Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

Style: Entertaining, Humurous and engaging. One of the best. 

Story: While lacking a clear main plot line it is none the worse for it, succeeds in keeping readers entertained with the various well paced arcs. Author keeps the development of the MC's powers well in check. Probably the best story I've seen on this site in that regard. There's reasoning behind the system it's well thought out and interacts well with the wider world. There is clearly a huge amount of well thought out depth behind the wider lore of the world. I look forward to the author further exploring it. 

Grammer: Near flawless, for Royal Road or self-published you don't get better. 

Character: MC is interesting and realistic yet contains just enough panache, swagger and wit to make her that special kind of entertaining. Side characters are numerous. But clearly are not written with the same kind of love that Elaine is. 

Absolutely worth a read. 

To the Author, I say thank you and 'Keep Going!', your work is amazing and I can't wait to see where it goes. 

Love the story so far. I feel like over all the plot and the way you are describing and building the world is very good but the last few chapters seem rushed for some reason. But i feel this is a must read book so THANK YOU for it being a free read for those of us who dont or cant afford to pay for reading material.

You have to go trough the first chapters. 

They are engaging, well written, and informative.

BUT the main character is mentally challenged. She quickly grows out of it, but she is DUMB. She is forgetful and unfocused to the point that saying she has a medical condition should be considered "politically correct". She really shouldn't count as an actual human being, more as the ditzy stereotypical bimbo, on steroids.

Besides that single small gripe, this is a great work. It flows very well, manages to be grounded even if the setting is soaked in magic. The characters are well developed and believable. No plor armor.

Good, good job!

On a side note : sorry to say but the whole "feminist" angle doesn't make sense in this setting. For ages women were considered inferior because they ARE physically inferior, and most of the jobs required for survival needed strength and stamina. In the setting of this novel? That wouldn't have happened.

When you have a "system", it all goes out of the window. A 45 kg woman could easily kick a tree into lower atmosphere and stop a running carriage with her face. Add straight up magic into the equation, and it only reinforces the fact.

Just saying, but the chances that a sexist society would develop is pretty unrealistic. 

Debatebly the whole "don't send women to the front lines because without children we get exterminated" kinda make sense, but the first time a girl that can throw nukes pops up, I guess the reaction would be "yeaaaaaaaah, let them do what they want. Feel free to train if you'd like, losing a few potential children is well worth a couple of Nukerina" 

This is a funny story with a somewhat unique gaming system.

The story is some what standard longterm litRPG story where the goal of reading is not to se the hero save the world but to follow the mc and live in the world through the characters. So the story will live and die with how the world and the characters are.

The world is a unique take on the old classical world of the Roman republic, though it will not go in to the politics of the Roman republic while sometimes at the same time criticize it in a mostly humorous way by having the mc rant about it.

The flaw in this story is that it is unfocused. Which is the norm in most of the longterm chapter to chapter storytelling. Where if any point or moral is meant to be shown or taught it is muddled by the unfocus of the story.

The strength of the story is the world and the sense of humor in the world. This world has a great presence and at least I really feel that this is world in which to laugh and have fun in.

The grammar is not something I can comment on.

There is sometimes a tone problem with the characters and the scenes chosen. Where for example a very serious character who is known for not handeling pressure well suddenly in a serious situation started cracking jokes. Would have worked with another character but with that character. Which woresn a different problem where characters on the same side start to feel really homogeneous.

Final point, if you have the humor this will be one of the best story's you read on RR but if not then you  find many characters and scenes irritating.

Great story if you like fairly light with a side of ethics.

Books 1-3 are all sorts of young adult "coming of age" as the MC goes from a nobody to a somebody. A lot of that is well written.....some of it is not.......but over all it is a great set of books to dive into.

Books 4 & 5........... sort of drag thru the Dwarven.

I am going to be very generous and liken it to Tolkien's enviromental story telling, aka it's a grind designed to get the reader in the same place as the character emotionally. Punched the air in joy when the MC finally left the dwarves behind.

Book 6 has tried really hard to recapture the early magic and while there are some great moments it is more friends at a party than anything else.

Besides the new release, I have read to the latest chapter and if memory serves me correctly, I only skipped a few chapters that were dull. 

Let's start off with the Main Character.

She's...annoying and naive. 

Other characters. 

I like them a lot and I actually like most characters more than the main character herself. 

Now, onto a world-building point. There is sexism in this world that has a System and it makes no sense. There is currently nothing enforcing this idea that women are inferior and every relevant male character isn't sexist and if they are, it's for only a few lines and then never brought up again. 

The sexism seen so far can be labeled as "annoying" and "tedious". If I recall correctly, husbands can beat their wives freely and along with the fact that women aren't citizens, there's not much sexism.

The story is fine. It's nothing special, but not bad either. Of course, I'm not great at analyzing the flaws and strengths of a story but I've enjoyed it so far which is amazing for someone like me who has ADHD and finds themselves bored very easily.

The LitRPG aspects are interesting and I like seeing Elaine's class-up.

I barely saw any issues with grammar and when I pointed some out in an early chapter, the Author responded and corrected them! 

Final Words:

If you're fine ignoring an emotional, immature for their age MC, some issues with the world Elaine is in then give it a read. I suggest skipping to chapter 21 to avoid some boring stuff. 

If you're not fine ignoring the flaws I listed then it isn't recommended you read this story because these flaws aren't going away soon.

Beneath the Dragoneye Moons has been an interesting journey so far, and the only way I managed to find this enjoyable was to just read it without going to deep or thinking too much about it as a whole.

Style & Grammar

The story is mostly being told from a first person POV and I really like the choice but it tends to suffer heavily depending on who's telling the story, in this case Elaine. The style is absolutely solid, the fighting scenes can be chaotic at times but very engaging, and the grammar is fine as I just ignore and gloss over the small grammatical errors I notice. The dialogue at times feels meaningful and interesting or it´s just dump of exposition, a mixed bag really.o

One small issue is with the stat sheet at the end of almost each chapter. I feel like it's barely relevant, because there is 60% story happening, 30% system upgrades(class and skill ups) then 10% a stat sheet of the character. Maybe show the stat sheet at the end of each arc instead of each chapter? Though it's just a small issue, jarring yes but the stat sheet doesn't bring or removes anything story-wise.

World-building

I've seen a lot of criticism on the sexism aspect of this world, while it's controversial, I think the author manages to do a great job at displaying sexism in this kind of world. It's subtle, it's frustrating for Elaine but it's also disconnected. Elaine does come across several problems due to sexism, but after a point it starts to get repetitive into the scene that has been written a thousand times and a thousand more where a man blatantly thinks Elaine is just a weak healer but surprise! She's not. I feel like all that sexism has just been dumbed down to that. Though the author has done an amazing job so far.

The world is also too generic, it feels like the author has taken a western LitRPG template and put his characters and story there instead of building a more unique world that breathes with life and interesting societies and locations. Night, a character introduced in the first few books has been really interesting so far and has made the world a bit interesting. Also the events from volume 4 onwards has also made the world feel realer and more awesome by the minute but...

It's also way too similar to Azarinth Healer, no problem with that, as it's perfectly normal to write a story to something what you love but the similarities are just to many for me to enjoy the world. From the organizations(Rangers, Shadow), to the human overall geographical and political situation. Some are just cameos or references, while others is just lore taken directly from AZ world.

Character

The main character, Elaine has been an absolutely interesting character up until the ending of the Ranger Academy so far. I really liked her, despite her childness, she makes interesting fun choices, she suffers and cries and fights for people she loves. For most part of the story her Oath has made this character so much more interesting as she has to take actions in considerations with her restrictions which in turn makes the arcs also more awesome. But after the Ranger Academy arc, things take a turn for the worst to our main characters, where yet another Azarinth Healer similarity takes place. Elaine feels way to similar to Ilea as a character, she sometimes even have the same personality and it's honestly jarring. She starts to swear more in her missions post-Ranger Academy arc, there are tons of inconsistencies with her Oath skill, taking in consideration her actions, her role has been changed from a support role to very powerful battle-healer. Despite her Oath, it seems for Elaine that she's actively seeking battles and monsters to kill. Yet again her character it's a mixed bag, in a arc she could be a interesting MC, with ideals and whatnot then in another she still has those ideals but she just goes with the flow, with whatever is happening for the sake of levelling.

The side characters, I won't go deep into them, there's mostly just a handful of interesting side characters. The rest though? Suffers from being just side characters. Elaine travels with a group of people, there are names and their specialty thrown, where I mostly been having a problem of not knowing who they are and having to check their introduction several time. "Is this the poison dude or the warrior dude, wait most of them are all warriors.". You can see how this can be jarring as for the beginning of an arc, we get a mass introduction of each characters names and who they are and that's it. For each major arc in the series, we get a completely new cast of side characters that assist Elaine throughout her journey. Due to the issue mentioned above it gets a while until I familiarized myself with these new characters and by that time it's already 60% of the journey done.

The issue with getting a new cast of characters so often, is that they barely feel like real, breathing characters. We don't spend enough time with them to have a meaningful side character arc, in most cases the group of people Elaine travels with are just exposition dispenser and helping her level faster. There is no juice in these side characters, and when it starts to get really interesting with them, Elaine has to leave and we get introduced another set. For example:

Due to this reason is hard to get attached to any side characters, and for most interesting ones they just become background characters that Elaine visits briefly when she's not adventuring or whatnot.

Conclusion

Despite all my criticism, this story has really hooked me. I really loved the action and the entertainment it provided. The author's writing is improving with each major arc he writes and I really just like it. In some cases, I don't need a huge fantasy epic with intricate details, amazing characters and world. Just a action-focused series, where you just to shut your brain off and enjoy it is enough and I really mean it.

I've been a reader for a long time and a Patreon supporter for over a year I think (?? eek).  Finally writing a short review, though I'll admit that basically every reviewer has said everything so far. 

Except about the soft reboot. Not a single word about it, despite the fact that there's a whole entry on Royal Road by the author discussing it. Between chapters 314 and 315, the author has a little note to the audience page () where he goes to length about it. Which he does fairly well, and it's mostly well handled. But I can't help but think that this is something that's really important to be up front to your audience about. Now, you won't get the WWWWWH out of me (that'd be a spoiler), but you should know as a prospective reader that something's coming.

Beneath the Dragoneye Moons is a story about your typical reincarnation in another world, nothing new in that sense, but instead of taking place in a mediveal society, it's much more underdeveloped, I'd say around the Greeks and Romans. This change in scenary makes for some interesting developments that make the story somewhat unique. 

While some people complaint that the sexism has no reason to be in a world with a system, I think that it adds a certain flair to the world around which the story enfolds, making for a lot of interesting scenes in which Earth common's sense contradicts that of Pallos, and so Elaine makes a lot of blunders that shape her character.

For the grammar part, I can say that the story has very few grammatical errors, and if there are some, they are soon corrected, so there's nothing to nitpick here.

What I like the most about BTDME is how the system works, I think it has a lot of thought put into it and the classes that Elaine unlocks are quite entertaining to read, as they have some restrictions in how their power has to be used, which I hadn't seen before.

If I had to pick a point I dislike about the novel, it would be that Elaine sometimes acts too immaturly, but that has been gradually changing as the characters progressed, and as of chapter 56, I think the issue has majorly been resolved.

All in all, Benath the Dragoneye Moons is a LitRPG that, while not making any major changes to the other altrenatives of the genre out there, does not feel repetitive and tells a very interesting story. I recomend it to all those who like the genre, or to new readers who want to give it a try.

I like it,  give it a try! Better than 90% of other litrpgs on the site.

Great grammer. No feeling like a bad translation. No needless espousing the heavens just to take up space. No awkward "a specific person" crap. Reads perfectly native english with good flow

Author makes a solid attempt at "show, don't tell" except for a time skip. 

Very handily manages the reincarnation childhood aspect without cringe.

I'm enjoying the character cast. The closest side characters are fleshed out (still working on a few of them right now) without spending an entire chapter on how everyone looks. Tastefully done imo.

System is well designed imo. I wish there was more detail on a few of the skills the MC got off-screen, but really they are pretty self explanatory so I get that the author is trying to not get bogged down. I want to see the skills she turned down for those though! HEAR THAT AUTHOR? 

Responsive author if you're into that.

Nice mix of 90% happiness and 10% pure terror, just as life should be.

All in all a great litrpg that actually has a cast of characters, but only 1 MC. I am not a fan of multiple POVs, but the occasional side chapter can flesh out the motivations.