Volume 1: Our protagonist finds himself reincarnated as an imp in a world with magic! Armed with his wits and understanding of the modern world, but with no recollection of who he was or even the name of where he came from, he attempts to survive and understand just how this new world works.
Volume 2: After evolving into a lesser earth demon, our protagonist finds themselves with new allies and new challenges after leaving the safety of their cave (temporarily) for the greater world! With new things to explore and bigger projects to work on, the world doesn't seem quite as small as it used to.
Volume 3: Having been banished from the goblin village, Zack returns back to his cave home. This retreat can't last forever, and events quickly force a wider perspective of the world upon Zack. Just where are the Goblins and Zack located, what new challenges and enemies will Zack face, and most importantly, what new discoveries and creations will Zack make along the way to overcome these challenges?
Volume 4: As Zack and his compatriots begin developing their fledgling island nation, new challenges arise both domestic and foreign. As always, rapid change leads to cultural instability, and weakness is exploited by foreign powers. Can Zack successfully navigate these new political challenges to maintain relative independence, or will the new nation be forced to submit itself in order to survive?
Volume 5: After surviving a war, Zack and the nation of Kembora focus on rebuilding and recovering. The hustle and bustle of the city slowly increase as more advances and expansion occur, but trouble is brewing in a far away land. Have Zack's research ambitions gone too far this time?
Volume 6: After being forced into isolation by both nature and previous allies, the country of Kembora is forced to re-evaluate its priorities as it deals with new problems. Will Zack's technological advancements cause even more problems, or will their benefits outweigh their costs? Will the rest of the world be able to handle what the future holds?
Disclaimer: Some chapters contain gore. Some swearing. Some actions may be traumatizing to some readers brought about by survival situations. Story is generally written in the format of journal entries.
New chapters Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at Noon CST. ~1500 Words/Chapter
There is no other way to review this novel than through analogy. And it would be hard, so bear with me.
Imagine the computer game. A city-builder. One when you oversee the development of the city, the tribe, the kingdom, from this upper view, but according to the lore of the game, your character isn't supposed to be this disembodied entity spying on its domain through the Eye of Sauron.
Instead, you are a real, as in, tangible, person. A mayor, a lord, a viceroy, a king, whatever matches the lore, very mortal being.
Yes, there are the games in which you ARE the Eye of Sauron (or Dungeon Heart, or whatever) too, but this isn't one of them.
You are a person within the setting in a leadership position, nothing more, nothing less.
The fact that you see everything from the top view is simply the gameplay-story segregation, sometimes excused by the technology or magic depending on the genre of the game, but theoretically, your character could die. From old age, be assassinated, be deposed, whatever...
You, as the player, are completely detached from what is going on in the game, it's not like the role-playing game where you are supposed to feel like being a character..
And this novel is the record of such a game.
It is nothing but the glorified gameplay log. The characters aren't characters, even the main character doesn't have feelings, or attachment, he is just mechanically playing the game while days, months, years, decades pass in the matter of a few lines of text, few paragraphs, yet he is not supposed to be a detached spirit. This is beyond the RPG, with skills and levels, this is gameplay log at best.
Like a player building a farm in the city building game the hunger is nothing but the stat, while he is supposed to be a creature feeling hunger, or command creatures feeling hunger...
Yet, he mechanically continues to do things, without needs or wants, without feelings, while time flies around. He doesn't want anything. Anything is an inconvenience at best, mechanically executed, nothing more.
Zero personality. Zero story.
I would forgive the overpowered characters which face zero difficulties, but please, let them have PERSONALITY.
There is none, and I would give a rating equal to personality here.
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This story is simply okay. There's nothing critically wrong with it, but there's nothing to really praise either.
The power and tech progression is very slow, there are consistent breadcrumb rewards to keep you reading, the side characters barely exist, the main character is believably stupid and oddly smart with a dull personality, and the world building happens at an even slower pace than the progression. The only thing the story had going for it, that being the power progression system; having the difficult choice between long term or short term strength gain, was obliterated later on in favor of a dull an uninspired system.
Quickly going to expand on the dull character: He has no goals, no excitement, or anything. He simply lives and, unlike many MC's, doesn't seem to have any real opinions of gaining strength to live. The one time he does come up with, what should be a serious long term goal, he completes it well enough in 2 chapters spanning a few months. When he discovers something he briefly wonders if it'll be convenient and that's it. Make a major breakthrough in something? Well isn't that convenient. Manage to secure a replenishable source of food? Convenient.
As said before, everything combines to simply be 'okay.' Neither bad enough to drop, nor good enough to actively look forward to continuing reading.
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I will be brutally honest. This is not a novel in the traditional sense. This is a transmigrators memoirs of history / historical fiction bulletin points / historical fiction from a transmigrators perspective. It feels as if every line that denotes the passage of time within the novel is the epilogue/prologue of a different novel. You know, the "its been 2/4/12/36 months since that fated day yada yada yada, this is the introduction to the second book yada yada yada." This formula is repetitive and gets boring very quickly. "Start chapter > it has been x amount of [time] and [thing] has happened. [Describe something relating to thing] |line break| [repeat until satisfied] > end chapter"
The interactions between characters are at best flat, and at worst non-existent. The interactions we do get are simply describing the conversation, "we discussed X, then talked about Y, then went [separate ways]<or>[to do Z]." The written conversations at times feel forced, and not reaching the levels of discussion but instead as if they were passing remarks of co-workers rather than natural conversations between villagers or nation builders. I remember when Zack first sees that the water level of the ocean had fallen considerably. We don't get a mad scramble back to the tribe with Zack yelling "where is Zaka!? We need to evacuate!" and a conversation followed by the hilarity that would ensue or the suspense it would capture. Instead, we get one or two lines of dialogue, followed by the same rote patterns.
I feel the need to point out that this formula works really really well with dungeon core books, so long as you have a side story with conversations (such as those between party members going into the dungeon or political conversations between the nobility of the area (or both)). This novel is also told in the first person, but the way it's laid out works much better for a third person perspective. Take for example "I did this thing. Then a week later I did this thing" vs "he did this thing. The a week later he did this thing." The first makes me feel exhausted reading about all the things I did, while the second leaves me feeling refreshed that someone else is doing all of these things.
I will say that the world building and magic system are intuitive and easy to understand while being fun to think about, while the system screen is more of a footnote. That's not a bad thing by any means, just an observation, and if done right can be a benefit to the story. I at least thought it wasn't done wrong. The descriptions for the steps that our main character takes are very well described, as well as the magical ways in which the character progresses. Overall the progression is well thought out and the world building is nice, but there is no meat. If the scientific and magical progress is the meat, then I am sorry to say that it is tofu, only a substitution, and we are left with a sad vegetarian plate of food. For the author, I would suggest reading some more character interactions from novels like dead star dockyards or Ecdysis here on scribblehub, or picking up a character driven story from a local library and digesting the interactions there. If you have a KU subscription, He Who Fights With Monsters is a good read with lots of different characters and different situations that are conversation driven.
All in all it was a decent read, but towards the end there (as of writing this there are about 1.5 more volumes than what I have read) it felt as if I was reading a hastily written historical document of a transmigrators scientist memoirs. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the science in a fantasy world / future knowledge co-mingling with mana and fantasy elements genre, but if this was my introduction to the genre I would drop it for a different genre. The only reason I give it a 3 is for the love of the genre, and because of the disclaimer given in the blurb. Outside of that it is a 2/5, possibly even a 1/5, solely due to the lack of character conversation or the refusal to have characters engage each other on a conversational level.
Basically instead of telling us what happens, let us hear what happens from the characters perspective, or let us hear about the whispering of something happening from the conversations that Zack might hear traveling throughout town, building suspense. 'More thoughts from Zack' would do the novel wonders while having him tell his workers, "don't lift that beam or the whole thing will collapse!" And the subsequent conversations would make the novel a much more enjoyable read. As it stands, the perspective makes it feel as if I am being beaten over the head with things happening and time passing, without having any conversations.
Edit: I did skip ahead to read through a couple of different chapters to see if the problems persist, and they seem to persist. As of now, this is a drop from me.
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One of my favorite novels to date nice worldbuilding unique Evolution system slower progression which is really well made and doesn't fell dragged out I hope the story gets finished.
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First of all, for me personally it is a perfect 5 star story. But there are some things of why doesn't deserve a perfect 5.0 and likely isn't for everyone.
It is a well written magical crafting and technological progession story with an subtle litrpg system that isn't too central to things. It takes place in a world/place, that albeit clearly inspired by classic D&D also feels delightfully alien. The protagonist is pretty smart, but not omniscient and makes mistakes as well as sometimes misses things which I find to be a good balance. There is also some character progression as well as character driven story happening.
But here we come to why I will only rate it a 4 here. These latter points are not really the focus of the story as far as I can tell, or at least are not where it shines the most.
Going further the story is written in the manner of a diary and actual dialogue, while it DOES happen, is very rare. Action scenes are a thing and are at least imo pretty well written, they also aren't the focus of this novel. No, the crafting is, and that is handled well.
I like how it is written, but this isn't for everyone and even I sometimes would wish for some more dialoge and a spotlight being a bit more shone on other characters. But alas, as a diary from our MC it makes perfect sense why it is written like it is.
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[spoiler]
Basically the MC reincarnated as an imp who doesn't know who he is and what world is that but he retained previous world knowledge the story focuses on his survival the grammar is kinda like a narration of and not that intense kind of like slice of life-ish and that's all if you do not like grammars like these then don't read[spoiler]
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Very good system and character. In evolution stories, we often jump from one form to the next to get stronger faster. Here, however, we have an interesting risk/reward system going on. Reset your level with new abilities and keep X number of stats! MC also seems like a proper mix of cautious an bold based on known info.
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Quite an interesting one compared to the rest. Very slow but that's part of the charm.
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Love this novel.I just can't stop reading so I hope the chapters keep coming ?
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