Second Chances

Story has a lot of potential, and I really want to rate it higher, but the author uses a ton of info-dumping for world-building. 

It starts off with a strong emotional introduction that is followed up by several chapters of world-building and developing the future background of the MC. Unfortunately, even after the initial chapters dedicated to explaining the world, there are excessive paragraphs of info-dumping.  It is fine at first, because what new author webnovel doesn't have an early info-dump? 

However for anyone who likes to binge a good story, it becomes hard to process and absorb so much information at once (even if it is nicely put in a blue box). A concern of mine would be how dumping so much info at once will turn off any new readers if the trend continues. Most readers don't come to Royalroad to read textbooks. Even the relevant information becomes stressful to process. 

FOR THE PROS THOUGH; Interspersed between the paragraphs is a wonderfully innovative story involving pantheons and foreshadowing a clash between different mythos. Upon processing the large amounts of knowledge thrown at you, you see a wonderful and interesting world to explore. 

Holy cow. This is pretty good, and I was not expecting it. Not from that synopsis. Something that should be noted is the story borrows heavily from mythology, pretty sure Celtic? Germanic? It mainly focuses on the fae (specifically the sidhe) but there are Greek and Norse antagonists included as well.

STYLE: Pretty sure its all first person. Told from the eyes of our MC ( who's name I cant remember. I'm sleepy. Pretty sure its Mac Du Belenos now. Might have misspelled it). No P.O.V. changes have happened or interludes (thank god)

STORY: This is where the score suffered a bit. As I said earlier, this draws heavy from mythology. It's also a litrpg. And unfortunately, in my opinion, this story suffers from being a litrpg. It's like looking at what could be a great story and then noticing it still has training wheels on. Theres something about the status boxes acting as a hard magic system that didn't really mesh well with the vague soft magic like themes of the wild hunt, the summerlands, or the sidhe in general. Because there are moments when magic is unexplained in this story, and those are just more enjoyable. But it could be personal bias.

I would also say that there isnt enough weight in this story. Things happen, but it feels as if it's kind of told matter of factly. What I mean is, I  the latest chapter The Wild Hunt was called forth. And the author did a good job describing it, but that was pretty much it. This is a major turning point in the story involving betrayal, fighting for survival, and facing your fears/ challenges head on (nobody thought it would be that convoluted, but nobody thought he was going to a simple banquet either). And yet, for such a momentous part of the story, it feels flat. Where is that gut punch of fear? The righteous fury? The grim resolve to call forth one of the most terrifying magic in fae lore, The Wild Hunt. Where is the weight of battle, where the 8 lb. blade (guesstimate. I have no idea how heavy it is) feels like its 80 lbs. The exertion of giving it your all to overcome your obstacles. 

Something I really like about the story, yet we havent had the chance to explore, is how a magical society is more advanced than ours. I really like this concept and wish we could explore the world more. What kinds of weapons do the fae use? Iron? Why swords, and not some magical gun or something better? A wand that shoots laser beams or something. Why are there so few princes and kings and queens if all you need is exp? After all, the sidhe may as well be immortal for all intents and purposes. 

GRAMMAR: You get a perfect score from me. I didn't notice anything wrong. 

CHARACTER: This suffered a bit too. The MC doesnt really seem to have any growth. He went from a 700 lb. depressed slob to this reincarnated handsome, confident, charismatic sidhe prince. And it truly seems like he's shed his past life behind. Wish that could have been tied into the story better. Wish events shaped him into the man hes become rather than the system. Feels like a missed opportunity for me. Also, the antagonists suck and are extremely cliche. Each one has been the pettiest, most cliche villain that explains their plans right before the MC kills them. Like wtf..... make the MC work for something, whether its self discovery or trying to figure out who means him harm. It's boring when everything is served up to our MC on a silver platter.

Conclusion: I mostly focused on the negatives in this review. Dont let that give you the wrong idea. I really like this story. It is a MUST READ. Seriously, lotta garbage in royalroad. But it will leave you wanting. Theres just too many times you'll go "that's it?" The action is not gripping, the politics feel flat, the antagonists seem two dimensional. But I love mythology. I love the racial stereotypes. I love the logic of magic causing a society to flourish, not stagnate. And ultimately, only a few days have passed in the story. It's hard to get all this shit crammed into a few days. 

To the author: The benefit of a webnovel is you're not confined to a page count. You can drag shit out. Besides the aforementioned "weight" and litrpg, and missed character growth, I would recommend dragging this story out a bit. Dont get me wrong, it's not the way to write a novel. But then you can world build properly. And then in the rewrite you can condense it. Then condense it again and again until you get to a point where you're building a world and progressing the plot and growing characters at the same time.

I'm sleepy now, night y'all

hello , i like this novel, it's really good especially for a first novel,  the only that stopped me from giving a 5 rate star , are some "incosistences" about the mc background and his actions (the killing etc) , Do you think that a fat guy who was abused  is actually a  killer machine without conscience? i'm pretty sure that being abused doesn't necessarily mean that someone is going to turn into a sociopath, then there is the calm when killing , on in general dangerous actions(I  a normal, would piss miself probably), does it sound like the attitude of a fat guy who was abused?? nope  to me , it sound like the punisher, a member of cosa nostra, a veteran soldier (from what i have read on quora xD , most new soldier tend to avoid killing) . So this kind of attitude is the only turn off for me, but only because of his background, in general i actually like cold mc. Anyway aside from that it's a cool read.

P.s author, like i have said to  others, you can't please every reader, unfortunately there is alwais going to be someone who doesnt like (the novel) or rage about something you did on the novel. Such is life, i hate harr. P.tter series (for example). anyway good job, and  I WANNA MOARR.

Edit: a good way to put it , is that i don't like  the mc background, it's kind of pathetic.and a big turn off. 

edit:the  author will do a rewrite later , so kinda of thought of giving him full stars.

As of chapter 23 - 

The gods "author" can indeed be fickle. This is a review as of the point that almost made me give up this novel. I am not sure if I will continue from here however it was great up to this point. The nerf nuke was pulled out and managed to nerf both the MC and the novel. 

The MC is presented as a person that made certain choices in his previous life and was led into the situation he starts. Mainly, good person that did god things regardless of what happened to him. This is presented differently when the nuke is going off. Also, the way the nerf happens is just so out of nowhere that it makes no sense. Finally, the nerf completely alters the story in a way that goes from OP to UP in seconds. Even after reading the reasoning it leaves the reader with a bad experience that is made worse by the lasting effects. 

Below I will go into my thoughts on what happened to help understand what happened. Spoilers included. 

I wanted to like this story because it has a very nice take on re-incarnation and as an unusual race at that. I have two big issues with it though:

• A good story follows the show don't tell principle. This one has so much information being dumped that by chapter 10 the story hasn't advanced more than an hour or so from the re-incarnation. Even when action should be happening there's more talking than anything else.
• I dislike the dialog style. It consistently spans multiple line breaks and just feels rambling. Hypocritical coming from me, I know, but takes one to know one.

FYI: landed here due a link from the Delve by .

 Very cool.

Will make a proper review later.

My brother suggested I read this one.

I'm glad he did, I'm enjoying it.

There isn't anything earth-shattering new, in this story.  But it is written well.

I think my favorite part has to be with the races and world development.  I like that humans don't really exist on this world, but there seem to be a bunch of races that hopefully will make for some interesting story lines.

Not a bad read.

I don't know much about Sidhe, but I actually hit up wiki a few times because of this story.  Wanted to know if any of the names were real.  Seemed since the Greek Gods were based on myth, the Sidhe might too.

There have been a few slow bits.  But the pace has been pretty good.  If you sit down and read it from chapter 1 to chapter 21 like I just did, it reads great.

All I will say is read it. No reason not to it's a great book and it's free so what are you still waiting for go on get start reading..... Are you still here I said get reading ! 

As of the moment of writing this, which is 15 chapters.

I have been thoroughly enjoying the available content as much as I can. 

Although the concept used is in no way an original, I feel that it is still being used in a way that won't tire the readers (or me at least) unless you end up doing very specific things to your story.

Examples of this would be either Kingdom-building which isn't cut out for everyone, or stray too far from the story. (An example would be Skyrim, with mods and side quests. Let's face it, who does the main story until you're way too strong for it anyways?)

I look forward to more content, and hopefully to increase my rating.

Kalari