Sand and Legends

Sand and Legends is a story that knows what it is, something that seems rather rare for RR. While the story so far is not a complex web of intrigue and subterfuge it is a fun romp that echos themes of old westerns and nameless gunslingers; Perhaps most importantly the story seems to have goals and progression in mind for it rather than spinning tires like many stories seem to do, which earns its fifth star.

Of its sins, I'd say that its characters all seem to be archtypes rather than full people, characterization is frequent but seems to have an almost aetherical tone to it. The species that composes near all characters but the MC are explicitly magical as is the setting in general, leaving the story with a frequent use of strange vocabulary and unknown concepts. Readers may find that a glossary or codex to expand the lore of the world to be appreciated, but otherwise doesn't detract from the story itself.

The story indeed is rather simple, especially in comparison to the fantastical nature of the worldbuilding. Probably for the best as readers have much to keep in mind already. I'd not see much issue saving much complexity for sequels or other stories set in the universe.

I'd like to congratulate Akaso on making it into my RSS feed reader.

This story draws from classic western archetypes - the stranger wandering into town beset by bandits, a man with no name and no past taking up the defense of innocents.  These are the staples of half a hundred movies, but I can't recall seeing one yet where Clint Eastwood's role was played by a millennia-old purple-glowing metallic skeleton with a gun for an arm.  The reader is tossed into the thick of a strange, vibrant world along with the protagonist, and for all that it's strange and alien we have these familiar roles to keep us grounded.

Then, slowly, things begin to build.  Flashes of a shrouded past begin to peek through, hints of tragic eons that we begin to understand as the protagonist himself does.  Through it all we're presented with armies of reality-warping lizard-people, giant mechs, pit fights, excessive stimulant consumption and more ancient technology than you can shake a livingmetal stick at - with the fantastic visual descriptions of all these further helped along by the excellent art included with the story.

If you like classic westerns or wandering ronin stories, read this.  If you like tragic heroes and tortured souls, read this.  If you like epic fight scenes, snappy one-liners, inspiring speeches, moustache-twirling villains, hidden mysteries...

You know what, just read it.  

Well, basically a very interesting cyborg without an arm and memories get sent to a weird undeveloped planet (when compared to the technology he uses). 

Searches for repair stuff, meets a lizard, and well then you get action... Handy aliens, red and gold eyes... This seems that's going to be a cool cyberpunk and oldie west ride... Somehow. 

Awaiting to see were it goes. 

Very well writen, great world building and a gun armed robot! Give this book a "shot!"  

Personally, I quite like guns. This story has quite the big gun, and while it's no BFG, its quite the powerful pew pew. Now if you're like me, and like big guns, read this story. It's free.

I do believe, however, that a vast majority of the MC's dialogue could be replaced by the ever immortal words of comic doom guy: "Death surrounds me, yet, in my head, I hear something that sounds like angels. LO, I have found the Holy Grail of Firepower! My eyes can but weep as they bear witness to the Majesty... The BFG 9000!"

Overall good shit mate :)

Really nice story! The plot hooks you well and keeps you going with a rugged and action-packed story. The lore is quite interesting as well, and I'm really eager to see where it will take us.

I really love our protagonist, Armless. Something about a hulking, mechanical chimera with a massive swiss-army gun for an arm strikes me as totally badass and awesome, and I loved reading every detail about his amalgamated form. On that note, the writing style is fantastic. Almost everything is described exceedingly well with great word variety and sentence structure, and I think it's definitely the strongest aspect of this story. I was highly impressed by it.

The following portion of the review (in italics) was written before the author fixed several problems with the grammar. It has improved quite a bit and I have changed my star rating to signify that.

However, it is unfortunately marred by several minor issues with the grammar that are prevalent in the first handful of chapters. Sometimes I had to reread the occasional sentence because the wording didn't quite flow right, and I noticed a few typos, missing periods, double spaces, and sentences where adding a word or punctuation mark would have helped the flow quite a bit. There were also a few sudden perspective shifts which caught me off guard due to somewhat ambiguous pronoun usage (for example, switching from a male perspective to another male, while still using the same he/him/his pronouns without any other indication that the perspective had changed), and the introduction of Rika tripped me up a bit since her name was suddenly dropped without Armless having any prior knowledge of it.

It's still very readable, by all means, and it does improve over time; by chapter 5, the level of polish has very noticeably increased. But it was still kind of distracting during the early chapters (the most important ones, to help hook readers!), and could be improved greatly with a bit of extra editing.

That said, I'm still certainly a fan of Sand and Legends. The story, worldbuilding, and characters are all there in droves, and I would definitely recommend it.