Salvos (A Monster Evolution LitRPG)

Salvos is not a groundbreaking masterpiece.  It's not an exciting adventure the likes of which you've never seen before.  You will not be bowled over with awe at its unrelenting magesty.  But that's not what a story has to be in order to shine.  Sometimes I just want to read something that gives me a goofy smile.  Salvos is that story.  

A lighthearted adventure about a demon trying to go home to see her friend, Salvos starts off a little dark but quickly progresses into an almost sitcom-style journey about a silly, dorky demon girl who likes to fight making friends with humans and repeatedly baffling them.  The plot progresses smoothly and sensibly, the character motivations are simplistic but consistent, and Salvos's slow character progression, while occationally heavy-handed, is satisfying and enjoyable to read.

MelasD is a fantastic author with an excellent sense of grammar and flow.  Chapters are snappy and I never found myself getting bored with the pacing or uninterested in the current objective.  Past the beginning section, the story just feels fun.  Tropes from similar stories are introduced with amusing twists, combat is snappy and interesting but never feels grim, and the constantly upbeat attitude of the main character is a joy to read.  

To anyone looking for a simple fantasy romp to make you grin, I can't recommend this enough.

The main character is silly, adorable, and thoroughly fun to read about as she progresses from a 'demon larva' as innocently cute as a puppy into a 'midday demon,' an overpowered toddler bubbling over with enthusiasm and energy. Her adventures and interactions with the secondary characters are amusing and enliven the usual LitRPG setting and world. Grammar, spelling, and sentence structure are superior. 

With the premise of the title I already get caught, I always like to see a non-human protagonist with a good development.

A demon that is born, thinking, in a world where everything is interesting for the new being, will soon find others and will have to interact with them to survive. The first few chapters already show the kind of approach that MelasD, the author, wants to give to this adventure and action story, it is worth giving it a try. 

I like this story. It follows a young demon learning about the world and gaining levels and evolving to different subspecies based on her experiences. During her story she meets a variety of different beings. Some are sympathetic, while others are less so. But her adventures and personal growth are engaging and sometimes even emotional. There is also some great artwork in some of the chapters.

The writing style fits in well with this type of story. The story contains typical but highly enjoyable aspects of gaining skills, levels and evolving to more powerful demon subspecies. Salvos starts off knowing very little of the world and how it functions. As she learns about it, so do we. She is not OP, but she is a survivor. She does not always win her fights and sometimes has to run away, but she grows more powerful over time and gains more skills.

In terms of story and pacing, the first volume is really great. The second volume starts expanding on the world but also loses a little of its focus and direction; as it seems more like the random wanderings of Salvos and her daily life. The first volume was where Salvos had a long-term goal and a short-term goal and the focus was on achieving these goals with the occasional interlude. The second volume reverses this in that it seems like the focus is on side quests with the occasional interlude mentioning the main long-term goal in passing. There is nothing wrong with this new approach, but it is sufficiently different from the first volume's to feel a little jarring. The third volume seems to have more direction in it, in that Salvos is more focused and drive while still occasionally have side-quests that pop up or external events derail her from her current plans. I enjoyed it much more than the second volume. I like the fourth volume more than the previous two, and while there are still interludes with other characters' POV, I think Salvos is given more time to shine and show more of what made me so interested in this story in the first place (i.e. intriguing main character with a interesting view of the world). The interludes also show interesting character growth for some of Salvos' companions and help flesh out what is going on in other parts of the world.

If you enjoy this genre, this is an entertaining story and you should at least try it out. Just note that the second volume is a little less focused on Salvos and more on the larger world and the side characters.

PS: As officially required for an advanced review, some details on the spelling and grammar: it is decent. There are some errors but it is not an unreadable mess. Unfortunately, time constraints seems to mean that suggestions in the later chapters are left unaddressed. However, on the plus side chapter releases are relatively frequent and if I had to pick between more chapters to more editing, I would prefer the former.

Hope this feedback both helps the author as well as potential new readers.

Originally written 10 Dec '20 (when Chapter 12 'Two of Us' was the latest chapter); latest update 15 December '21 (when Chapter 245 'Nightsveil Part 5 (End of Volume 4)' was the latest chapter).

To keep it simple this story is really catchy, the vocabulary is varied and makes the reader's progression alongside the lines really smooth. 

The narration doesn't have loopholes and the author is always here to clarify some questions that we may have.

Really a nice book to read ! 

I don't write reviews often, but this is such a great, easy-going story, about a fresh, naive mind, new places whilst making some fantastic friends and companions. 

What makes Salvos so good, is the way MC interacts with the world, and how others react to that. Her relationship with Daniel and other humans is fantastic, bringing out more and more of Salvos as the story progresses. What starts out as a simple, single minded quest to return home, turns into battles for levels, friendship, growth and vengeance.

The growth during her journey is immense, both in the classical LitRPG sense, and emotionally and mentally. Her endearing yet clearly demonic nature makes her both loveable and interesting, showing a different side to what is out a classic demonic race. 

The humour, light hearted nature, and cast come together to give a story well worth reading. Something easy to read, with more depth than you'd think, and characters you can't help but love. Give it a go (and Melas), you won't regret it!

Thank you, for making such a good story! And don't be disheartened, ignore the haters and tell reviews, you've got a green in your hands, polish it good and proper! 

the story follows a battle-junkie demoness as she stumbles through life and meeting hardships such as losing friends, getting spirited away and adjusting to human society when people don't really get along with demons well in general. The characters are well-rounded and the writing style invites you to keep reading, I enjoyed it very much.

I will rate this a 4.5 since for the standards of this site it is top notch, but it is not a masterpiece yet.

The story is mostly fun, and the main character is fun and cute. After a good start there are some problems with it though.

Discussions about fights are often many times longer than the actual action scenes. After spending a huge number of words explaining why and how a fight is going to happen, the action scenes themselves often get skipped. And then after the (skipped over) action scenes they get talked about yet again, multiple times.

The second main character Daniel is... not great. He's super whiny and constantly wants to run away from everything. The story would have been more fun without him in it constantly trying to make it more boring. The only thing he adds is a focus for Salvos, but that just means Salvos has less actually interesting interactions with the rest of the world. And isekai can be interesting to explore how a person from earth handles the strangeness of another world, but the Daniel character is certainly not up to that task because of both the character himself and his place in the story.

After about chapter 70 I've started skimming over large parts. Lots of it is old information retold to another side character,  Salvos and Daniel arguing over the same things yet again, or scenes drawn out so much that one in ten sentences was more than enough to understand the story.

This thing is great. Awesome. I'm engaged with the characters, and I'm loving the world building.

I've caught up to what's been posted so far on Spacebattles, and had to look for it here. I can't get enough of this story.

The characters are enjoyable, and I like that it's not another "villain protagonist" or "anti-hero protagonist" that turn these interesting story ideas and edgy and unbearable to read.

Salvos is the titular character of a story about a demon child trying to figure out who she is and where she belongs. I've been reading this story for awhile, and like it very much.

The characters are definitely the strong point of of the story, but it's doesn't lose out in other aspects. We see character growth, both literally and metaphorically, and personally I just feel invested in Salvos, watching her grow and learn more about the world, who she is and how she fits in it.

I can't really talk too much about worldbuilding - the demon world is described as bleak and basically a wasteland with literally nothing to see but rocks. The mortal world is well-described so far, but we haven't seen too much of it so far. What we have seen is consistent and well-described.

The writing is well-done. I don't recall any problems, or grammatical/spelling problems.

My personal take is that the story is very much about self-actualization, and goes about it in a very literal way. Character progression is measured by evolution, where each evolution essentially "resets" the character in terms of  and immediate goals.

The last few chapters have been especially good, with Salvos being