The Hero Without a Past
by Dangerguard
- Gore
- Profanity
- Traumatising content
When you wake up on the roof of a burning building, in a city under attack by aliens, you know it's going to be a bad day.
When you can't remember your name or your past, you know it's going to be a bad week.
When you start seeing messages that tell you to level up?
Time to settle down for the long haul.
A LitRPG about alien invaders, superhuman defenders, and one poor guy stuck in the middle with a serious case of memory loss.
Updates every 4-5 days.
Note for readers: while most chapters are in first person, a number of chapters with different third person POVs are titled 'Interlude'. These chapters also have an impact on the story, and the terminology is a personal choice.
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Character INT and CHA gets randomized every chap
Reviewed at: Interlude Thirty-Six: Lewis Manetti
UPDATED to reflect a further decrease in quality (and thus decrease in my rating) due to further developments. Read latter parts of Story and Character parts for specifics.
Style: Writing style has solid foundations and is mostly consistent. Some minor hiccups here and there, as well as a wildly varying chapter length, but no major problems here. Vocabulary is appropriate to the topics and characters.
Grammar: All good here.
Story: Good pacing and the setting where aliens attack earth in relatively small squads for unknown reasons while it is being defended by superheroes (and -villains) is interesting enough. Our MC being amnesiac gives the author a tabula rasa to work with, with no family or backstory getting in the way. There are some major plotholes where the entire world has clearly conspired to leave room for the MC and his OP power to fill in and get some limelight. There are some severe issues where characters do not behave according to story developments or downright ignore actions taken during the story. The author is trying to sloppily retcon parts of the story, but does not want to go through the works of actually rewriting parts that don't match up with what developments he wants.
Characters: Oh boy. OH. BOY. Here we go. I guess most everyone has heard about the trope that every superhuman is always exactly as strong as the story currently requires. This is that. Dialed up to 11. With a cherry on top. And it's not just the MC and not just the superhumans - literally every single character in this story can be competent, smart, socially capable, calm and and collected in one chapter, and be an apparently lobotomized, drooling mass of incompetence in the next one - whatever the current development requires. They will suddenly forget to use skills they habitually used all the time because that would resolve an issue quickly where the author wants it drawn out. They will act against their own interests, knowledge and agenda because the story requires it. They will be gullible idiots and believe crap that they could look up and disprove within seconds because that would eliminate personal vendettas. They will say things that makes absolutely no sense for their character, personality or knowledge, just to keep conflict festering. And so on. Recently the story introduced a character that initially seemed to be meant to bring some common sense and life experience into the story, something which our MC and his sister sorely lack - just a few chapters later and he acts just as inconsistently and against his better wisdom as the rest of the cast.
The absolute low this story has recently descended to is introducing a psychopath mass murderer with pyromancy and pyrokinetic powers. She of course suffers from the same depicted issues - massively inconsistent personality and behaviour - but what makes this a new absolute low in the story how others react to her. Despite her having a history, including just a few in-story days ago, of using her powers indiscriminately and having killed thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians with her powers, our "hero" team allies with her because her survival is somehow tied to preventing a major disaster. If they just treated her as an ally of necessity, that could still be fine. Instead, they completely ignore her murders and her psychopathic nature and engage in friendly relations with her, going as far as the MC going out on a date with this murderpsycho after having been encouraged to do so by his sister and father, who seem to find that absolutely great and hilarious. There is a lot of effort undertaken by the author to retcon some of her murders, but given that he does not rewrite anything of what actually happened that is entirely futile and actually starts throwing shade on the author's own morality if he seems to think that his weak attemps at excuse can rehabilitate mass murder.
So you can maybe see why this novel is so massively frustratring to read. You never know if the next chapter is going to be one of those which are awesome - and yes those absolutely exist - or one of those where you want to scream at the screen how the characters can be this stupid all of a sudden.
Dear Dangerguard: You have talent. Your ideas are interesting and at their base, your characters are good, too. But you clearly have very fixed checkpoints for your story and did not think through your character personalities, their abilities and their battles. You clearly struggle to reach those checkpoints in an organic manner that feels coherent with what you've already written. Thus the entire development is erratic and character behaviours are all over the place. You need to think whether you rethink your story development or your characters. Because it clearly doesn't work out as it is currently going.
Has potential, has narrative dissonance issues
Reviewed at: Chapter Fourteen: Meeting People
*Reviewed as of Chapter 14
This story has all of the ingredients needed to be great. It feels unique, the setting is a whacky blend of about a dozen different ideas, and (in general) the characters are likable. That being said, there are a number of issues I have with the main character, the way he is written, and the plot line therein.
Firstly, the characters themselves. I love just about every character in this story except for the main character, each and every side character has been a pleasant addition, and I find very few stories where I feel that way. The big aching detriment to my scoring of the characters in this story is all attributed to the main character, who I struggle with liking at best and downright despise at worst.
The main character, an amnesiac streaker with superpowers who now goes by the name Andrew Drake, feels nearly entirely emotionless and detached from the world around him with random moments of extreme emotion thrown in. For example, in a randomly generated home invasion he unconvincingly tries to beg for mercy before going full Rambo and beating four dudes to death using his bare hands with absolutely no hesitation. Then he cries for about 5 seconds as a 14 year old girl handles everything and somehow maintains her cool.
I've noticed this happen just about every time he kills someone/something, and he always kills the things he fights despite getting a hit marker with damage every time he punches something. He instantly threw up when he killed the alien, he immediately cried after he killed the first 4 gangsters, after the next 4 gangsters who he killed in an equally brutal way it was much the same. It just feels unnatural, trauma doesn't get instantly processed and discarded like some credit card transaction, a lot of the time traumatic experiences build up or people don't even realize they've been traumatized. Things like shaky hands, jumpy reactions, staring off into nothing. Crying does happen, and is a valid way of processing trauma, but it's almost never instant like that when adrenaline is still coursing through your system and you're scared for your life.
The story also likes to frequently describe him as intelligent and eloquent, but I don't see any of that in his actions. He consistently fails to solve common sense problems, and generally just makes more issues with his actions. For instance, when he starts finding screens blocking his vision what does he do? He starts waving his hands around in public like a madman until even a 14 year old girl told him to stop because everyone can see there is something wrong with him (he could easily have just left them in his vision when around other people or disguise his actions, but he doesn't, because he doesn't think). He then goes on to fail to process that being a superhuman, with superhuman abilities, might make him more money than being a basic construction worker; again, common sense. He doesn't even seem to bother to look up on the internet how superhumans are handled by the government, despite it littering the entire story and him being personally informed of it's importance on multiple occasions, which causes more and more problems because he keeps getting into trouble with the law for using his superpowers (which partially exempt him from those same laws, if he'd just bother to use his brain and look things up!).
I mean, seriously, he was told by a police officer that any crime involving a superhuman is a federal case, but goes to state court for his now shut-and-dry mundane self-defense case and immediately tells his lawyer that he's a superhuman despite all the effort to keep it secret. It's now illegal for the state court to issue a verdict on his case, because it is out of their jurisdiction, and he totally blew his cover that he lied to the police to keep. Lawyers aren't legally allowed to represent someone under false pretenses, that's not how confidentiality works.
That doesn't even touch on the ridiculousness of him being a minor and somehow doing all of these adult things, like representing Anne as her guardian. Or him being issued a new SSN claiming him to be her brother with just a phone call, when that is almost never done even if you show proof of birth and residence (that's why identity theft is so terrifying, they can't just print a new one for everyone that asks or it would be abused by criminals). Less and less of the goings-on of this story are making sense as I read through, and all of that is centered on the main character and the dissonance between how he acts and how the world reacts to him.
Phew, character/story rant over with, now onto the categories I have yet to review.
I have very few issues with the style of writing itself, mainly just how nearly every paragraph is less than twenty words and a shocking number of sentences are less than 5. All of which only serves to artificially increase the length of a chapter without actually putting more writing in said chapter.
As for grammar, I have no major issues. There have been a few minor mixups, like the author confusing the usage of 'latter' and 'former', which have led to some amusing differences in meaning; but it can be mostly understood which is really all I can ask for.
Overall, is this story worth a good deal of hype? Yes, I enjoyed it for the most part and it just has that feeling of something special that I truly believe could go far. Does it have it's problems? Also yes, but if you can get past them you'll love it. Personally, I hope the author takes the time to iron them out, but we'll see.
Strong start but starting to lose focus
Reviewed at: Interlude Thirty-One: Edward Windsor
For a while this was the first fiction i checked for an update every day. I really like it mostly. Then the infinite interludes started (9 of the last 19 chapters 2 months). The author has plenty of room to continue, and i hope they're able to pick up steam and carry this through.
Has good scenes, poor logic connecting them.
Reviewed at: Interlude Twenty-Two: Clanlord Daemoras of the Guthnar
The good.
* Author can write good dialog.
* Some entertaining action scenes.
* Very good premise.
The bad:
* Effectiveness and power of the heros, troops and the MC is stupidly different and vaires all over the place, chapter to chapter.
* It feels like the author comes up with an idea, and instead of thinking, does this fit the story, or can I change it to fit the story... they change the story to fit the idea, no matter how many people have to suddenly be idiots or how nonsensical their actions become.
* Mary Sue ish MC.
Overall thoughts:
Biggest problem is the severe lack of internal consistancy and the extreme difference in effectiveness of the MC vs everyone else.
Book 1 Great, Book 2 Problematic, Book 3 Will Be??
Reviewed at: Interlude Twenty: Lady Lumina
Spoilers
The first book or arc where we are introduced to the main cast I thought was really well done. The main charcter was heavily hinted to be an adult and he acted like it. Maybe not the most brilliant person ever but they do not have to be for the story to be fun. I liked the mish mash setting of aliens and superheroes in a corrupt city.
Then the second book came around and the MC starts to fight the aliens alongside the military and other superhereos. This arc has been frustrating. The main character acts like a totally naive child and near military fanboy. This is compounded with a lot of nonsensical statistics of casualties and such. The problem is that heroes are described as being BARELY able to kill double digit grunt level aliens with alien attack casualties in the thousands and tens of thousands. And how professional soldiers even with armor get decimated constantly and can barely fight off even a couple hundred aliens. Then the MC arrives and on his first engagement blows away every other hero. This is not good progression especially for a litrpg style story. The MC needs to struggle a bit more considering he has only had his powers for a year at this point and is not even level 20. When you look at the powers of other ultras ones like Agni who can destroy entire armies by her lonesome, she ALONE, could probably completely wipe out an alien force. So the setting needs to be drastically altered for it to really make sense.
Then you have the military which for some reason is really effective with him in the group...unnaturally effective. Kind of like how normal npcs in video games are suddenly good at fighting when the story needs them to be. And yet the military is also strangely dumb at the same time. The MC offers to give them advanced weaponary and explains all of his powers (...just why?) and then some low level officer gives him a "stern talking to" and how dare he try to help and doesn't he know anything about logistics and on and on. Very frustrating since any sane person would jump at the opportunity for highly advanced tech from an Inventor that would help save the human race. And the MC does not even get what he gave the military back nor ASK for it.
The non villian characters in the interludes are almost all ungrateful and suspicious people. Save a bunch of people from slavery? You must be evil becuase you used violence! Or the charaters are very manipulative. This kind of thinking is in a lot of characters. I just wish we had some normal people in there even for a couple pages instead of these.
The ethics system is a little weird. For example you gain 3 ethics for saving someone's life from sexual slavery, but you lose an ethics point for a traffic violation. As though breaking the law in a minor way like that would wipe out the good you did by saving a person from such a situation.
The grammer, style are ok. However book 2 has some really poor editing and formatting. Overall in general I think Book 2 should be rewritten. Please go through the comment section since a lot of people are pointing out a problems in the hope that they are fixed. Hoping against hope that Book 3 is better and that is why I am giving it a 4 instead of something lower.
PS. Oh and for the love of God do not have the MC use the charm or seduction on Agni and have them be a main character. She is at the level of Hitler or something where serial killers would feel insecure even being near her. Literally burning over a hundred thousand innocent people alive. BY FAR the most villianous character in the entire work! I would be most upset if her past misdeeds were just handwaved away!
Edit: Revised score down to 3 stars from my 4 stars. This story gets more and more unbelievable since the characters are becoming more dumb and insane..
Expected Copper, Found Gold!!
Reviewed at: Chapter Ninety-Seven: Like a House on Fire
*Edit Honestly, can't in good faith recommend it anymore, it used to make sense, but now it became a game of who will carry the 'stupid' ball for this chaper, and it usually is the MC.
**Old Review: Let's begin by saying that this story went beyond my expectations, I went in expecting yet another mediocre story, and to be honest the cover and the title didn't inspire much confidence.
Thankfully, I was wrong and this story kept me hooked and looking forward to the next chapter, and I would encourage any reader to give this story a fair chance, as I believe it will be worth your time.
Huh... why not 5 stars then ?
Well, that is because I noticed a glaring issue, and that is the very forced comedic relief, which began as minor things, but then whenever it came up, it started ruining the chapter by belittling serious issues that have no place as comedic relief.
While this story has a comedy tag, It actually carries itself very seriously, and has a (Superhero / Dystopian Future / LitRPG) themes, and honestly I was actually surprised it even had a comedy tag, as it was not apparent in earlier chapters.
Further on the issue under Major Spoilers:
There was a chapter regarding freeing sex slaves kept by a gang of human traffickers, a very good chapter with good fighting scenes, but ... some of these girls / boys had to flee or help almost naked, no issue there, expect the MC's campanion kept making sexual jokes ? Huh.. like what is your preference and which of the girls do you find more attractive or which would you want for a girlfriend...
Not to mention these girls in later chapter, expressing their willingness to do sexual favors for the MC.
This is very off-putting, inappropriate, and extremely disturbing.
I actually made this review regarding the most recent chapter (ch 44), where the story goes down the common "misunderstandings” route, which I can already see that it will be used as comedic relief in the coming chapters.
The Mc saves a gay couble and escort them to their home, and it was all over the news.
It is already apparent that this will be used by his companions to tease him or cause "misunderstandings " with any future love interest.
I personally don't mind comedic relief elements or the "misunderstandings" route, It is just this story was like a hidden gem, and this gem feels cheapened by the mentioned above.
That said, it is one the better stories here on RR, and you should give it a try.
Hard nosedive.
Reviewed at: Chapter Ninety-Six: Fire Faced
Story started out fairly good, but recently has taken a nosedive. General style is decent, grammar is pretty good.
Spoilers for chapter 96.
Agni can burn in hell
Reviewed at: Interlude Twenty-Eight: Maria Sins/Esperanza
Author introduced a villain who kills tens of thousands of people, and starts fighting with the MC, without actually investigatin much.
Then later she suddenly becomes a "good" ally because apparently she just hunts rapists, and well all the citizens that die during her hunts are just collateral damage.
No way is this novel a 5 star.
Could be great with an edit
Reviewed at: Interlude Thirty-Six: Lewis Manetti
Great potential in this story, for the most part i found it enjoyable. It really just needs an edit on the way a few characters are introduced/portrayed. Without throwing out spoilers, it seems the author either changed their mind about a role certain characters were supposed to play or just missed in the tone they were trying to set with the character.
Since then it seems the story has begun to focus too much on trying to "fix" how the character is portrayed and we only get a viewpoint from the main character every third chapter or so.
It would probably benefit more from a rewrite and refocusing than further attempts to "fix" it with future chapters.
Why is this so highly rated?
Reviewed at: Chapter Twenty-Five: The Great Raid
This piece of writing is the very definition of "mid". I imagine the author thought of a good idea, like what if the terminator was a teenager! And they were in a world of heros....and he has a system! and goes to HS and has a secret identity, blah blah. There was an idea, a cool one admittedly, but then the author sat down and rushed towards where the idea would come to fruition whilst completely ignoring what makes a story a story.
First sin of writing, exposition dumps. The first character the MC meets does nothing but exposition dump and for some reason the 14 year old girl is a witty, snappy, highly articulate and completely fearless bastion of knowledge who is also completely trusting of a naked man with no memories. But then after she is done being an exposition dump she suddenly acts like a 14 year old girl. The next character with more than two lines of dialogue is also an exposition dump. In fact the first 20 chapters exist only to give exposition, a lot of it. Its boring, its dull, its uninspired.
If you were to get rid of the first 20 or so chapters and put us right into the action that begins in chapter 25, this story would be a hell of a lot better. Of course you would then need to find clever and interesting ways to get exposition out of the way, instead of just dumping it on the reader cold turkey.