The Runesmith

I like the protagonist well enough and the story is interesting.
There is a clear progression path and a clear goal defined.

Events happening are interesting and mostly add something to the story.

However, the writing style started out well enough but gradually turns horrible. The sheer amount of overexplanation makes it a pain to read. Every action taken by any character is described in atleast 2 sentences with different wording for it then to be explained as to why they did it. It feels like it is written for a ten year old.

Chapters can be cut by 50% and nothing will be missed. I started skimming the last few chapters and skipped a few parts and I missed nothing of note. It is starting to feel like "Blood Warlock: Succubus partner in the Apocalypse". It's writing also started out well enough but gradually everything gets explained atleast twice and every small piece of information is pretty much reiterated every 2 chapters.

Pros: interesting world building, interesting power set for the mc, interesting side characters, a number of interesting goals yet to achieve.

Cons: far too much filler, extremely slow story progression, when the mc is crafting it is extremely boring, long winded & the mc has no pride in his work, there are far to many coincidences surrounding the mc

First, let me say that everything in this review is subjective to my point of view. It is only an opinion and notes my reactions to reading the story. This review is not an attempt to belittle the author, the effort in writing, or the tale. I rate on a scale of 2.5 to 3.0 being average, 0.5 being as bad as possible, and 5.0 being perfect.

Grammar: The first 150 chapters are worse than the rest of the story. The errors are a large portion of the problem, but the syntax used is odd. It was not strange in a good way but in a head-scratching way that made me wonder what the story was describing. The last portion of the story was mostly clear, with little interpretation required and moderate to frequent grammatical mistakes. The first 3/4 of the tale was legible with moderate evaluation and numerous grammatical errors. I would rate the first part at 1.5 stars and 2.5 stars for the last section; this gives a two-star rating for this part of the review.

Style: There isn't just one style; the style shifts and changes over time, with a few things primarily set in stone. One of the things that made this a slog for me to read at times was the lack of continuity, consistency, and plausibility.
Consistency is the worst of the three. The story would give you a piece of information, and sometimes, as fast as later that same chapter, you would find it had changed. The changes were a frequent issue for non-system-related items such as finance and resources garnered.
Verisimilitude was the second most common issue of the three. The world-building was too complex without enough thought put into the ramifications. It combined Medieval, Renaissance, and Industrial era societies and technologies into a hodgepodge culture with what I viewed as casual misogyny. Initially, the culture treated women with the inappropriate attitudes of the Industrial era pre-egalitarian movements. Later in the story, this changes to a more equitable stance but is still tilted towards males. It is a justifiable part of the world, but I don't have to like it.
Continuity was a minor issue as some salient aspects of the story would be changed in later chapters. The matter might be from the author not following an outline. It could also be not keeping notes on a vast number of small details.
My personal preferences do not fall under the styles used. Combined with the previously mentioned problems, this gives me a rating of 1.5 stars for style.

Story: The story is where this tale shines for me. The overarching plot is one that I identify with easily. It scratches the itch for adventure and exploring a new system. It also focuses on crafting to a large degree. That is something else that I like reading a lot. Even when I don't necessarily agree with the specifics, it is always intriguing to me. As a result, the rating for this category is four stars. It is well above average for my tastes.

Character: I am not a character fiction enthusiast, and thus my requirements for this category are significantly less stringent than someone who is. The main character acts within a prescribed set of personality traits that do not change at a whim. He does change throughout the story as time passes. The minor characters that show up but don't have much influence are somewhat wooden, but that is something I expect. The bit characters are more detailed than the minor characters and start to feel more realistic. The side characters feel like their own persons if a bit shallow at times. Even with the generally positive opinion, there is still room for improvement. When added together, a rating of 3.5 stars for this section is appropriate from my perspective.

Overall: My reading style emphasizes grammar, style, and personal enjoyment. While I enjoyed the storyline and the characters, these priorities determined how much I appreciated the story. There were several times that I wanted to give up reading it. I did manage to complete the current list of chapters. An average of the four categories give a rating of 2.75 and a weighted rating of 2.0 stars. I enjoyed it enough to finish what was available, but I am finished for now. I may revisit this story in the future.

Context:  I picked this one up after Magic Smithing went on hiatus and really enjoyed the series for almost the first hundred chapters.  The story started stalling badly, so I set it aside and just came back to it but will be dropping it.  The story just kind of stopped.  None of the plot points are addressed any longer and every chapter feels like filler. 

Overall: The story starts out strong with a good mix of action and crafting.  There are also several sub plots and side characters that make things interesting.  After chapter 100 though this all stops.  There are some mentions of key plot points and some foreshadowing, but they are never addressed again.  This story feels a lot like the author had a great idea and lost his way at some point. 

Style:  I got nothing for this.  The writing style starts out keeping the reader engaged, then takes a massive dive.  It almost seems as if the author is just putting out chapters for the sake of it.  I would much rather see them scrap half of the existing story and rewrite them with a purpose.

Grammar:  The writing is decent, and the grammar is good.  There are few obvious mistakes.

Story:  The story follows the story of a lesser son in a noble house as he sets out on his own.  The story is crafting heavy, with some action and general slice of life.  The MC travels for awhile to find his way and learn new skills.  The story stalls after about chapter 100 or so.  We get to see multiple chapters to craft one item, the abandonment of basically the entire supporting cast (not in actuality, but as far as presence in the story), an entire chapter on what the character decides to wear and why, three chapters for his class change, and then just more filler.

Characters:  The MC is a likable underdog type, who wants to craft over joining the military.  His growth as a person and with level progression should be interesting.  There are a lot of side characters, but they get pushed to the background in a major way.  Even his love interest.  Their relationship gets added almost as a side note and isn’t really used in any way.

I hate to say this. I DID love this story, the concept is marvelous, the MC have a solid background and origin to kick start the story. But unfortunately it become stagnant and the storyline become linear. I tried to keep up with it, but it is no longer bearable. 

I am sorry to the author. This story has promises, but unfortunately it is no longer for me..

I'm honestly not completely sure what I think about this story. On the one hand, I want to keep reading it because I do like the story. On the other hand, the focus points of the author seem to be a mismatch to what I enjoy reading and some of the writing just doesn't seem to work out. Nevertheless, the story is certainly entertaining, as after 100+ chapters I'm still reading it, even if it isn't the best one out there.

Style

The style of the story is quite nice with a few glaring issues. The setting is nice and decently thought out. The world does feel alive, and is mostly internally consistent with itself. There are no major glaring plotholes, and there does seem to be a reason for most things.

The writing style on the other hand does have some issues. I can't tell how many times I've found out something after it has come up. For example a small piece about taming that stood out around chapter 90: "Roland was kind of familiar with this process due to him spending some time adventuring now." This is however the first time it has come up in the story, and as far as I can remember there wasn't even a hint of it earlier. It does make sense that this is possible in this setting, but it's simply inserted into the story after it has come up. This happens with all kind of things, including abilities that the author has that the reader is never told about until it's a convenient time to bring up.

Story

The story is pretty nice. Instead of the more traditional slice-of-life kind of story that crafting stories usually seem to follow, the author is opting for a much faster paced story with many and large timeskips. The advantage of this is that the MC is always up to something new and progressing. However, not all these timeskips are nicely placed. Often there are a few chapters going towards a goal, and the resolution itself is just skipped over in time with one or two sentences saying something to the goal of: "Having managed the crucial part, the rest was easy. The MC is now over here doing something else to continue the story". This is not just with crafting things, but also with interactions between various characters, which leaves you feeling unsatisfied at time.

Grammar

It's quite rare that I notice grammar issues in a story. Mostly I just read over them and aren't bugged by them too much as long as there aren't too many of them. There aren't too many sentences that throw me into a loop here, but there is one word that the author has been beating to death and I can't help but see and get annoyed by it every time (which is multiple times per chapter): "There was a certain version of the golem", "noticed that a certain part was", "a certain warm fuzzy feeling".

Character

I do find the main character interesting to follow. There are definitely some moment where you wonder why they are doing something the way they are, but overall he seems fairly reasonable and relatable. He is a very introverted to the point of locking himself away from others for months, so don't expect too many interactions with others. The other characters in the story all have personality, and I do quite enjoy reading about them. Not all of them get an equal amount of exposition, so a few of them seem to fall into a trope, but I don't always find this a bad thing, and it seems to work her.

The concept and characters are quite interesting and despite the many issues the story was surprsingly enjoyable, but the problems just seem to get worse the further I read.

The story is constantly talking to the reader, sometimes even interupting a seen to tell the reader something directly rather than having it told in the story, while there spelling isn't bad there are a lot of odd and jarring phrases and some annoying grammar issues.

The world building is medicore, not bad just doesn't seem like the author cared to put any efforty into it.

The characters are interesting and the storytelling itself is well done which got me to read so far, but the other issues overwhelm the potentially good story.

The world building is done very well. The author doesn't info dump a huge amount of seemingly random info. The main character has zero character building. He doesn't change his mentality or the thought propelling his actions once. He has made runesmithing his purpose of living and has become socially inept. It wouldn't surprise me if he just holds up in a cave and spend the rest of his life hammering away. Even side character are more interesting than him. He lacks any type of depth. He was afraid of become like his old life slaving infront of a computer but he put himself in the same position slaving while runesmithing. And there aren't any other characters that really matter in the grand scheme of things. If a character hasn't been mentioned in two chapters expect to never hear from them. Could be so much better if the MC progressed emotionally in any type of way. 

For context on my scores: 3 stars is my "I see no issue with this but it's not amazing" level. Above is good. Below is bad. Standard fare. I understand if some may find my grading harsh. 

Character: 

The people are complex enough, not just flat and lifeless. I don't particularly enjoy any of them, and I tend to be uncomfortable with any mention of romance & several characters seem to be pretty focused on sex which. Isn't my thing but it's not so focused on it that it's painful. I see no huge issue with the characters, really. 3 stars. 

Grammar:

Sometimes I have to stare for a minute until I realize what it means. I feel that being able to comprehend what's happening is part of grammar. Unnecessary words also add confusion, plus some odd parts where I think that auto correct changed into the wrong word. 2.5 stars. 

Story:

Main character seems to sometimes have trains of logic I don't understand but that's not a huge issue for me. It's a crafting story. Don't know what you want from me here, I love primarily crafting stories. There are a lot of "and then several weeks passed" type passages, and that detracts from the rest of the story, but progression is fairly reasonable when keeping the passage of time in mind. 4 stars. 

Style:

I don't like it. I'm being blunt, sorry, but there are so many full stops and sentence structure doesn't vary much. It's mostly short sentences, dialogue tends to feel stilted, there is something uncomfortable about it. It's. Not too bad in the beginning, because I thought there would be some improvements, but it never really did. I'm on chapter 93 now and I was going to wait until I finished reading them all to review but the style got to me. At least Twelve times there was some variant of "there was a tall youth.... Etc etc.... This was our MC" and it really wears on you after repeating for the nth time. The constant "some days passed", "after a month", " a certain youth", etc really makes me tired. I'm at the point that I'm considering dropping the whole thing because continuing to read with this style will not be very fun. The next time I see another "here is a clear description of our protagonist... Oh and if you haven't caught it yet, this is our protagonist" I'm going to cry. 1 star.

Overall score:

The style brings the entire thing down. Really wish it didn't because it would be fairly enjoyable otherwise. It's very very straining at this point. 1.5 stars. 

I hope it will improve in the future but I'm not sure. I'm going to be dropping it. 

In my opinion, the only thing that is holding this story back is the grammar mistakes and misused words/phrases combined with an odd style which takes some getting used to. I do think it improves as the story goes on, however. So take heart and give it a try.

The worldbuilding is very good. Characters are mostly realistic, but some characters (human) are just so unbelievably stupid. Oh! And that romance thing? Well... let us just say that I do not like it.