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ejrathke 's review for:
The Wandering Inn
by Pirateaba
Part of my desire to read this was to get a feel for longform serialized fiction. I started with this one because it's about an innkeeper, which was a story idea I had anyway. I had pretty low expectations, since this is not only selfpublished but published twice a week online for free. It's been going on for a few years and, according to the website, is already millions of words long.
The first decent chunk of this pretty much met my expectations. It's a long slice of life novel, and the author makes the decision to keep our protagonist alone for way too many chapters. It's slow going and not especially interesting.
But as the story goes on...something happens. Even though it's a very slowmoving slice of life novel, stakes raise considerably. We meet a lot of characters and the world expands, with a few more POV characters coming in. The world gets filled out and the characters interact and intersect in interesting ways.
And, somewhere along this massive first volume, the story actually becomes quite good. Or I at least got fairly invested in these characters. Even though this is a slice of life novel, it really becomes several different genres. There are horror elements when appropriate, big action setpieces, and the way things seemed to just be plodding along result in some very careful plotting, demonstrating how the small actions a character makes ripple forward and change the power dynamics of a countryside.
It's a LitRPG genre, which is...not super appealing. Basically, it's like a JRPG but in novel form, with characters gaining levels and classes. The novel goes a bit into detail on all of this and it is, I think, pretty stupid and honestly not very interesting. But even despite this, everything around it blossoms into something that's actually captivating and engrossing.
It's a slowmoving slice of life novel that seems PG for a long, long time, but then when the stakes raise, things transform. There are grisly scenes of carnage and anguished moments of psychological trauma.
So, yeah, I began this as a bit of an experiment but I think I bought fully into it. And now I may just end up reading the whole thing.
Eventually.
So I guess I would recommend this. It begins slow and moves slow for most of its considerable length, but if you're interested in characters and a sort of silly world that develops into something much more interesting, I'd say this is worth checking out.
The first decent chunk of this pretty much met my expectations. It's a long slice of life novel, and the author makes the decision to keep our protagonist alone for way too many chapters. It's slow going and not especially interesting.
But as the story goes on...something happens. Even though it's a very slowmoving slice of life novel, stakes raise considerably. We meet a lot of characters and the world expands, with a few more POV characters coming in. The world gets filled out and the characters interact and intersect in interesting ways.
And, somewhere along this massive first volume, the story actually becomes quite good. Or I at least got fairly invested in these characters. Even though this is a slice of life novel, it really becomes several different genres. There are horror elements when appropriate, big action setpieces, and the way things seemed to just be plodding along result in some very careful plotting, demonstrating how the small actions a character makes ripple forward and change the power dynamics of a countryside.
It's a LitRPG genre, which is...not super appealing. Basically, it's like a JRPG but in novel form, with characters gaining levels and classes. The novel goes a bit into detail on all of this and it is, I think, pretty stupid and honestly not very interesting. But even despite this, everything around it blossoms into something that's actually captivating and engrossing.
It's a slowmoving slice of life novel that seems PG for a long, long time, but then when the stakes raise, things transform. There are grisly scenes of carnage and anguished moments of psychological trauma.
So, yeah, I began this as a bit of an experiment but I think I bought fully into it. And now I may just end up reading the whole thing.
Eventually.
So I guess I would recommend this. It begins slow and moves slow for most of its considerable length, but if you're interested in characters and a sort of silly world that develops into something much more interesting, I'd say this is worth checking out.