Hello! Writing updates and pondering.
Added 2025-02-24 17:14:56 +0000 UTCHey everyone!
This one's not a chapter, but it's coming.
Just settling in with a cup of tea to tackle these final edits. I'll be uploading the last chapter today, after I'm done polishing up a few more sections and fixing some plot inconsistencies that you have pointed out and have been nagging at me (you know how it goes - once you notice them, you can't unsee them).
Before we move forward, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the story. What worked for you? What didn't? Any burning questions about the world or characters? I have a general outline ready for Book 2, and while I'm excited about where the story is heading, getting your perspective would be incredibly valuable.
The story has some rough edges I'm planning to smooth out before moving on to Book 2, but having fresh eyes on it might help me catch things I've missed.
So consider this an open Q&A - about the story, the world, the characters, or even what you'd like to see in the future. Your input could help shape where we go from here.
And thank you, as always, for being part of this journey.
Comments
As some people said before: a lot of stuff spiraled of out controll, and lets remember that he is literally just a kid (in the eyes of others). I Loved the school stuff, loved fights in the city, loved Bob, loved school bully and friend of MC. Basicially everything clicked EXCEPT the first and second "unlucky dungeons" (I know first one was a trap/cave but whatever). Both of them felt extremly forced and solutions to literally impossible problems seemed to come out of thin air - and these solutions ofcourse came with power boosts. To me all of those came just wrong, like two different types of stories. Things with school? With city thugs? With literal apocalypses? Everything explained, nice planned, everything clicked, no random powerboosts, no "POWER OF WILL" of "POWER OF FRIENDSHIP(i know this book doesn't have power of friendship but its very simillar thrope). It just doesn't belong with rest of the story. But I think I know what was REALLY the problem with these two instances, and I already explained it earlier under some chapter: you put MC both times in literally impossible to survive scenario, and then thru power of will/impossible coincidences/something that TOTALY should not work he managed to walk alive from these, while something 99% less dangerous in the city is still troubling and as engaging, but you dont have to pull solutions out of thin air - because solutions in the city are possible within realm you created, not some new mumbo jumbo that MC encounters/JUST SO rememmbered/learned on the way. I mean, that was just my 100% subjective impression, the book is still really good and engaging (Im paying for patreon am I?), yet these parts did not click for me. For future what I would say: do not put him in situations where he literally should not survive, you can put him in really BAD situations, crazy situations or really dangerous, but impossible? Yeah, few times my conclusion was straight up "allright, he should be dead" ESPECIALLY in first trap/cave.
Patryk Rys
2025-02-24 22:21:44 +0000 UTCI think you do a good job with your world building and environment descriptions. The world definitely feels lived in, which I cant say for many of the stories i find online. Your writing mechanics are more than up to par, and i find your prose pleasant and easy to read. You've also done a good job so far of invoking emotions. You can really feel Adom's anxiety in tough situations, and relief when he finally pulls through. One of my only real issues is that it seems like the plot kinda spiraled out of control for lack of a better phrase. When the story started, it seemed likes Adom's first big hurdle would be overcoming his impending terminal illness. That's a super interesting and compelling hook, but it pretty much gets thrown on the back burner with the whole betrayal and dungeon arc. Not that theres necessarily anything wrong with that, but it felt to me like the whole betrayal thing probably could have been moved later in the story. Also, Adom's parents being fabulously powerful and influential makes it feel kinda weird, like why wouldn't he go to them for some of the hard to get materials? I understand he cant just go around saying he knows how to cure this debilitating and mysterious disease, but I it feels like a kinda dumb decision to not at least try, especially with his mother apparently being skilled at alchemy, and even more so from someone who was a full grown adult before regression. My last issue is I'm not crazy with a few of your names for concepts in the world. Star Knight and fluid both feel like incredibly mundane names for how fantastical they are. I feel like Stellar Knight or Astral Knight or some more flowery word would maybe get the gravity of their power and status across. Here's an example from Cradle. The main character learns a technique that is based off of constructing a giant dragons claw out of essentially mana that swipes down from the sky. Now, the author could have just called it Dragon Claw or some such, but instead he calls it "the dragon descends" to get across the magnitude of the attack. This isnt just some conjured lizard hand, this is the wrath of a dragon descending from the heavens to smite a foe. By adding more descriptive or complex names, you add gravity to the concept itself. Not saying you need to change anything, but going forward it might be helpful to think about the weight of whatever concept you're conjuring up This is a whole wall of criticism here, but please don't take that to mean i'm not enjoying the story. Its been a lot of fun so far, and I can't wait to see where you steer the ship from here. Thanks for bringing me and everyone else along for this journey.
Hunter Brown
2025-02-24 21:32:15 +0000 UTCIt was mentioned that they were partially corrupted by the dungeon spirit composite guy. There could be some infighting/manuevering going on that restricts them from interacting with Adom. Their involvement in dragon's breath would also explain a lot.
Broseph
2025-02-24 20:37:26 +0000 UTCI have a feeling his Eren's role is going to get pretty complicated in the future. He very easily has the potential to be worse than dragon breath. There is also the possibility of his power having some kind of drawback? Difficult to control/backlash? Maybe his rune will play a role? Whatever direction his character goes, as long as it doesn't feel contrived or castrate the plot, it should be fine. I personally don't doubt that Eren will be handled properly.
Broseph
2025-02-24 20:28:41 +0000 UTCOh also scaling. I have a really hard time understanding how big this world is. I don't really like worlds where adjectives like "epics" are used and then large armies are like a few thousand people, which is a small border scrimmish for the vast majority of history. Roman legions had hundreds of thousands of people.
Jayden Southworth
2025-02-24 20:17:23 +0000 UTCMy only real issue is the unnaturally overpowered friend. Every time I see stories do this it confounds me. I'm not really a fan of reading novels about secondary characters. I want to read about the main character. I understand for reasons of plot you have to have tension, including a characters who can keep up. But that doesn't mean you have to have such a weird incongruency with the powers and levels.
Jayden Southworth
2025-02-24 20:13:08 +0000 UTCMy biggest issue is with the overpowered friend. I like his character but it feels like if he gets competent he will naturally become the main character. Only the authors will, via the plot is stopping his natural ascension to story dominance. I don't read stories about support characters. It feels like He needs to be nerfed or go bad therefore becoming an enemy to be defeated. I'm getting trained by Adom to save the day will for me destroy the story. I've enjoyed most of the rest of the story although I agree with above comment over Adom needing more agency.
Chaz Baz
2025-02-24 19:58:51 +0000 UTCI think your exposition has been fine, the people wanting more of that are just invested in the story and interested in learning more about your world building, I think you have enough time in the future for lore dumps and introductions. The fight scenes are handled very well and you pace the action sequences very well, maybe a little less daydreaming during them and a little more zoning in as Adom gets more combat capable, let's not have someone yell the combat beats to him everytime. I think the main weakness I've seen on display is the lack of character agency, Adam has fealt like everything has happened to him, now not every regressor needs to be the same in story structure but one of the strengths of the storytelling style is that it's effectively an older soul going back in time and applying Agency to a time in life where they had very little of it. Im sure we have all had that thought. I think some more plotting out of Adom's interactions and how they change the initial story as opposed to massively diverging new plot lines all the time would be a strength. Obviously you'll still get butterfly effects which will turn into wild adventures, but giving a little more control and competence to Adom and then making the "new plots" more of a rare occurance in comparison to the main timeliness style plot beats would probably alleviate alot of the issues with stumbling from plot point to plot point. The only other real issue I've noticed was using new characters to power scale, Gale was too powerful for how little impact he had/he wasn't a big enough boogeyman (maybe some lore dumps about who he was from our main character could have established his threat level a bit better) the vampire was presented as nowhere near as powerful as he ended up being initially, I think a lot of readers were shocked and how much of a big bad he ended up being, Noss should have been introduced earlier and it would have gotten us panicking about Gale potentially beating him, him being on Gales level could have been a good surprise as well to the Main character, and I think the Golem and Bob got shown at some wildly different powerlevels throughout the story arcs, Bob seems understandable as more a representation of the soft magic style but the Golem was kind of all over the place and then losing an arm didn't seem to matter too much to it, so maybe that happened a little to early story line wise if you want to do something with that. Overall really enjoying this so far, please keep up the good work.
Dylan King
2025-02-24 19:46:36 +0000 UTCGet your pitchfork! I will bring the torches. Just kidding.
Hellnhavoc
2025-02-24 18:41:21 +0000 UTCEren's growth potential is 98%. What is Adom's? Does it increase with GAINS? How many races/empires are there? How old will Adom be when he graduates? Is this like Harry Potter pacing with 1x major evil per year or is he going straight for the adventure? Is he going to aim for True Archmage? What major will he declare then? Can he test out of the major? Is he ever going to tell anyone he had Life Drain Syndrome(self-diagnosis through books) to explain everything? Was Gale 2-circle? Or is his artifact that OP? Are there Fluid user levels? If Fluid is tied to magic, how do you get Fluid without magic? What circle mage is Adom's mom? Does dungeon diving help improve magic capacity? When is the next disaster? Does Adom know what causes them all? Or does the invovlement of the Order and its assumed counterpart throw all those theories out? What about Gods, are they active or is it just myths and passivity and only Adom met one? How did this world develop its morality? Healers seem like 1 bad break from going on a murder spree. (Paranoid Mage-cascading failure) Has anybody tried to visit the moon? It seems prudent for Adom to enlist the services of a Diviner. Rip Gizmo. Is Mia a romantic interest? How will Adom react now that he isn't on a countdown? Is he going to live forever? Is he allergic to the sun? Is Sam a genius? Will that childhood friend that starts with a D ever say what changed him? Can you learn fluid by dropping someone from really high up with a failsafe they don't know about? What makes a spell cost more? Fireball vs Flame vs Firebolt? Dont let my questions change the story you want to tell(inspired by many anime).
Michael
2025-02-24 18:00:07 +0000 UTCTaking notes, yeah, book 2 will take a bit of a slower approach, hopefully for the better. Thanks for the feedbacks, you guys :)
Ace_the_owl
2025-02-24 17:49:06 +0000 UTCHey there! You're right, i never even thought about it, thanks for the heads up, doing that now
Ace_the_owl
2025-02-24 17:44:47 +0000 UTCAh, it's absolutely on the table, it'll actually be addressed in the coming chapter!
Ace_the_owl
2025-02-24 17:44:09 +0000 UTCI think there is a bit too little support from the Order considering how long they have been preparing for the events. As long as an explanation follows, it should be fine.
TheOne320
2025-02-24 17:34:59 +0000 UTCAgree. This was the one major point I had trouble with enjoying. It was a permanent chase of one disaster to another. I like the ideas from this comment a lot, too
EsZeus
2025-02-24 17:34:49 +0000 UTCHi! Just a little patreon feedback, I don't think (unless I am just overlooking it) your patreon says what book you are writing? I try a lot of stories and have a lot of patreons I support, so being able to quickly get the context for a post like this would help me. I eventually looked you up on RR to figure it out, but I would expect the banner at the top / the subtitle under your name / the About page to tell me the novel name
donny navarro
2025-02-24 17:33:34 +0000 UTCYeah, I pressed the wrong enter and it got posted before I had written anything else. :facepalm:
Simon Hoerder
2025-02-24 17:33:09 +0000 UTCYeah don't worry when you want I can make one for you
the oldest dream
2025-02-24 17:29:21 +0000 UTCHiya!
Ace_the_owl
2025-02-24 17:28:07 +0000 UTCHey there! Yeah I have been working on it anytime I get the chance and I definitely won't say no to advices on how to make one, thanks for this, I'll definitely send a message to chat about that :)
Ace_the_owl
2025-02-24 17:27:52 +0000 UTCHi do you want a discord server for your book? I am currently the mod for 2 other authors if you want I can tell you more details you can directly message me on Patreon or discord "the_oldest_dream_"
the oldest dream
2025-02-24 17:22:26 +0000 UTCHi, you've had young Adom work a pretty big wheel so far. Something that should be entirely out of his league age-wise. I'm not a fan of story telling where the young main character stumbles from one disaster to the next and from one conspiracy to the next larger thing. Please give the adults in the story some room to show case their abilities and Adom room to grow before you throw him into the next major thing. After the wrap-up of current affairs, the story could resume a few months later with the archmage or headmaster sending Adom and his friends on a quest -- something that is big for them but fits into a much larger frame where the adults do the other parts. Maybe they send him to clean-up the dungeon break when it happens and he acquires mind-protection along the way? The next thing is that knowledge about the weapon is out there. Even knowing that the crown prince was trying to get a super weapon out of Professor Kim is going to point people in the right direction. So that's something where I expect a lot of international attention and anxiety for Adom will lie. But I'd expect the adults to handle that and try to keep meddling teenagers out of it. Finally, I expect some extracurricular shenanigans from Adom trying to look into that whole thing the Laws set up to support him. There's a few open questions that probably can't be resolved in the wrap-up. And he'll be reluctant to reveal it to anyone else. Not sure how he's going to explain his golem -- too many people know about it by now and it's supposed to be beyond what most people can do at that point in time. And it'll lead to questions about his newfound wealth. I don't think Adom will want to reveal too much about it but he'll have to reveal something. But at the same time he'll want to dig deeper and find that missing curio shop owner.
Simon Hoerder
2025-02-24 17:18:31 +0000 UTC
