Enlightened Empire

First, let me get this out of the way. The story is enjoyable. I've read up to chapter 283 or something, 2 chapters into book 6. That's maybe 2.8k pages and if there was nothing to hook me I would've dropped it ages ago and not after 5 books. That's why the 4.5 stars for the overall score.

However at this point, the story falls so badly, I don't have enough patience nor will to continue with it. There are a bunch of reasons, but first, let me get the good things in order.

Grammar: Impeccable as far as I am concerned, as a non-native speaker. The read was smooth enough and the author was able to get the general feel of the scenes across to the reader properly. Other than a few typos here and there, I've seen no other mistakes. Technically, the story is sound and you won't have to go through the extra effort to read it.

Style: I really like this. The author includes just the perfect amount of povs.Therer are some cliffhangers, and other tricks throughout the books. However, everything is done in moderation and does not take away from the Story.

Ok, now comes the bad. And ooooh boy, there are a lot of bads to be had. This story, is without a doubt, flawed. The author made a note in the story synopsis on how this was his attempt at the kingdom-building genre, and that a lot of other authors don't do it well. Here's my opinion on that after reading 5 books, 

This novel gradually takes all the fun things about kingdom building away, and more and more focuses on mercantile and court politics. If you like kingdom-building, you 'might' like this book. However, there are a lot of better books around. (My opinion only).

Let me explain, as this concerns why I have given the story score only 3.5

Book 0 is nothing about the kingdom building side, and only about trading and escaping. Yes, there is technology developed, but that is a different thing from kingdom building. Related yes, but not equivalent.

Book 1-2 is about hard politicking. No kingdom building to be had.

Book 3 is the start of the kingdom building. But just barely. It focuses a looot more on the war.

Book 4-5 Shows some proper kingdom building. But even in these books, politics take up more than 50% of the story.

All in all, maybe 10-15% Of the total chapters are about proper kingdom building. The rest is not. We get to see the effects of various technological development throughout the whole story and a lot of chapters, but in those chapters, the main focus was something else and the developed tech was only used as a fulcrum at best.

This, in my opinion, is the first place where the story suffers.

Kingdom building here is 'realistic'. It isn't a city simulation like a lot of other stories, as said by mc Corco himself. The process of developing technology is skimmed over, only the conclusion and result is shown. Yet all the nitty-gritty details on what the problems of developing Saniya (the main city of the mc) is shown, a lot.

The MC has knowledge and people. But there are so damn many small minor problems to be tackled before the proper base building can even start is mind-boggling. The reason why I like kingdom building is that I like to see the lives of the oppressed people improve, enemies, getting rekt by superior tech. breaking archaic traditions for modern humanitarianism, etcetera.

This book fulfills all those at the barest minimum. 2.5 pages in and the MC has only developed his own territory and not even the whole thing. All his allies either betray him or are getting betrayed by their other allies. Every time Corco puts the sword or gun down to develop his own territory, every damn possible minor problem crops up at the same time. 

Basically, everytime kingdom building has a chance to properly happen, the author shifts focus away and writes chapters about why kingdom-building realistically is so hard. Followed up by a bunch of chapters about politics, trading. Failure after failure after failure after failure. Some minor victories. Plot armor for a major win. Then the failure galore begins again.

The story 'was' enjoyable. At chapter 283, it is frustrating as fuck to read. All the fun parts of a proper base building series gone, then comes all the not-so-fun parts for a kingdom building novel being highlighted, chapter after chapter because 'realism', in a fiction. I don't want realism if it means a realistic kingdom-building novel will become boring as fuck. What I want is believability. If it isn't realistic, yet is still believable in the context of the whole setting of the story, then that tops a 'realistic' novel any day of the week.

Next, Characters, another avenue this novel suffers in.

Let me start by saying, Corco, the main character, is REALLY unlikable. Because of one reason. HE NEVER FUCKING LEARNS! The author portrays the mc as someone really humanitarian. He plays by all the rules. He wants change but doesn't break a lot of traditions. He is 'fair' to his enemies as he is to his allies. The most major victories he got over his enemies at book 2 would be some good comebacks to their insults. While his allies on the other hand were busy being killed by his dirty playing enemies.

This is how most conflict arcs are set. MC is busy developing his kingdom. A bunch of his allies betrays him in secret. They break all the rules. In the background, new enemies show up. MC is really disadvantaged. His real ally dies to protect him etc. Character development happens. Mc is like, "No more mister nice guy", then proceeds to be the nice guy. Enemies break all the rules in the game possible, mc stubbornly sticks to the rules. More of his people get gutted.

Another character development happens. MC be like, "Ok THIS TIME, no more mister nice guy." then proceeds to be even nicer to his enemies than before. Even if he doesn't proactively help them, his inaction towards threats and his 'fair to everyone' policies, again and again, causes his enemies to gain the upper hand. 

Can you imagine how frustrating it is to read a book where the enemies can break the rules without any consequences, while the MCs main reason to not break the rules is that he is afraid of said consequences?

The MC NEVER learns.

And finally, after all those scenes were set up, and at the onset of the war or conflict with the mc being betrayed, again and again, he STILL WINS. Mostly because of his modern techs.

Most enemies are shown as greedy and incompetent. But they still manage to gravely injure the MCs side because of MCs own actions, yet in the end, they still lose cause they are stupid as fuck. Of course, the author doesn't forget to kill of a few allies of the MC, mostly off-screen (meaning we don't get to see the scene of them dying), to show that the conflict was indeed won with a hard struggle, not with plot armor.

The MC is stupid, his allies are worse. The enemy are ONLY EVER greedy and power-hungry. Mc makes the same mistake over and over, the enemy capitalizes on those mistakes over and over. Yet the MC still wins.

Welp, gonna drop this now. Good luck to the author. But in my opinion, this attempt at kingdom building has been a resounding failure. It's a good novel in the court politics genre, a bad one in kingdom-building.

Can't read anymore just skipped 10ch out of annoyance with Corco once again being unable to do anything better than his brothers, somehow. I'm going to cool off and maybe come back a Continue in like a week, I stopped at "everyone has a plan" so I'm pretty far in.

Style: Amazing to me at least, with a bit cutting down of description and more dialogue would be good though.

Story: really annoying progress of politics and civilization. The overarching plot is fine but the way in which everyone besides Corco's group gets away with doing "bad/ dumb" things is really tiring. I feel like there's zero meaningful consequences for the antagonists and every consequence under the sun for Corco and his tiny kingdom.

Grammar: perfect until some of the later chapters where words are missing.

Characters: MC has flaws that don't seem to develop in a positive way at all. The side characters are in-depth if it's the MC's friends that is. All other characters are just copy-paste, unfortunately. The only redeeming character with difference is the Green king who

I think the overall quality of this story is good but it fails to reward the reader with any meaningful progress and victory, they are all half or quarter victories. This is hard to read through with painful lengths of 40-50ch of brutal defeat and then one insignificant reward from a victory. I will continue to read as it still has engaging plots and stories I just wish it could feel like the MC got more than a conciliatory win that overall means little. Kind of agree with Kenoby's failure porn comment.

It's well written, and I didn't have any issues with grammar. I do like the premise of the story, and the MC who uses their brains to overcome their obstacles. I am very curious what other modern knowledge the author is going to use obtain an advantage. Maybe mass production method of steel, or crucible steel? Using lead in glass production to make crystal glass? Or perhaps make guncotton? dynomite? There's a lot of cool things he can do.

Ice cream!

War is used to drive the technological progress of this story. And it just never ends. It doesn't leave you with desire to know what happens next.

We never really get to experience anything exciting about this new world. Nothing about cultivation, magic, flora and fauna, etc. 

The story is good. Royal road good.

This story is incredible with its positives and negatives. I might take some personal bias of the score here as I might give the story higher grade than what I might say about the story. I've read up to latest chapter on Patreon chapter 374. But in the beginning I struggled to like the story it took me twice just to read it, eventually hook it me. I binge read it for 4 days straight. I give the story overall score 4.

Grammar: As far from reading from royalroad and Patreon other than minor typos and spacing of some words that made me bit annoyed, it was great. The author expresses general direction of the story from each scene and you won't have the effort reading.

Style: The story is moderate pace of different character perspectives for what’s going on the story. Giving a nice pace of general effects without losing interest about characters. What story lacks was the pace of time, given not exact years, months, or days on the timeline is quite annoying sometimes given vague details on how much time has passed between each scene.

Story: Overall the story is a face pace political story of gaining power through the use of modern tech and ideology with hints of cultivation. It might me being nitpicking. To me the author does bare minimum at the notion of “kingdom building” we failed to see the interaction of the effects of what the kingdom does to itself and rest of the world. Where we only see the results not the journey that people face as technology gets better. Where is the struggle of finding new tech and how hard it might take to create said tech. The perspective of the commoners, warriors, and nobles are barely explained on how they feel about them from mathematics, chemistry, medicine/biology, engineering, etc on daily there lives. Then the darker side of society are never shown for people on how they might try to exploit the new system the Mc has created. These important “details” are glossed over course of the story for more interaction of the main and side characters in the political and merchant side. The author does eventually includes some of these elements as story continues but it’s way later. The political side of the story was in depth on the struggles of creating a new society with old trying to stay in power and what one might face against towards being “realistic”.

Spoilers

Character: Next the characters.

Main

The main characters is a flawed man that’s combination of his two personalities the young faithful prince and semi-knowledgeable modern man both naive while trying to keep “fair” character in a greedy world. He’s too nice towards people especially those he consider family. Many times before it’s been explained that he will no longer be the nice guy but it’s been shown that he never really punish the actions of greedy and power hungry men as he loses another ally in the struggle of power. It been shown before of his Isekai knowledge towards his cast but no interaction is explored on how they feel about it, always glossed over.

Side

As for side characters. They been used for multiple of different ways without losing interest with using small stories and there general feel towards the Mc and rest of the world as they change. Of course making it harder for new characters to be introduced. The small stories I have mostly liked and few disliked. While some characters forgotten.

The romantic interest did annoyed me on how she acted in the story to the point of dislike. Eventually I got use how the character acted and loved her interaction with the Mc on how they supported each other.

Enemies

Enemies in the story feel like cartoon villains always coming back to bite you in the ass. Though it show how “realistic” the world is former allies become enemies former enemies being ally towards some time. While each opponent develop as person presenting new problems to be faced while others stay the same being dumb and incompetent for the sake of pride for short term benefits never seeing the bigger picture of long term. I do hope they defeat some these enemies eventually since there first appearance.

Reminds me more of a BAEN Books novel than something on Royal Road.

Strengths: Well crafted and sympathetic characters that aren't cliches or overdone. Good worldbuilding with distinct cultures and realistic human behaviour. An engaging plot that doesn't pander to the main character. 

Flaws: A lack of foreshadowing and exposition makes some events seem to come from nowhere. Very important characters, laws or rituals just appear without any real context. For a hyper realistic novel such as ths one, the main character's immunity and complete indifference to assination is a little offputting. Assasins seem to have been made completly inept to make up for the lack of MC powers. Especially considering the existence of low powered superhumans that could kill the MC with a single punch or arrow. The existence of said cultivators is also a little odd and underdeveloped.

An interesting read. Excited to see where it goes. 

Ill first state that this story is one of the best kingdom building stories on royalroad, for quite good reasons. The author has put a lot of effort into creating this story. However its not perfect and i rather really wanted to like this story more, but alas.

Corcopaca Titu Primu Pluritac, rather known as Corco, is a prince of the faraway lands of Medala, who has been exiled out of the empire to Arcavia, the land where his ancestors once came from, before they fled,  Corco finds himself lost, with no purpose, with barely any followers who went with him in his exile. Then one day, when he has lost all hope, Corco suddenly finds himself awakening with strange memories, of a foreign world called Earth, of fundamental knowledge about many major concepts, that could change civilization forever. Armed with that knowledge, Corco finds a new goal, to change his nation for the better, and eventually the world at large, but such knowledge does not suddenly make everything easy, for there are many obstacles in his path.

I rather like him as a character, even if he is by no means perfect. He is a person who honestly wants to change the livihood of his people, and even the world at large with the knowledge he got from another world. While he may have such knowledge, that does not make him overpowered, it just puts him ahead of everyone in that aspect, he still has to actively use that knowledge to his advantage, and is not afraid of sharing specific technologies as long as it does benefit him and will not backfire, Corco is also rather a traditionalist, who respects the old traditions, but is not afraid of breaking them, if they are in the way of his plans for the betterment of society. There are his many followers, some of which do follow him out of loyalty, others because of what he could achieve. Even if i like quite some of them as a character, still i feel like they could have done better, some of them fall rather flat, i just dont know why.

While Corco is set up to win, in the plot so far, it hasnt been made easy for him, with him having many enemies that he must defeat or outsmart, and at times, things take a rather unexpected turn, forcing him to change some plans. As said, im liking the fact that even through Corco has all that knowledge, it does not make him infallible at all. A decision that i like, is to make the MC not reincarnated at all, but rather a native of the world, that got the memories of a dead person of earth, this rather improves the story by leaving much of the problems that generally come with Isekai stories out of the story.

The world is simply the best part about this story, its so detailed and thought out, there are a lot of cultures and nations that are very well developed and done realistically as much as possible. Though at times i wish that some nations and cultures got explored already, but there is no doubt, that the author has plans to eventually get to those.  This story also does have cultivation elements, but they are a rather minor thing, not overwhelming like in many cultivation stories one can find, cultivators are for sure strong, but are not invicible at all, and quite costly to maintain.

The author has put a lot of research in the required topics for this story, for the MC's 'discoveries' to make actual sense. Though at times, it can be seen that the knowledge the author has gathered about those topics, is not perfect, and that does seriously show itself at times, but i consider this a rather minor issue, though it still could be improved.

Grammar is overall good enough, with there being just few errors, which are puncuation errors, wrong capitalization, missing spaces at times, all those dont feel like actual problems, but there is also the fact that at times, i felt like a sentence could have been worded better. Normally a reader should not have any problems while reading this story, since those mistakes barely do bother the reading experience.

Overall the author has a readable writing style, that does its job quite well, with a good balance of story elements. I also have barely any complaints about the pace of this story so far, its a kingdom building one, the slow pace fits well with that.

However there are sadly some major problems with it, the writing barely did hook me at all in the start, maybe this is due to me not being that interested in kingdom building, even if its one of the genre's i read. This is a big problem with book 0 and a major part of book 1, with to a lesser degree the later ones. This does not help the story at all with attracting new readers considering many want to get hooked instantly.

To add on this, book 0 is rather a additional book that the author wrote later in when he was writing book 2-3, its not fully required to read it, but it could still give a introduction to the story, even if it does not have much ongoing in it.

Overall, this is for sure a very good kingdom building story, i recommend people to atleast give it a try even if it can be boring at times. For fans of kingdom building however, they should just start reading this story, its exactly the kind of story that they want, with a normal MC.

Because of COVID-19, I've been scouring the web for noteworthy and interesting stories: I'm happy to have stumbled across this one. Englightend Empire presents an interesting twist on isekai and most epic stories by focusing on the politics and economics of a story as much as the military and cultivation. There is no excessively overpowered main character and the author presents a somewhat balanced view of relatively new military technology. As an economist, I also appreciate the author's attempt at incorporating economic policymaking into a story when few do because of the difficulty. 

In short, I'm a massive fan of this story, so much so that I've read all 255 chapters in the last three days (rip productivity). Please keep up the good work! I wish the story will encourage other authors to similarly give as much importance to the economics and politics as the military and shinny weapons. 

I honestly root for the MC but at some point I kinda gave up because this author has a sadistic streak. Same recurring trope of annoying merchants and nobles that ruin all plans. The naive MC spouts mutual interest at every turn, but there is only one character template - selfish and greed. You should've stuck with Raven and the Snake as the title instead of the enlighted empire because its literally one enlightened MC + a couple followers.

Story is basically 300 chapters of failure porn. First he fails in Arcavia because of pestering merchants and nobles. Then he fails the succession because of great granddaddy. To top it all off, he loses all composure and charges into the front line and still doesn't kill the duke that chased him across an entire sea. Each book never get a satisifying end.

The only redeeming factor is the grammar and the cultivation intrigue.

After binge reading it again( more like speed reading actually), I forgot how this novel reminds me of Chinese novels where everyone and their mother disses the MC. But unlike those novels, here the MC just grits his teeth and accepts it like a dimwit. He keeps talking that he'll make an empire of renown but lacks the spine to, at the very least diss back at his conspirators. 

If I wanted political drama I would've watched a congressional hearing on the internet. I'm again reminded of why I dropped this one in the past. I came to read for kingdom building, inventions and action. Sadly this novel has far and few between any of them.