Wake of the Ravager

It starts off great, the story of a kid from a small town who is desperate to be a wizard in a world where your status and wealth usually determine and limit the abilities you get. It’s a fun and adventurous romp with a bunch of interesting characters travelling through a collection of well-designed cultures that are solidly grounded in the great ability/skill/magic system that the world is run by.

It does have its problems though. Whilst it's funny and enjoyable to read there are times that it gets a bit too silly or ridiculous and the main character really feels like he needs to grow up and stop being an idiot. He needs to mature and demonstrate some character growth as a result of everything he’s done but instead, he still comes across as the dumb kid he was at the start.

It also feels like he has a bit too overpowered with too much plot armour. There is a reasonable basis for the unique advantages he has, he worked for his skills and it’s clear that there are others who are better at him in their specialties who can beat him but it doesn’t feel like he ever really has any significant setbacks.

The magic system the world uses is great, a great balance of abilities and limitations that engage the reader’s interest and forces the characters to work for their advancements. Its structure also clearly reflected in how it's shaped the society the characters live in with clear and logical examples of how those with power (social, economic, military)  use it to increase their personal power (levels skills) and vice versa leading to an interconnected cultural setup that makes sense.

The various different countries and cultures the characters visit feel solid and well-grounded in the world. It’s brilliant and fascinating to see how each of them is logically shaped by the combination of their location and the unique skills that each different nation has developed (and jealously hoard from each other). That said there is an issue in how they relate to each other. Often it feels as though the action of the main character in one country have little bearing in how he behaves and is treated in the next, each location acting as a mild reset on his status, restarting his antics anew in a new place rather than as part of a solid progression from step to step.  

Also of note is the harem relationship that the main character has, whilst the various girls are a collective of unique individuals, each with their own skills and roll in the story, the actual relationship between them, the main character and each other too often feels like it lacks a strong basis in the story. Any difficulties feel as though they are just kind of brushed over off-screen, without any actual thought being put into it, they all just happen to like him with no work. 

Wake of the Ravager is a litRPG with a great system and an interesting setting that starts strong but is eventually dragged down by subpar story decisions and poor characterization.

The basic premise of the story is that a young boy in a village wants to be a wizard despite most wizards being nobles with significantly more resources. The basic magic system is that being in the presence of a lot of death causes a Break, giving an amount of Warp that can be used to improve one's attributes or learn skills. Each successive Break requires more death, so most ordinary people only get two or three. The MC works to learn magic despite this, and becomes involved in ongoing world events.

The story starts off very promising, with the magic system being the main highlight. It had an likeable MC, a good premise, and a decent cast of characters. 

However, as the story goes on the problems start to add up, or to put it differently the same few problems keep hurting the story. 

The first problem is the harem and its associated problems. Put simply, its a terribly done harem. Its written in an incredibly cringeworthy way, the female characters lack any meaningful depth, and the raunchy humor falls flat. The forced harem has led to entire arcs of characters acting unrealistically, and with no offense intended, reads like it is written by an immature teenager.

The second problem is the main character. At some point, the fun and likable MC genuinely interested in studying magic became a psychopathic murder-hobo who alternates between having enemies behave like idiots to make him look good and being convolutedly forced into difficulties, and whose personality is just not fun to read. A well done villanous/anti-hero MC is great to read, but this one just feels weird because he's had no character growth or development since the first arc of the story, and just has his personality adjusted to suit the current plotline.

The magic system is an incredibly interesting one however, and has a lot of unique ideas. Reading the magic system and the evolutions of the build and skills has been the highlight of the story. 

Overall, I would not recommend this story despite it's great magic system.

This novel could have been one of the classics of RR, but the author lost himself.

The story is all over the place.

It feels like the beginning of this novel was written by someone and at one point in time someone else took over and that person is doing a terrible job. 

The only good thing so far are the villains.  

The Mc and his sidekicks are like a bunch of 11 years old kids with super powers disturbing the peace in  the neighborhood.

Dropped at Chapter 77. Here are the main reasons.

1 The System and power progression are boring. I didn't like this style of system at all. (Subjective, perhaps others like it more)

2 Elliot is super duper extremely annoying and even more unfunny. Constantly interrupting, draining tension, and just seeming completely out of place with constant "modern" "jokes" in a medievalish fantasy world. By constant I mean multiple times per page for most of some chapters.

3 Constant romantic/sexual tension for a long time where no progress in their relations are ever made. I felt relatively invested for a bit but then i gave up on it and even later it became annoying. As of  C77 his relationships are both pretty much exactly the same as C20 or C30 with no progress whatsoever. Which wouldnt be a big deal if they were just ignored but their is constant sexual tension and many pages devoted to these girls. 

Overall the story could still be a lot worse. My first point is just my opinion and a lot of people might disagree. The later two can be ignored by a reader willing to spend some effort. There are many good parts in the story too including a great beginning, a good job developing the MC as a character and a decent general plot line so far. 

I really enjoy the storytelling and the comedy. All the situations, the characters, the world. Worth reading or at least trying out. The writing is constantly improving too, with almost no errors or none at all. 

So many of the scenes are vivid without using too many words, the author is very good at that. Despite it being a harem, the characters feel real and unique instead of being 2 dimensional and slot filling.

The characters have only gotten more realistic and enjoyable, same with the storytelling and worldbuilding, it's never felt like too much of one thing. Every chapter has been immensely enjoyable and entertaining. If you were put off by the harem tag, don't be. If his relationship can be called a harem then the word has been done injustice for a millenia.

Started pretty damn well, but it's getting increasingly clear that the author learned NOTHING about proper story structure from his previous works, that all got thrown away when he grew bored.

Throwing "cool concepts" around without having a clear idea of a beginning, transition and end is nothing but an exercise in folly.

You are getting once again close to the breaking point, where you start to find the story stale and decide to flip the table. One of the rare occasions where I feel bad for having used patreon because reinforcing bad behavior is downright criminal. 

Don't try to prove me wrong, you will only drag it out even more and make it miserable for everyone involved. Sit down, write the skeletal structure of a frigging end, and work freely within those parameters. 

Winging it, is not a good strategy. 

I honestly cannot recommend this work knowing that most readers will only feel disappointment after being strung along. 

As typical of many fictions of this genre, started out with interesting character, world building and sets of challenges. Unfortunately, also like many other stories of this genre, quickly devolves into a shounen anime power arc, where the character suddenly gains plot armor and nothing is threatening anymore. Pretty disappointed as it has happened to many stories in the past, will probably check in after a few months to see if storytelling picks up. 

 This started out quite good, first chapter actually made me laugh a bit but I guess it's never good to judge a book by its first few chapters because this spiralled down the toilet so fast I suddenly remembered why I never make it past any if the authors first 20 or so chapters.  

Calvin started out as a likable character, a little weird but in a good way imo, knew what he wanted and actually tried taking steps to get there but as the story progressed I just can't fingale what made me start to dislike the character, maybe it was the constant need for the author to make him everyone's plaything or excuse my French 'little bitch' or the fact that one moment his gritting his teeth in anger and swearing vengeance on the cannibals that devoured his friends and plan to make small chops out of him then the next second his thinking about humping the "somehow' bootylicious cannibal chiefs daughter, how terribly convenient and extremely foolish, but since the author decided that after writing or thinking up the sexy babarian chick and that he wanted a harem but couldn't see anyway to erase the fact that said vixen and her people just wiped out his village and are having his friends for dinner, he decides that a love potion is the way to go. 

 It just feels like the author has no plan and is jumping from idea to idea while trying to force it all to fit. I will say that I did enjoy the magic system, seemed fresh and really makes for some cool synergy.

I was originally going to pull another star for the bait and switch because I thought the author was writing a harem but didn't want to tag it as so for whatever reason but I can see the tags have been updated which further proves that he doesn't really know where this story is going but is following his lower head and whatever his patreon supporters suggest. 

All said it a mediocre tale and hopefully I'll forget about it again soon. Have a nice day. 

Well it was a pleasant read, zany and all, but introducing a human pizza character jumped the shark in my opinion... I ignored the bit at first, but the human pizza keeps reappearing :-( I would otherwise give it a 4 stars for being a fun unserious fantasy/ scifi

There's a lot to like here. The setting is fantastic, it's got one of the most interesting magic systems I've seen to date. I like the central conciet of the plot, there's some genuinely interesting intruige with some hints at the grander picture here and there, enough to keep you curious without giving the game away. The writing itself is for the most part very good, so why do am I so down on this?

Everything good this story does is held back by the fact that the focus is being shifted towards making a harem happen, and the author is letting his desire for powerful women who actually secretly want to be abused warp the story and the characters. Let me make it clear, I have nothing against there being sexual content in a story, I enjoy some good smut as much as the next person, and while harems aren't my personal preference I can deal. But the writing quality dramatically dips from time to time so that the writer can get some of his personal fantasies in, and it's getting worse. From around chapter 75 onwards it's getting incredibly bad, especially focused a particular female character who is at this point the essentially the main character's slave.

I liked this story a lot when it started, but lately every chapter is making me less and less interested in seeing it through to the end. It's a good "anti hero/villan protagonist tries to get obscenely powerful" type story, perhaps even a great one, but it's quickly becoming lost to the author's desire to get off.