Within The Soul: Supremacy

I read the first few reviews that talk about extremely slow start that is kind of tedious and how it gets better. I have to say it's not nearly as bad as they described.

It's a slow burner cultivation novel for sure and the grammar and style at the start are atrocious - that's mainly the reason I thought about giving you less then four stars, but it really got better.

Now about the novel as such. Your style of writing could improve, mainly the switching to first person present tense at the beginning was really bad. If you have time, rewrite those sections to the third person past tense you're using and the whole prologue "mini-arc" will get much better.

I have gotten to chapter 27 in one sitting and I have to say it's exactly as I imagined it would go. That's great. Please do not introduce sinister background conspiracies into your story and keep it light as it is.

The MC is the many times tried and someties atrociously butchered trope of reincarnated scientist (you probably read the "age of adepts" or "warlock of the magus world" or the novel that they are derived from that I forgot the name of) and in your case seems to be done very competently. Mainly the use of knowledge of our world in the cultivation techniques.

You made the MC lean more to the OP side, but still not badly so. That reminds me! Please when rewriting the earlier chapters, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD make the MC use inner monologue instead of talking to himself. It's really immersion breaking.

Oh and in the scenes where he is taken away from the home he reincarnated into - use some exposition to explain a little bit more. You probably tried to express the disorienting feeling the hero was living through after the reincarnation, but in the process managed to disorient the reader as well. I had to reread the pasage three or four times to make sure I had not missed anything.

What threw me off was especially the use of doctors name out of nowhere without context just before the beginning of the journey. It gives the feeling you should know what is going on and I had to reread the passages t make sure it was not mentioned somewhere I just skimmed over.

Otherwise it just keep doing what you're doing. It's the right direction. It's positively light and has the slice of life feel of azarinth healer. I'm reqally anticipating what you could write down the line, as it seems you have a few plot threads unraveled that hint at large scale of the story :)

This review is written at chapter twenty and is also one of my first reviews.

The grammar starts off bad but gets progressively better as chapters come in. As of chapter twenty, I only notice around three errors a chapter, and for the word count that is in each chapter that is pretty good even if it means there is room for improvement.

As for the story, there is one glaring problem. The prologue is too long. When I say prologue I mean chapters zero through three, all four of which serve as a glorified prologue. I won't go into details but all of these chapters serve to introduce the story. This wouldn't be a problem if there was more dialogue, but it is just thoughts and scenes, no real character interaction. Maybe this would work if it were a book, but the average Royalroad user doesn't want to get into a story with a prologue that long, I only got through it because I was particularly bored and the synopsis interested me. It's probably why such a great story has so few readers, the first few chapters act as a filter.

Though its really up to the author, I would say to fix this it needs to be rewritten or skipped entirely. After all it is perfectly valid to start where the story starts and should even be encouraged, the prologue only serves to set the stage.

My only other gripe with this novel isn't that big a problem, but more a direction that would make me personally like the novel more. While there is plenty of character interaction, I feel that the novel would be better if more permanent character interaction is added. What I mean by this is to have a character that stays with the character and isn't killed off or removed after a few chapters. Again, not a major problem, especially because the chapter count is only at twenty.

As for the character score, I have no problems giving five stars, they are all portrayed three-dimensionally, every interaction seems realistic and does really good to show how different the culture is for a xianxia.

Finally, style. From what I understand style is two things, the ability of the writer to keep the reader engaged, and the ability to convey the message, which in this case is a story. Besides the prologue, which I won't judge simply because of how much better everything got, both of these are accomplished, each chapter reveals something new and surprising, with perfect pacing.

This novel is great. I love the MC. The author shaped his personality well. Great world build-up on what shown and what are mysteries to discover. The only flaw for me of this novel which some may not consider a flaw is that this novel's pace is too slow. 30 chapters already without anything big happening. For a normal story it would be ok but for a xianxia. It would be a big X

As with most transmigration stories, this one starts slow and confusing. Once we are past the shaky beginning, things start to pick up.
The characters are believable, with understandable motivations.
The world building is not particularly original but clearly thought out.
Those that like Cultivation stories should definitely give it a try.

My only worry is the signs of power creep, while not immediately relevant to this story, it is a valid concern in any story in the genre.
Overall a Good Cultivation story bogged by transmigration start.

i binge read the first 28 chapters.

i really liked the story so far.

i hope you can make the complex plotline hints blossom, if yo can this will end up being a great novel instead of just having great potential

The story is quite interesting and is a huge factor in motivating me further. Not to mention, I am not a big fan of cultivation yet I find this book is rather intriguing even with its flaws.

Style and Grammar

While the author does his best to interweave info dumps in his writing as subtly as possible, they don't do well in this regard. The narration, on the other hand, is quite good along with the decent amount of description the author gives. However, I have to say, the MC's thoughts and feelings are conveyed too directly and blandly add this to the occasional misuse or absence of punctuations, the writing becomes jarring at times - yet, if one rereads it once or twice, the author's intentions and what he means to say become more clear and hence, understandable. 

Story and Characters

The story and the concept of science and cultivation coming together had hooked me in the start. This is something that fascinates me, put it together with the logical and slow pacing - which suits my taste - I really like the story. 

Although the character interactions are largely between the MC and temporary characters, all of them are made quite distinct and not mere filaments of imagination. I especially like the MC, maybe because he resembles me in certain ways, but he is quite agreeable and rather fun to read about. 

 

Overall, if one bars the grammar and the style, this is a great book.

 

 

So. I would like to start this review by saying I don't like cultivation novels, but even I was drawn in by the world building and excellent characters that show a lot of three dimensional characterization. The TLDR is read this one it is really good. Now onto the more in-depth review...

 

Style:  5 out of 5, very good, the writing has just enough flair to keep me interested, personally I like more descriptions but I understand that I am in the minority their lol, all in all a good balance of detail and fast paced description, quite good.

Story: 5 out of 5, it really is quite good, I can't say I have read many books of this genre, but I highly doubt many of them have a futuristic physicist as the main character, and I find it refreshing to have a mc who actually thinks instead of simply flexing their Mc muscles.

Grammar: 4 out of 5 this is the biggest downside of the book so far, the first few chapters are a little rough but as the book goes on they get much better, I think the author is doing a wonderful job especially when English is not his first language, keep up the good work.

Characters: and now we get to the highlight of the story, the characters. Each and everyone is fleshed out to an amazing degree, honestly I find it amazing that this is a debut novel, I am subscribed so keep it coming lol I will be reading it!

Good promise so far, interesting story and whilst familiar to a number of other reincarnation / cultivation stories its different enought to to be well worth the time taken to read.

 

The style felt staccato at parts, I think, due to sentence constructions. The grammar is ok overall; it’s understandable and the few mistakes don’t detract too much from reading fluidity. Most of the mistakes are just proofreading ones. For example, semi-colons in run-on sentences, commas in complex sentences, proper consistent capitalization, and spelling (one example: chapter two, dismay instead of dismal.) The verb tenses are also sometimes off at times (again, using chapter two as example, touched instead of touch). A proofreader can help you with this fine-tuning. As the chapters progress, the mistakes do decrease. Also, the improvement can be visually seen, at least, with the capitalization.

 

I actually missed the science fiction aspect in the beginning of the story. Maybe it’s because I’ve read too many cultivation stories, but I was hoping for something different. Of course, in the synopsis it was explained that this would happen, but after reading those chapters, I felt like you could’ve made a good sci-fic story. The scientific connection to cultivation elements was different from usual though, so that was nice. But in the beginning, the cultivation explanations were a little long.

 

I’m not sure what to make of Matthew/Aleran. If one were to ask me to describe him using adjectives, I would be rather stuck. The only word that comes to mind would be ‘excitable’. But that description would be applicable to basically all of the characters. So, a little more distinctiveness to characters could be added.

 

The action scenes are described in depth. They may be a little long to some. But like the general writing style of this story, there is a good amount of detail to every action. For those that like cultivation stories and don’t mind a slower pace, then they will like this story. Aleran’s encounters with various creatures, for example, were well described and made one immersed in the world; however, to some, this might be too much roaming around. Actually, if anything real significant was lacking from this story, it would be some kind of end-goal or purpose. It doesn’t have to the ultimate goal, but something for the near future, like a plan to go somewhere, to be of a certain strength, to beat someone, join a cause, etc. And I don’t mean by state of circumstances that this happens, but that the MC would choose and plan it on his own. Still, by the end of 21 chapters, it feels like we’re inching closer to that “something.”

This is a hard one for me to rate. A couple people have noted here that the beginning is tedious to say the least. I have a little bit more of a problem with the start than most. It takes 12 chapters to really get up and running. That is way, WAY too long.

The most important piece of a xianxia for me is the characters, specifically the MC and this MC, after the 12 chapter slog, really stands out. He is inquisitive, driven, and constantly fighting adversity. He does not mope or pout about his shitty circumstances overmuch and his path to power has proceded at a generous clip (again after the initial 12 chapter yawnfest).

Assuming you can stand the beginning and get into the meat of the story, it is worth taking a look at (I would almost recomend skipping to chapter 8 or 9).