The Iron Teeth: A Goblin's Tale

The perfect goblin story. This story rewards your efforts for Empathizing with the main characters of this series. A realistic view of a fantasy world focused towards a mature audience. Not too gritty and dark in my opinion. A perfect balance of light-heartedness and reality. 

Style and story:

The world is presented in a natural,pure flow since it is through the experiences of the characters that we come to understand the situation of the fantasy world. It is rare to find this type of writing style as opposed to novels where information about the world is shoved down our throats through dreary dialogue or exposition. The world is built solidly and the monsters are accurately described with impressive details.

Our main protagonist Blacknail is seized by a band of bandits and is made to perform the duties with his master to collect food and data about various monsters that can present a threat to their fellow bandits. Determined to reach the highest ranks of his "tribe", he sets out to prove himself to his master and the bandit leader. 

The progression is slow but the world makes up for it with its detailed descriptions of the world and characters.  Docking some points for being especially slow in the beginning, but I didn't really mind. 

Characters:

We start out with our little adorable goblin that continues to entertain and grow through the series. The characters in this series are great since they are not only influenced by their ambitions, but also by their current surroundings. This keeps the characters fresh and interesting. You can see how each character is affected (albeit slightly but surely)  by the mc goblin and this can lead to some really interesting exchange in dialogue (Especially against the mc and his master). Not a perfect score because I noticed extremely small inconsistencies with characters and later in the chapters some character's development is put on a halt for future revelations. 

Grammar: 

Personally I was never really good noticing grammatical mistake and I never found any that broke the immersion. Full points. 

Overall verdict :

Obviously there are some moral conflictions towards killing and plundering. I wouldn't say there is a huge issue  since the characters openly acknowledge the weight of their actions, but some people may find this really off putting. I personally find it intriguing at how the mc develops his own convictions for killing and responsibilities. This is by far on another level of ingenious compared to other generic monster mc fanfics.  A few problems here and there, but is approaching the level of becoming a really epic fantasy story. The entertainment level is just too great to pass up and there is actual depth in the make-up of this story. Maybe give this story a try and if you like it, support the author for his hard work. 

First off, none of that reincarnation or virtual reality stuff. Here we got a straight up regular crap goblin in a fantasy world getting picked up by a bandit so he can do odd jobs and generally be useful.

This means we get a perspective we don’t generally see, but it also means he’s really weak, cowardly and generally useless to begin with. So there is a pretty big lack of action at the start and the world as we perceive it is very small, centered around this one character and his life. But because of this we get more detail into individual characters and the world around the MC, and he develops at a more sane pace, as opposed to suddenly being OP as heck.

The grammar is solid, the pace is fairly slow, the world is interesting from what we can see and the characters are being developed pretty well. None of the characters are completely generic and have a decent amount of depth. Definitely worth a read in my opinion. I look forward to its continued development.

 The Iron Teeth is a great story from the prospective of natures lowliest of creatures, the goblin. A different type of story that follows said goblin as he evolves and learns about the world around him. 9/10

I gotta say friend this is a great story, the characters seem so real and the story is so fleshed out. So yeah Love this!

Very pleasant to read, clean and developed writing style. Very original story with hidden twists and colourful characters. You don’t notice your self how you wait in anticipation for a next chapter. 100%  worth the time , start reading now.

I good novel from the perspective of the goblin, worth picking up

 I love this fic. The way everything is written, the details, the drama, violence and theme .  . . .highly suggest it to be read with a bottle of beer or wine.

 Keep up the great work, it''s definitely something new. hope it develops further 

One of the few completed stories on Royal Road, ClearMadness has done an amazing job with the Iron Teeth.

This is dark fantasy done right. Too often authors who write in this genre go way overboard with their evil protagonists and plotlines but Blacknail is just perfect. He's an amoral little beast but also endearing and fascinating and following his growth and interactions with humans is what really makes this book shine. The world building is also great, with hints of a world in decline with all kinds of monsters and dangers lurking in the wilds. Quite reminiscent of the Witcher-series in that regard.

By the points:

• Growth / levelling up of Blacknail.
• Fast paced action and lots of violence (gritty).
• Several mysteries surround the story (magic, mutants, mimics, forest people) that get occasional hints and reveals.
• Lots of well-developed characters.
• Nobody is really "good" in this book/series, just very real with lots of grey morals and practicality.
• The main character(s) don't always win, and the author handles that well.
• I can't really tell why without giving away some key plot elements, but there are a few big things that happen over the course of these 3 books that make the story even better. Some are expected, some are not.

About the only thing I didn't like with this book was the chick with the red hair from the city that loves dangerous things but is totally inept (Khita). Didn't seem very necessary and was a real Jar Jar Binks sidekick in my opinion.

Overall a fabulous story and well worth its place amoungst the very best stories on Royal Road. If you have some spare cash being a Patreon gives you access to bonus chapters / side stories. Plus advanced chapters of his other story Though the Heavens Should Fall which is also posted here on RR.

The story is fine but with how slow it is, after a certain catastropic event I felt that Blacknail lost a lot of what made him interesting. Perhaps also the loss of too many interesting chacters with not enough replacement had an effect. I read up until the end of hearth and home I think. In the end though the slow pace puts the pressure on the characters to be interesting and for my tastes they weren’t enough.