- Back to the LabyrinthOct 31, 2019
- No Such Things as CoincidencesOct 28, 2019
- The Day Before the BeginningOct 23, 2019
- The Red Headed GirlOct 3, 2019
- The Sick GirlSep 30, 2019
- ExpositionSep 28, 2019
- A Week’s TimeSep 25, 2019
- Chemistry & AlchemySep 25, 2019
- The LibrarySep 23, 2019
- DecisionSep 22, 2019
- New Ally Pt. 3Sep 20, 2019
- New Ally? Pt. 2Sep 19, 2019
- New Ally? Pt. 1Sep 18, 2019
- Confrontation with the Witch Pt. 4Sep 17, 2019
- Confrontation with the Witch Pt. 3Sep 16, 2019
Table of Contents
As of chapter 25: The Sworn Blades Pt.2 I'm very interested in this story, especially after constantly reading stories where the Female Lead/MC will constantly depend on someone else. It should be obvious from the Synopsis and early chapters that the MC is a 'my pace, my rules' kind of person.
If you hate novels where the MC meets her Gary Stu, this is for you.
If you hate novels where the female is there purely to be a partner for a male, this is for you.
If you're looking for a MC that loves FromSoft's games, then this Demon Lord in the making delivers.
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This series started out great, with an interesting premise and characters. Unfortunately, as of the current chapter while writing this review, the author has largely shot the series in the foot. More on that later.
The main character of the story is Alex, who is also the 1st person narrator for most chapters. Hence, the reader gets insight into her thought process as well, which works to the stories advantage in the beginning, but also excerbates the "shot in the foot" problem in the later chapters at present.
She gets summoned into another world, with a principal motivation of becoming a fearsome demon lord. While she is aware that acting towards such an ambition will have her hunted down, etc.. She specifically notes that she wouldn't care if she is eliminated.
At the start of the story, Alexs' behavior and mentality reflects this rather grand goal rather well, calmly deciding the best course of action upon being summoned, in order to survive.
Her "demon lordish" aspects also grow quickly in this beginning stage, exhibiting a speedy acclimation to the new setting, and not being afraid of committing relatively extreme actions like murder to her own ends.
Overall, with her initial setting, she is an interesting character, and one you could actually root for as an antihero or an evil protagonist. For the first part, where these points still hold, the series is a 4.5 to 5.0 out of 5.0 points.
Now, as of the current chapter, the author has made several mistakes all at once in a big pileup, and it is threatening to tear down the story entirely.
The mistakes may be summed up as follows:
This is always a risky move for even more experienced writers of fantasy stories. There is a reason why such characters, if they are introduce early on at all, are usually in positions where they cannot interfere with the plot, and the MCs actions directly. If they can interfere, then there is nothing a still-weak MC can reasonably do, especially in an evil MC setting, without extensive and painfully obvious deus ex machina. This leads directly into the authors second mistake:
2. The MC directly catches the attention of one such top tier character.
This naturally has exactly the consequence one would expect: The MC immediately looses all agency as a character in the plot, and might as well be a side character at this point. There is nothing she can reasonably do against an opponent, and hence can only really do as directed by the afforementioned top-tier character.
3. After getting caught by this top-tier character, Alexs initially portrayed personality is lost.
In these chapters, her behavior and thoughts strike a strark contrast to the initially portrayed mindset she was supposed to have. She becomes indecisive in situations, confused, and strictly, behaves like an idiot compared with the clever and cautious nature she initially displayed.
Finally, while this is speculation on my part, the third point has brought up an undesirable possible fourth point:
In the beginning, Alex is being influenced mentally by an unknown third party. Her personality decay started shortly after she deviced countermeasures to this influence. Which could mean that the interesting initial personality of Alex could have been intended by the author as a false, "influenced" personality, and the change is just her actual personality resurfacing.
Which would only do the story a disservice, as the new personality clashes strongly with the MCs principal motivation, and would likely just decline the story further.
After the occurrence of mistake 2 and 3, the level and interest of the story has sharply declined, landing in the 2.0 to 2.5 star territory.
For now, I will give this story three stars, for the interesting premise and well written beginning, as well as for the fact that the decline in the story is at the present point not beyond fixing. As I really enjoyed the first part, I hope the story can recover, as I would very much like to read the continuation if the level the story had in the beginning is maintained.
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