Reviews - Mother of Learning, ARC I

380 reviews for:

Mother of Learning, ARC I

Domagoj Kurmaić, nobody103

4.26 AVERAGE

samlov's review against another edition

3.0

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

ochers's review against another edition

1.0

DNF'd 150 pages in.

nghia's review against another edition

2.0

Mother of Learning is a very popular self-published web-serial. These have a reputation for quantity over quality, with authors publishing new chapters several times per week on RoyalRoad.com with no real editing or proofreading. While there is some diversity in the genre to overgeneralize somewhat they tend to feature: male power fantasies, generic fantasy worlds, lit-rpg and progression trappings, and so on.

Mother of Learning is not only actually complete, somewhat of a rarity in this space that prefers stories to stretch on endlessly, but features a time-loop, something I've always had a fondness for. So I decided to give it a chance and see if it is something I'd like.

Short version: Nope.

Nothing here was egregiously terrible. It reads quickly, despite its bloated page count. Some of the handling of the timeloop is pretty well done. The main character, despite still being a teenager, is a cautious and thoughtful planner, which is a nice change of pace from what you normally see in these kind of protagonists.

But the writing is, unsurprisingly, extremely amateurish. I don't say that to mean that it is bad per se. But there is approximately zero description of anything in the world. Nearly nonexistent worldbuilding. Characters that are flat as cardboard, all sound like one another, and serve no purpose except to help the main character level up. Dialogue that is, at best, functional and serves mostly exposition or training purposes.

There is very little here except 600 pages of Zorian starting a time-loop, deciding what magic skills he's going to level up this time around, and then practicing until the loop resets.

Which is a shame because there are dribs and drabs of stuff that could have been great. No just the big mystery of why there's a time loop and why these certain people are stuck in it. There's an invasion on the last day before the loop resets and Zorian spends much of the book strangely incurious about it. He has a mentor who is bizarrely over-the-top hard to please and maybe there could be an interesting character there but who knows? And a dozen more things small and large like that, usually relegated to a single throwaway line before the author gets back to, eventually quite tedious, training and leveling up montage stuff.

Fans of the series tell me that if I just read another 1,000 pages it gets better. I have no reason to disbelieve them but I also already gave the author 600 pages to entice me and...it isn't for me.