Revelation (Salvos: A Monster Evolution LitRPG)

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! 

Overall:
I believe the book is quite decent, there's not too much to say here from a bare bones overview. This book isn't really a monster evolution story though, the MC just constantly gets more and more human as time goes on. Currently she's not much more than a quirky teenage anime girl that's way too strong really. Daniel is the best written character.

Style:
Not much to say for style, I quite like it actually. Paragraph spacing makes everything flow nicely.

Grammar
: Grammar is nearly perfect, only a couple of minor spelling mistakes (Which seem to have increased in frequency?)

Story:
This and Character are the real meat of reviews most of the time, and this is no exception. Personally I feel like the author watches way too much anime, the story is riddle with qUirKY anime interactions and moments, it can feekvery cookie cutter sometimes, if you've read a couple of lighthearted isekai/high fantasy shows you can see where a lot of things is going.

There's a fair bit of last minute super saiyan kaoiken EMC gear 4 power ups but they usually feel earned compared to a lot of anime MCs. The most egregious trope the author loves to wallow and drown in is the "Character arrives at the last minute to block a killing projectile" trope. Jesus fucking christ this happens every single fight. Big bad will fire a fireball at a downed character/group of random NPCs and someone will either come back to stop it or be introduced to stop it. This happens incredibly often and I hate it. It usually goes "G-g-guh Kaitlin Darkhelm!!!?!?!? She's the leader of the reference! She's super strong because of (X) accomplishment!!!" or it goes "Oh my god its Daniel/Salvos!!!!! THey arrived before any main characters got killed wow what tension!!" Very infuriatning. Other than that the story is mostly just Salvos chilling somewhere or going off exploring. Fights are usually quite well done with salvos either stomping or being pushed to the brink of death before coming back. It's in line with all the other tropes, bit too many times where the power of friendship quite literally wins the day though. Also anything not Salvos centered very quickly becomes boring and I find myself constantly skipping over Daniel+Amanda/Edithe+Hadrian chapters, though the Daniel/Amanda ones i'll at least occasionally skim through.

Characters:
First of all I'm going to commend the author's love of comission artwork. It's nice art and is great for helping to visualise stuff, it's also just really nice to see. Second of all I'm going to shit on it. The character designs suck. This is not something you hear often on RR but man the characters (barring Salvos) look incredibly basic. Edithe looks like an 18 year old anime girl from any popular low budget fantasy school show, vampire girl looks very basic as well for the whole gothic lolita style, and Salvos actually looks really cool, her demon form especially has wendigo vibes to it. Kinda odd how art is only comissioned of the female characters but whatever.

Characters themselves:
Daniel Song: Best written character by far, his internal conflict  is great and an actual point of somewhat trope subervsion, very rare for Salvos!

Salvos: Salvos is fun for the first few dozen chapters but kind of becomes a bit oxymoronic, she's perceptive, intelligent and seemingly tries hard to be ignorant? She switches from alchemical prodigy to "Whats a horse again?" I also do not like how she's marketed as an inhuman demon (And the story is marketed the same) but spends the entire novel evolving to become more human, whilst seemingly resisting humanity? This novel becomes less about monster evoltuion and more about "Teenage girl thats not a great fit for society fits in, in her own quirky way! ;)" I adore her morality though, I dislike bleeding heart protagonists and like ones that would wathc a civillian die and not even flinch, but are very dedicatd to their friends and have a vague sense of a moral compass (I.e Denji from CSM, though he's more morally "good" than Salvo) Also her whole "Princess" thing gets annoying very quickly, it's fun for a once-twice off joke but god it's getting repeated way too much. She must be acting ignorant, I refuse to believe she's a near scientific genius but is completely ignorant of basic concepts that should have come up at some point.

Edithe: Dont really care about Edithe, she's weak and has a character arc about pretending she isn't. Thats the problem with a series based around raw numbers. There is no way for Edithe to become strong without bullshit. She's the Sakura of the main trio. Other than that it's nice to see Salvos and her interact and hang out.

Amanda: Dont care, skipped over her chapters
Hadrian: I have no idea what his character is, he bores me so much I just skipped over him. There's something about people feeling betrayed and he might be into Edithe? I dont care, he's not interesting or relevant.
Vampire girl whats her name: Interesting to see vampires in this verse, but they're quite tropey "Nobles that have to drink blood and have a secret society" Apart from that... nice seeing how she interacts with Salvos I guess?
Olgaf: Kind of a nice character, not much to say though.
Willy Will O'Wisp: Very interesting concept in his character growth and would have been very nice to have seen Spirits more developed through him, rather than Edithe going "Now combine with me Willy! Lets use our combined friendship cannon to destroy this demon!" As the conclusion to his chapter. Needed more time and a terrible ending to his arc

Conclusion: If you like silly goody high fantasy/Isekai anime this is probably for you. If you like something serious then stay clear. 

Anyways, if I forgot some characters then that says a lot about their imporatnce. Rev

It's... fine. I've enjoyed having this as something to read when I don't have the mental energy for something more complex. It's the literary equivalent of watching TV. Don't get me wrong, that's nice sometimes, but there's nothing special here. I won't remember this in a year.

It's got more sustain than many stories I've read in the progression fantasy genre. The pacing still suffers in the way that most all web fiction does, but for some reason I haven't gotten too bored after almost 150 chapters. It's long. There's a lot of it. I like that aspect.

I don't care much for the characters. The MC isn't very complex, on purpose, which sometimes works very nicely as a foil to the wider world (I wish this concept was explored more rather than hinted at), but often just leaves me wanting a little more depth. Her main companion is a bit of a sad fellow. He's not very motivated by anything, constantly doubts himself, and hasn't seen much character growth. C'mon author, you could make this a proper hypersigil real easily ;) Or at least one that does more than reinforce existing conditions.

There are very few typos. The overall writing style is fine. It neither elevates nor detracts from the story.

The plot is not particularly compelling. I am not confident in my own abilities as an author or critic, so I cannot say why, but I would guess that it's because it feels haphazard and without real stakes. One thing happens, then the next. Level up! Some of the characters express more emotion than in the usual story of this genre, I appreciate this greatly. But I want to see more! Higher highs and lower lows. Development in actual wisdom, not just [Wisdom].

I read the writing advice once that a good story needs not one, but three compelling ideas. This had one, in Hegel, but it was only shallowly referenced (repeatedly) until it became background noise.

Overall, if you're looking to fill time, give it a shot. Right now it's topwebfiction #1 for a reason. I won't recommend this to any of my friends.

I had hoped this story would get better but it has not so I dropped my rating. I have had fun reading this don't be mistaken by my relatively low rating but I have had enough. I have read and dropped this 4-5 times and still find it childish and not in fun way. Demon hunters that don't know what demon looks like, fine, said demon ambushing the said demon hunters and going one vs army ,fine, but every encounter not made by Salvos feels like interactions between mentally unwell individuals and even of encounters Salvos makes are wooden. Not my cup of tea.

The story begins with an interesting premise and setting, but by the halfway mark of the second book, we end up with another mostly-human 'monster' main character, and the quality of the writing takes a sharp dive. Especially with the adventurers' war. I'd recommend reading the first book, and then calling the experience complete.

This is a great story. The characters are all interesting and the grammar is great but there is one galaring problem and that is the main character herself. While her naivety and bluntness were fun for a while I slowly began to notice myself skipping past her dialogue and antics as time went on. She never changes and she rarely faces consequences for her actions. Instead the people around her are punished and she could care less.

Now the author tries to play her off as eccentric but intelligent yet the more I read the less it makes sense for the character (to me at least) that she suddenly swaps from having no idea what the hell is happening to a tactical mastermind.

The character goes from funny to annoying around the 50th chapter and it just keeps getting worse. I implore the author to bite the bullet and kill a main character because Salvos needs to change and this is the only way it would make sense for it to happen in the story. Her obsession with being a princess was funny for until the author continued to (and still does) hammer the same joke into everyone’s skull. Running jokes can be funny but when the same ones are used in almost every chapter they quickly become infuriating.

Daniel and Edith are better characters in every way imaginable. Their backstories interesting, their motivations are stronger than “I want to save the friend I barely knew!”, they actually acknowledge their flaws and actively try to improve themselves. Salvos on the other hand only has one of these things going for her. The Netherworld and her birth are very interesting and the situation as to how she ended up trapped outside of the Netherworld is interesting as well. But unlike her companions she never grows as a character, refuses to acknowledge both her flaws and weaknesses, is incredibly naive, and extremely prideful.

I understand why many people like her character but I’m at the point where I can’t stay invested in the story anymore because I find the MC infuriating. I’d recommend this book if you don’t care about character development all that much but if that’s something you like the just move on to something like “The Prefect Run”.

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.

Personally I find the current story description

This is not the story of a newborn monster trying to evolve and survive in a violent nightmarish wasteland. It started like that but then around chapter 15/16 (?) It turns into a sitcom, between the grumpy/secretive/kindhearted human helping the ignorant alien fit into the fantasy styled human world. Lots of humour and misunderstandings because despite having an encyclopedic knowledge of what things are the demon understands nothing about how people or societies actually work. 

Yes there is fighting but there never feels like their is any tension to it and there is litrpg elements but they feel clunky and the character keeps getting handed more new powerups instead of earning them. 

On one hand reaching the rank of greater demon is presented as though it's supposed to be an achievement of note. Something of significance, given how the one we speak to goes on about how great he is and how he massacre his way through whole towns with apparent easy. Yet the MC manages it in a matter of months with what feels like very little work. 

It's not a bad sitcom, but it's not a good litrpg about a monster facing dangers and evolving to meet them. 

Objectively, I don't think Salvos should be a very good book. The characters are predictable, mc is ridiculously overpowered (casually fighting enemies 20-30 levels higher than them), the overall plot so far is nothing to write home about, but at the end of the day, I still enjoyed reading it.

It's just some goofy fun with litRPG aspects and a naive demon girl thrown in the mix. It's not the most revolutionary story, but it doesn't have to be. Salvos is Salvos, and it's really enjoyable to read.

Just don't come into this story with expectations of an expansive plot and you'll have a great time.

EDIT:

Adjusting my score by -1/2 star. If you've kept up with the story so far then it should be fairly self explanatory as to why. The newer chapters just aren't as quality as the previous ones.

Everything feels rushed now, more like a script for a play than an actual novel. The lower quality combined with the shorter length of the chapters makes everything feel like a useless slog. I'd much prefer if we only got a chapter or two a week that had actual content as opposed to the daily hollow shells of a story we're getting now.

The story will probably pick up soon, but even then I feel that I'll be bored reading it. I still will read it mind you, but I'm finding myself more and more disappointed as I continue with this novel.

EDIT 2:

Let me clarify, chapters feel shorter. My apologies for being unclear with my previous update. This story is still fun to read, but it feels to me as though the daily uploads are slowly draining any noticeable content out of the chapters (or maybe I just got used to reading other stories with longer chapters and thats why I feel that they're shorter).

To be perfectly clear. Read this novel. Do it. Everything in my original review still applies, but the later chapters feel empty and devoid of life.

Apologies to the author for being unclear and apologies for souring the mood. That was not my intention, and I understand how hard it is to constantly and consistently write a story like this.