. She is becoming a caricature of her original personality, and based on some of the reviews that got 600-800 chapters, it seems like that only gets worse. At the beginning, food was a passion of hers and after eating nothing but grass for months, she wanted to try a bunch of the new foods of the world and make up for lost time. Now, multiple times a chapter she is shoving food into her mouth, stopping at restaurants to eat, and whining when she can't eat, even in completely inappropriate moments. In a mission and her and her teammates almost died? Better complain about not being able to eat while waiting for them to recover. Waiting to meet up with your friends for food where she'll spend stupid amounts of money on food? Better mention how she spends the hours before going to other restaurants because eating food makes her hungry. It's a joke that was never funny and strains my patience the more it is brought up.

Same issue with her and being serious. At first she didn't really take it seriously since she wasn't even sure if it was real or not, and then because she was beating everything so handily she didn't need to take things seriously. Her making jokes while talking to herself honestly seemed more like a coping method to keep herself sane since she'd go months without seeing anyone else. During the dwarven ruins arc she still made jokes, but it was never really at inappropriate times. When other people died she wasn't cracking wise. When she almost died she became a mess and even mentioned to herself that she wasn't smiling and forced one to try and not completely breakdown and change as a person. Then in the hands arc, on her first mission where her and her teammates almost all die she is making jokes and not taking it seriously, despite everyone getting annoyed with her and telling her to knock it off. It also doesn't help that the jokes aren't funny.

Lastly for Ilea, the sex. Just feels like when the author gets horny while writing he throws in a sex scene. There is no set up for any of them. The ones with the guys are at least mercifully short. Roland sits next to her on the roof of a wagon and draws while she reads. Cut to them waking up naked next to each other. A watress is introduced and is getting sexually harassed by a customer so the waitress shocks him with electricity. Better follow her to the bathroom, say you want some, she shocks Ilea, but because she can handle it that leads to a much more prolonged and described sex scene. The one with Kyrian is even more genuinely creepy. One or two references of Ilea telling herself not to fall for him when she looked into his eyes earlier in the story, but she told herself not to fall for Eve and her other male teammate. Guess she'll be sexing them up the next time the author is horny. With Kyrian, she takes him to her house, asks if he's had sex and when says no, asks if he wants to. He says no, so she instead asks if he's kissed someone, when she says no, she kisses him. Then they make out and she gets on top and starts stripping them both and they have sex. Doesn't help that he he can barely talk to people, stuttering every time and looking down, and she was helping him learn to read, further making it seem like he has a mind of a child, making this whole thing seem incredibly manipulative, and definitely giving off r*pey vibes. 

The trio in the dwarven caves are all immensely unlikable and the fact the author tries making them seem like redeemable characters with Ilea considering what they do as reasonable is disgustingly toxic. Force her to join their group, reveal all her secrets about her class and stats, a big no no in this world people would kill you over trying to do, and then repeatedly send her to die activating traps. But they don't look at her weird for being a battle fanatic and she leveled a bunch, so it's all okay and they can be friends. Her teammates with the Hand are fine but have like 1.5 dimensions to them. At least they're changing to become less obnoxious to their teammates and into "better" people, something Ilea herself failed. Besides Eve's mystery seeming equally pointless and not at all planned out, don't have much else to say about them.

If you have nothing else to read you can find worse. Don't bother thinking much about the story, doesn't seem to matter.

Well, everybody and their dog has written an overview of this fiction and I'm not the one person to be deterred by that, so here's one more to the avalanche.

I've been reading this opus periodically since the time it had about 200 pages (that's when I like to pick up fresh stuff) and it has gotten progressively better. I remember the time I started reading it and thought: "the grammar is weird and the POV even weirder", but it was still at least a little bit enjoyable so i grit my teeth and stuck with it.

Lo and behold, it has gotten a lot better and the authour even revwote the bad grammar and the weird POV in the earlier chapters. And since then it has became the nicely flowing slice of life LitRPG that you can take as a bechmark for others, that still has stuff to go for.

P.S.: I've since reread the whole (up to now around 220 chapters) story twice and still find it nice.

I wanted to like this story, but I couldn't. 

Don't get me wrong, i'm usually fine with stories like this, where a character goes from place to place beating up shit, getting stronger, solving every single problem, and having everyone compliment them all the while. It's a guilty pleasure for sure. This? Yeah, nah. 

What didn't I like about it?

The characters. They have no personality whatsoever, as much as the author would like to pretend that they do. Ilea in particular is just about as cookie cutter as they come, and has no personality outside of making sad jokes and fighting. 

The dialogue. Most characters sound like tweens, even the older, supposedly mature ones. It's painful. Also, Ilea's innerse voice is incredibly obnoxious. The author wants her and other characters to sound funny, but they're not. It's so heavy-handed that it brings you out of the story.  

The plot. Again, i'm fine with these kinds of one-dimensional, progression stories, but this one is just boring. Read one arc and you've read them all, with minor changes. Would be fine if the characters were decent enough, but they're really not. I have nothing and no-one to attach to. 

What did I like? 

Just about everything else, especially the magic system and writing style. This story may have evolved into something better, with better characters and plot over time, but i'll never made it there to find out. 

I don't like this story, but I can see why some people do. 

Azarinth Healer is a solid litRPG with satisfying and continuous power progression. 

The premise of the story is a portal fantasy where the MC finds herself with a battle healer class, and then proceeds to train, fight, and grind to get stronger.

The story currently releases 6 decent-length chapters a week, which keeps the pacing up even when the MC is training/grinding/studying. The grammar is good, with few major errors. The characterization is straightforward and consistent, with Ilea being a pragmatic and mature adrenaline junkie whose goal is to challenge herself and get stronger. 

A strong point of the story is how well the litRPG system has been designed and handled so far. It is an interesting 2-class/person system with well-defined capabilites and rules. Ilea's progression has been very satisfying and has felt earned.

The story refreshingly does not involved any save-the-world situations, and has mostly been allowed to evolve organically as the MC adventures. The worldbuilding has been quite well done as well.

Overall, I would strongly recommend this story.

(Review as of Chapter 247)

Ahhhh, Azarinth Healer. One of the biggest series on RR. Also one of my favorite (and ex-favorite) series on here. This series is one I would definately recommend everyone try at the very least, but also a series that I've decided to finally drop.

This series used to be my go-to series on RR, the one I'd spend hours binging, then putting it down for a few months only to pick it back to binge it once more. Rhaegar uploads so consistently and so often that I sometimes wonder if he's secretly a robot programmed to write all day everyday (god knows I myself can barely write a few hundred words per day).

But at the same time, after reading almost 500 chapters of this amazing series, I've found myself bored and quite frankly annoyed whilst reading.

In this review, I'll first go over why I gave the rating I gave, and at the end I'll give a more general reason to my rating. Hopefully I won't get bombarded with dislikes because I didn't give this series all 5 stars lol.

1. Style:

Honestly, nothing unique or interesting. Pretty generic, but not bad by any standards. 4 stars because it's solid, but nothing extraordinary.

2. Story:

Story started off quite interesting. We have a fairly generic opening, with our MC Ilea getting isekai'd into a fantasy forest. She gets chased by wolves and drakes and stuff, find the hidden Azarinth temple, and gets her class. Pretty standard stuff. She then finds human town, stuff with elves happen, stuff with the Taleen happens, stuff with Shadow's Hand happens, pretty decent stuff and we get some inkling of some deeper plot with the Golden Lily and that one girl who was also from Earth.

My problem with the story starts with Ilea going to the North. Frankly, the whole shebang with the North could've been good if it weren't for the fact that it got dragged on for so long. I'm not 100% sure how many chapters it took, but I feel like the mini arc where she is clearing that Rose steel dungeon (or whatever it was called) where she meets Elfie dragged on for way too long, with most of the chapters being Ilea just beating up the knights over and over again. The whole North arc felt like a side-quest, honestly, and it was just as I was getting interested in the Golden Lily storyline.

We then spend like a good 100 or 200 chapters going from the North, back down south, then back to the North while barely progressed the Golden Lily storyline, and by the time when we finally get back to it, I've forgotten most of the stuff surrounding them. It honestly just felt like Rhaegar deciding to drag it out for the sake of dragging the story out.

One thing I'll say, though, is that the power ramp is dealt with decently. There is definately some power ramping going on lately, but they were able to keep it in line for the most part.

There's some other stuff that I found irksome, but I will do more in depth later in the review since it's honestly purely my personal opinion.

That said, 3 stars for the story.

3. Grammar:

Nothing special to say about this other than the fact that Rhaegar really need to reread what he wrote and fix the minor spelling mistakes before posting.

4 stars because it happens quite frequently.

4. Character:

Alright, characters. One of the main problems I had with this story lately. Ilea's honestly pretty...bland. Sure, she's got an attitude and is somewhat memorable, but honestly I don't think she has progressed much at all as a character. Her stats go up, but she's still the battlejunkie with an attitude, not much change or character growth in the 500ish chapters I've read. The biggest character "development" she's gone through was when she had a breakdown when she first killed a person, but then she went back to the usual Ilea right after.

The side characters are, in my opinion, much more interesting that Ilea herself, and more "growth" if I'm going to be honest. The problem I have with the "growth" is that it's usually just "Oh Ilea, you're not gonna do XYZ!" becoming "Ermagerd Ilea you're so OP n stuff, and you got good morals!". (Going to talk about the morals stuff later).

2.5 stars because the characters are still super bland even after ~500 chapters.

My personal opinions:

Time to talk about some of the kinks and quirks that really bugged me personally.

First, the biggest thing that put me off lately is all the "morals" and stuff Ilea is enforcing. It honestly just feels like Rhaegar wants to make it so that Ilea is a Good aligned character, but without actually putting too much effort into making her seem that way. Ilea just going around telling people "Torture isn't good" or "Slavery is bad" and all that stuff, which makes perfect sense for us readers who live in the 21st century, but which probably makes no sense to the people in Elos since, you know, they don't exactly have the moral compass of a person living in 21st century Earth. The characters then essentially bend over backwards to accomodate Ilea because "Ilea stronk", and this all just feels like a very cheap way to say "Ilea has good moral compass :)".

I found this especially grating during the seige of Riverwatch, where she goes off about how "slavery bad" then beats up the invaders and makes them promise to abolish slavery. I mean, yes slavery is bad, but like come on. Pretty sure everyone reading this story knows that slavery is in fact bad, we don't need Ilea to tell it to us over and over again. It was especially annoying when the leader of the invaders essentially told Ilea that the slaves weren't captured because of race or whatnot, and frankly had a decent quality of life for a slave. (Think Roman slavery, except a lot more accomodating). So it essentially ends up with Ilea forcing the invaders, which if I'm remembering correctly, was a guy with a title who ruled over a piece of land, getting told to "abolish all slavery and send them off with food n stuff or else", essentially crippling their their economy.

It's this kind of stuff that makes me dislike Ilea, she just don't see the bigger picture when she makes her decisions. Another decision of hers I really hated was when, in the North, Hallowfort was getting attacked by the Feynors and the Dark Ones managed to capture one of the attackers. They were going to torture the captive to get more information, but Ilea just killed the captive and told the Dark Ones "torture bad", without thinking about the fact that, you know, getting information that could win the whole dang war would lead to a lot less deaths?

Like seriously, Ilea seems like some sort of teenager who thinks everything in life is black or white, and that doing the "morally correct" thing (that agree with her own moral compass) is always the right thing to do, no matter the consequences.

Oh, yeah, there aren't consequences because apparently nothing bad ever happens when Ilea does something that's honestly dumb.

Finally, as some of the other reviews have pointed out, this story is honestly getting stale. It's just the same thing over and over again, and with the glacial pace the underlying plot is progressing at, the series has become sort of slice-of-lifey.

Alright, rant/review over. All in all, Azarinth Healer is a solid series and is definately one of the magnum opuses of RoyalRoad, though it is not without flaws.

2021 Update: Grammar has improved.

AH is one of the better stories on RR: it has believable characters, decent worldbuilding, and a decent story. The main issues are grammar, style, and unimportant chapters. The grammar issues have mostly been fixed, though there are still errors from typing too fast, such as missing spaces and random letters being added to words. Proofreading would solve these issues easily. Ilea received most of her character development early on, and stagnated at around chapter 80. Other characters have grown well, especially

The style fluctuates as the author tries different techniques early on, and again at between chapters 120 and 200. Other reviews have asked how non-combat classes level up, it's the same as how Ilea first reached level 10, practice. Finally the main issue I have with AH: the pointless chapters. Some chapters, for whatever reason, have no real content. No character growth, no exploring, no meaningful combat, and so on. They have repeatedly stopped me from reading any further, dropping the story for months at a time until I forget them and can read on. I’d name them, if I could remember them.

I enjoy it but now in much further in I find it harder and harder to relate to Ilea's choices. She's trying to be "good" or what and a bunch of chapters repeat her stances over and over but I find them hollow.

The overarcing story is really interesting. With lots of mystery and fights and more fights.

!!!Spoilers!!!