Serial Saturday: Randidly Ghosthound Chapters 1-40 by Puddles

This week for Serial Saturday I’ve got a real treat for you all. It’s The Legend of Randidly Ghosthound by Puddles!

Plot Synopsis: As the system initializes, the world shifts. Geography is rearranged and mixed, and levels and stats are instituted across the globe. On that night, one young man was walking through an underground tunnel, his mind on the small problems of his easy life. Because of his location during the shift, he starts in a dungeon far above his level, with no knowledge or teacher, or Newbie Village to guide him. Without a class, he struggles simply to survive in this world changed by its new connection to the Nexus. But struggle he will, for he is Randidly Ghosthound, and this is only how his legend begins…

Plot: The plot of Ghosthound is amazing, I had more than a few sleepless nights when I first read the series and while the series isn’t complete yet, I have no doubt that this would sell amazingly well if ever published. These first forty chapters include the foundation for Ghosthound, and while by the end of it Randy has started to grow into his own, it’s still just the beginning of the story. To put it into perspective there are 330+ chapters as of writing this post.

Characters: Randy is an awesome main character, he’s neither stupid nor so intelligent that he’s not relatable. However the rest of the cast is just as amazing as Randy. My personal favorite is Shal, but the rest of the cast is excellent too.

Grammar: The grammar is excellent, and while there are some mistakes, there aren’t more than you’d find in a newspaper.

Overall: If you love any sort of fantasy, or gaming, at all you need to read Ghosthound. It’s one of the best English original Web Novels out there.

For those who like: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, LitRPGs, Magic, Excellent Plots, Fantastic Cast of Characters.

Not for those who don’t like:

Personal Status: Eagerly On Hold to allow more chapters to be written, and to save it for the months of hell called summertime.

Serial Saturday: Qi Worlds by Skully

For my first Serial Saturday post I’m doing the exact opposite of what I did for my Movie Monday’s first post. It’s Qi Worlds by Skully!

Plot Synopsis: The Qi Worlds Project is embarking on stage one. Eleven candidates have been selected to participate, from China and around the world. The Qi Worlds Project is essentially an experiment to develop the qi manipulation skills of the participants, while they are in a virtual environment. Ben is ones of those participants and while he has had experience with meditation, he has little to no knowledge of qi other than what he has picked up from anime and gaming. Ben’s personality has always been a “boots n all” type, he often acts with little contemplation and on pure gut feel. In all likelihood, he will succumb to the life within the simulation and forget about reality, aka “goes native”. Where others fail will Ben succeed?

Plot: Let me get this out of the way first, yes the full title is technically “Hardcore: Qi Worlds”. I’m fully aware of the fact, however nothing in the book ever gets “hardcore” in any way, despite the racy picture above. In fact there’s a lot that the author promises that just doesn’t come to fruition, he promises “Mystery” but the only mystery that pops up 40 chapters into the story comes down to a simple yes or no question. There are plenty of other frustrations that pop up, like the author’s strange fixation on calling Ben’s party “The Vanguard”. Instead of saying “Ben and the others walked to the city” it’s often “The Vanguard walked to the city”. It’s highly offputting and incredibly childish looking for the author, who I can only think believed that saying “Vanguard” over and over again was “cool“. The biggest issue with doing such a thing is you distance yourself from the main characters, who are supposed to be relatable. So when Skully continues to use “The Vanguard did so and so”, it just makes his work look like crap. I could have inferred that from the fact that he decided to post his work on Gravity Tales, but a few of the English original works on that site are actually decent and don’t deserve to be in that particular cesspool. So despite the fact that I read this work on royalroadl.com, I could only find this work as fitting right in with the rest of the trashy behavior from that website.

Characters: Ben is such a stereotypical main character that I was really hoping that the side characters would be at least interesting, but they weren’t. The female love interests are all incredibly shallow and stay so close to the classic archetypes of fantasy characters that they could have been in hundreds of other works and fit right in. The rest of the cast isn’t any better, in fact most of the cast is shallower than a inch deep puddle.

Overall: Stay far away from this pile of rubbish, there are much better works out there.

My Personal Reading Status: Dropped and searching for some brain bleach to rid me of the memory of this terrible piece of work.

Introducing Serial Saturday and Movie Monday

Hey all so I’ve got a post giving a brief explanation of my two new columns, one of which already has a post! Introducing Serial Saturday and Movie Monday!

New Columns? What?!?: Well in case you didn’t read last Saturday’s post, I’ll briefly explain what’s going on. Due to Bato.to’s shutdown I’ve had to implement plans I had in reserve for emergency situations. I’m replacing my Manga Monday and Sensate Saturday columns with something else. These are Serial Saturday and Movie Monday.

Serial Saturday? What’s that?: Serial Saturday is an idea for a column I’ve had in mind for the past year and was planning to have replace Sensate Saturday on my 4th Anniversary of my Blog. However that plan got thrown out the window with the announcement of Batoto’s shutdown last week. The column will cover various Web Serials, or Web Novels, and will focus on amateur authors. I’ll be getting this stuff from around the web, but everything will be written in English. The author doesn’t necessarily have to be a native speaker, and I may do some serious critiques on grammar for those who deserve it, but nothing I post in Serial Saturday will be translated works.

I have a huge amount of content piled up for this column, and it will operate similarly to my Translation Necessary Thursday posts. I’ll cover a set number of chapters each week of a certain series, and I’ll try to switch up between various series. I can’t promise that will always happen, because I might need to restock my supply of chapters. There are some points I need to make, I will try to cover unpublished works, however some of the stuff I’ll cover will inevitably be published in eBook format on Amazon or similar places. So the distinction between Bookish Wednesday and Serial Saturday posts will come down to one thing. Any series that has a professionally produced Audiobook will be covered in Bookish Wednesday. Everything else will be valid for Serial Saturday.

Movie Monday?: Well in case you didn’t read the latest Monday column, I’ll be covering various movies I’ve seen and do my usual thing, I’ll try covering cinematography as well as my usual categories, but I am no movie expert. In fact I have absolutely no confidence that I’ll be able to write this column in the long term. Due to various circumstances I don’t watch movies very often, so I have a very limited stock of material. I don’t have the time to dedicate to watching a movie for a post every week, so if I run out of material to cover before I can resume the Manga Monday column, I will most likely have to forgo my Monday columns. I hope that I won’t have to do that, but I might have to do so if things really go poorly in the Manga translation scene. I’m not a great reader of Japanese, so I can’t judge most series if they are untranslated.

That’s it for this post, I’ll be back next week for my first Serial Saturday post!

Bookish Wednesday: Slime Dungeon by Jeffery Logue

This week for Bookish Wednesday I’m covering a book that is sort of a LitRPG. It’s Slime Dungeon by Jeffery Logue!

Plot Synopsis: Death came on swift wings. A soul, blessed by a goddess, falls to the land and enters his new life. He clings to a single memory, the defining moment of his previous life. Now, he learns how to succeed in his new life, as a new dungeon heart. To become the best dungeon he can be, he partners with the one existence all dungeons need: his bonded Dungeon Pixie.

Plot: The plot of this first book isn’t that bad, although it is fairly short. There are some LitRPG elements, mainly when Dock, our Main Character, is evolving his Dungeon. That being said that’s pretty much it for those elements, for the rest of the book it’s pretty standard Fantasy. There are multiple Points of View, but the main action takes place almost entirely around the Dungeon.

Characters: Dock like I said above is our main character. Clare is his partner and while she’s pretty good for a female lead she does get outshone by side characters quite a bit. That could also be said about Dock as well. The entire cast is interesting, but they aren’t super amazing. However for a up and coming author Mr. Logue has done an admirable job with this.

Overall: This is a decent read, but there are better reads out there. However there are worse ones out there as well, like Unbound Deathlords.

For those who like: Fantasy, LitRPGs, Action, Adventure, Drama, Good Plot, Interesting Cast of Characters.

Not for those who don’t like: Any of the above.