Klisik

I'll start out by saying I haven't read something this good in a long time. I was thinking of giving the story a less than perfect overall score because the story spent more than a few chapters where the only character was the protagonist but the story is just too good othewise.

While it did detract from the story, I couldn't bring myself to remove anything from the character or story score because I think this was an intentional move on the author's part. Not only did that part of the story serve as a buildup for future events, it also served to develop the protagonist as a character.

Not only that, I'm impressed enough at how much character development and plot events happened within the span of such few chapters that five stars feels like too little for the character and story score.

Although worldbuilding doesn't have a score I'd like to give it an honorary mention. This story manages to strike the balance between revealing enough about the world for the reader keep making guesses about what's going to be revealed next while still leaving a lot unanswered.

In terms of grammar and style I didn't notice anything off. Really I'm not the best judge on those sort of things but I can say there's nothing glaring.

For anyone thinking about reading the story but aren't completely sure I'll just say that if you like the progression fantasy genre you will absolutely like this story.

I enjoy the story and am on the edge of my seat for more. For anyone who enjoys the kingdom building genre and the ISOT subgenre you won't find the story lacking.

The grammar might have errors but if it did I didn't notice them. Though I will admit I can be a bit blind to this unless it's glaring.

Style wise there were no problems I could see. The story might benefit from more dialogue but that doesn't mean there were issues with show don't tell. The exposition is almost flawless and definitely good enough for five stars in my book.

As for story, I liked the hook enough to read the story and stick through it, but the first part feels both a little confusing and underwhelming to me, enough that I just skimmed it. After that though the story really picked up, with amazing worldbuilding that really sucks you in.

Characters don't feel two dimensional but at the same time they don't feel very fleshed out. Really this is only because not much time is spent on individual character's dialogue. It might just be that it's too early in the story for it but I would really like to see character arcs.

This review is written at chapter twenty and is also one of my first reviews.

The grammar starts off bad but gets progressively better as chapters come in. As of chapter twenty, I only notice around three errors a chapter, and for the word count that is in each chapter that is pretty good even if it means there is room for improvement.

As for the story, there is one glaring problem. The prologue is too long. When I say prologue I mean chapters zero through three, all four of which serve as a glorified prologue. I won't go into details but all of these chapters serve to introduce the story. This wouldn't be a problem if there was more dialogue, but it is just thoughts and scenes, no real character interaction. Maybe this would work if it were a book, but the average Royalroad user doesn't want to get into a story with a prologue that long, I only got through it because I was particularly bored and the synopsis interested me. It's probably why such a great story has so few readers, the first few chapters act as a filter.

Though its really up to the author, I would say to fix this it needs to be rewritten or skipped entirely. After all it is perfectly valid to start where the story starts and should even be encouraged, the prologue only serves to set the stage.

My only other gripe with this novel isn't that big a problem, but more a direction that would make me personally like the novel more. While there is plenty of character interaction, I feel that the novel would be better if more permanent character interaction is added. What I mean by this is to have a character that stays with the character and isn't killed off or removed after a few chapters. Again, not a major problem, especially because the chapter count is only at twenty.

As for the character score, I have no problems giving five stars, they are all portrayed three-dimensionally, every interaction seems realistic and does really good to show how different the culture is for a xianxia.

Finally, style. From what I understand style is two things, the ability of the writer to keep the reader engaged, and the ability to convey the message, which in this case is a story. Besides the prologue, which I won't judge simply because of how much better everything got, both of these are accomplished, each chapter reveals something new and surprising, with perfect pacing.