A Caged Bird Flies Free

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Biyu grew up a caged bird. With a beautiful face at birth, her family had her sequestered and raised by tutors and servants. Her education is thorough in the things a daughter of a noble family groomed to be a wife of a family head should be. Then, one day, they sent her to be sacrificed to the Great Ruby Eyed Serpent. Shown compassion by the Great Serpent, Biyu is offered power and a life completely different from the one she was raised for. When her choices are ignominious death or an ignominious life where the abuse of her training could make the world her enemy, she obviously chose the latter.

So she trains, learns, and one day will return to the Empire to find a purpose for her life beyond being a caged bird.

- Female MC is asexual, ends up in a relationship with women.

- Book one ends with the MC simultaneously loosing all progression, but gaining a great deal of power. Its a soft power reset.

- Sensitive content includes depictions or indirect references to discrimination, execution (including non-judicial), slavery, sexual assault, etc.

- Profanity will be uncommon, but it can get foul.

I'm planning to put this on Scribblehub eventually.

Information

Status: Ongoing
Year: 2025
Author: Rgv

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.8/ 5.0
Followers: 91
Views: 28,792

Reviews

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Community Reviews(2)

LkaybRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Its downright criminal that this story isn't shown more love. It's well written, satisfying long chapters, and a good storyline. It meander a bit and, being asexual, I wonder if this is going to go along an aroace route instead of strictly asexual. I'm really enjoying this so far, and I hope to read more of it. There simply isn't enough love for ace characters and so far it's a good depiction.
mornfallRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
First of all, this is among the top stories that I have read on RR so far (and I have read many thousands of pages here) and I am definitely puzzled by the lack of popularity. I am also a little sad that apparently the second book is going to be the last, because there are many plot points I would love to see expanded and eventually resolved, but that does not seem likely if there are only a few dozen chapters until the end.
Characters: I love all of the core cast, everyone has a personality and undergoes significant development. The characters are not accessories to the MC (like what tends to happen in ‘harem’ fiction). I also like that tragic moments have real consequences long into the future – again something that is often missing from stories (to be entirely shameless, this is one of the reasons I would like the story to continue going – I would like nothing more than the lovely characters to get enough time and space to heal and recover). The antagonists are admittedly a little flat, but they and their motivations are not the focus of the story. I am sufficiently happy to treat them as sentient obstacles most of the time (the depth here obviously varies, I am not saying these are cartoon villains across the board).
Plot and worldbuilding: The story is interesting and as far as I can tell, quite original. The world is interesting, with thought-out history and mythology. It takes some traditional fantasy races and gives them new and interesting backgrounds, traits and motivations. I don't know much about oriental mythology, but there are [in this story] aspects of personal drama akin to Greek myths (like, say, world-altering entities causing havoc due to jealousy). A time-honoured approach to storytelling, if nothing else. It certainly works here.
Style: I like that the chapters are plot-driven and not ‘artificially’ cut into schedule-constrained chunks. The text is quite traditional, with substantial paragraphs and with powers and skills shown rather than enume