Adrift: Raven's Wail

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

William was trying to fix his past mistakes when suddenly everything came to an end. Given a second chance, he now strives to figure out his place in the fantastical world of his favorite game, but not everything is peachy in the beginning, for together with him is the young duchess Lucrezia Sommer Wulfgrem, the first major villainess of the game, and former owner of the body William now inhabits.Follow them on their shared struggle to uncover a dangerous conspiracy that will engulf all of the duchy of Wulfgrem.

An honest shake at the Otome villainess genre, where I’ll try to the best of my limited abilities to write something that many other novels in the genre tend to gloss over.

English is not my first language;

All criticism is welcome!

Also Available on Scribblehub

[Winner of the Royal Road Writathon challenge]

Information

Status: Completed
Year: 2021
Author: Aluminium_Aligattor

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.2/ 5.0
Followers: 441
Views: 305,431

Chapters(137 total)

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(10)

D@rrinRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I look forward to new chapters every day from this and one other series right now. It's easy to become deeply invested in the characters and world. I love the concept of the story. It's very original.
Grammar mistakes do get in the way some. The story also jumps forward suddenly without much transition.
I'm very much looking forward to the academy and how William will optimize quest rewards with his future knowledge and right wrongs. I'm hopeful that while this book touches on dark themes that it doesn't divolve into a dark fantasy.
tigre0014Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Ok, so... not the best at expressing myself here. (The fact English is not my first language not helping)
I'll start from the premise: never seen something where the villain of the otome game (if it can be called like that) and the one from our world are still both there. Reading both prologues it can be glimpsed how the 2 MC will work together... they're kinda similar while (from what we could read) having strengths and weaknesses complementing each other well.
From the prologues we can see astory well written, with a good overview of the mess they will find themselves in and the world around them.
I couldn't find grammar mistakes but if they aren't simple things or frequent enough I don't know how accurate I can be...
Waiting to see how the story will go.
(I found pretty interesting the way gods and goddesses were portrayed...)
AnganglerRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This ticks all of the boxes I wanted to.
If you've read any otome-isekia kind of stuff, this takes the idea from a fresh angle.
There is a nuch greater emphasis on drama, and general awfulness. Making for a situation where the protagonist deeply out of there element.
There is great excellence the world building aswell. Not to mention the character interactions are rather entertaining.
WhitebloodRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
First and foremost, this novel is absolutely fantastic, enthralling, complex with multidimensional characters and with unique social structures and norms and woven with lore unlike any on RR so far (on otome genre at least). The characters are likeable and each and every character having depth and unique personalities. None feel like 2D papercut scripted mobs but living breathing human with thoughts of their own. Furthermore, eventhough the Synopsis makes it seem like any regular otome, this is any but that. With Kingdom building, personal trauma, friends, social interaction and power play.
However as many have pointed out to the author that the first prologue of the MCs are over-detailed and can in-fact be stories of their own, but in my opinion they add depth to the characters making the story more immersive.Though I still wonder up to this chapter, the purpose of all the characters introduced in prologue. The grammer of the story is not the best with spelling and syntax mistakes here and there but the initial chapters are way better, as I think they are being edited, but it not so bad that it will break immersion or flow. Nevertheless, its the writers spin on creativity that makes this unique and likeable.
However, for those looking for romance straight up like some short-gun marriage, you will be disappointed as there is close to none between MCs atleast as one would expect for otome reincarnation/portal fantasy. However the social norms are more than that of Amsterdam with hugging and close to nudity common and a religion even But this is tale of its own so who are we to judge as author builds originality in his world.
Nevertheless, A fantastic read that you should absolutely read.
MarkosRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
Hello, there people...as someone that has read the entire thing I say try it to find out if it's your cup of tea.
But the adjustments I think should be made.....the pacing and power scaling.
The entire thing for me if paced well could be 1.5 to 3 times longer. This I think has caused some things to be left out, particularly a tiny complaint of mine about the Archmage family ....Kaine's shit family, is just one of the shit families. ...like I know they are trying to be neutral...but why so, besides Malphas' asking/making? them. Does his mom wants to be a noble that much to let her (obviously) favorite daughter, Margaret(?) near Galius and his "friends" I mean they knew what happened to the Archduke's family so why....... Lu lost a fucking hand to that bitch. Lu saved her from a fate worse than death that her parents left her to.
Yeah, she was in love, but hearing it from you family that lover was a rapist and worse should .....fuck I find her second in terms of irritation. Arthur's sister seems like an ignorant bitch too I dunno she only had a few lines
Rank 1 Uumaries and Malphas
Rank 2 Margaret, Morugarius, Arthur's sister.
Power scaling issues I think are like the all-out fight vs the royals.
Will and Lu should have lasted longer vs Malphas...to the point that Malphas got pissed enough at the pest then summoned the rage thing, then Lu summon Zeruel just to survive. Sure, Will and Lu were probably tired but to get stabbed just like that...kinda feel forced for them to get injured and merge to save themselves.
Also, Richard got like One blessing and mange to stand against Malphas??? Something was left out and caused the power scaling to be a bit off. But I understood it was an OP blessing. Still, Richard was more if not even more worn out than Malphas in that fight, Veronica should have contributed more. Like Veronica should have been Goku, Malphas should be Raditz, and Richard with the teardrop is Piccolo charging up.
SIDE note.
We all know characters in romance ga
Creationism0Royal Road
★★★★ 4.0
Just to get it out of the way, I'm a friend of the author, as noted in the review title.
That being said, in fairness the story suffers a lot from pacing issues, often going breakneck speed only to slow down for one chapter, before resuming. This leads to many details and relationships being short changed, and a lot seems to be done with hand wavium.
On the plus side though, The characters that do have sufficient time are well fleshed, and the world is extremely interesting. Grammar is for the most part quite good, with any bad mistakes getting fixed once a pass over is given by the audience. Plot is also good, with plenty of things happening in the world to make it feel full as well, so you won't be disappointed on that side.
Author has already said they intend to do a large editing pass to fix the pacing once they get into a good spot to do so as well, so look forward to that
AgasthenesRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
First of all the story has decent grammar (afaik as non native speaker) and the prosa flow's well enough.
We have an interesting world with glimpses of an interesting magic system.
The characters are interesting and clear goals. So far so good.
Tge story has here or there some elements that seem a bit strange but that's ok.
The main problem is at this point pacing at some points it seems to fast at others to slow and at some points both.
And all that while half the story is prologue.
The prologue is split in two halves, one for our isekai guy and one for the body he inhabits.
The isekai prologue had me, while starting off slowly, hooked. But at the point we're things got interesting our guy got isekaied and I was left with questions. Especially the question why the author spent so much text outlining a setting that doesn't matter in the end.
Thd second prologue feels less engaging as there are so many things happening (a whole mystery novel worth of content is going on in the background). There are so many events and reveals happening that it becomes quite confusing.
Good captain got removed but no, he rebelled and was evil, there is evidence, but then the other guards are evil too and then they only listen to evil captain the second, who supports obviously evil guy, but there is evidence he only researches spell to end famine, but earlier we learned food magic is forbidden, but then isekaibody finds out he is doing other evil things and has the guards under his command to block isekaibody from leaving, but suddenly the guards only listen to isekaibody, and the apprentice of the evil mage finds evidence about the spell Bering evil, and then everybody wants to leave but then the harbor gets nuked.....
As you see it's kinda a mess
And finally after six chapters prologue we get the isekai guy into the isekaibody.
Anyway. I found the story to varying degrees engaging, but I add a lot of potential in it.
TL;DR half the story is prologue of questionable importance but it
CasualDarkSoulsRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
Update: The work is improving and remains a gem of originality and adventure and I want to note that improvement.
But it is still has a problem with "telling" vs "showing" (sudden lore drops that could have been given organically like during dialog). It also still occationally has pacing problems with half a chapter to describe a background then two paragraphs after meeting their "quest" is done.
Note: The beginning is still really rough, I would skip the Pre-Isekai prologue, (chapter 1-3). You just need to know he was betrayed then jump into it. Honestly the mystery of his past actually makes it better in my opinion.
Original Review:
Wow, this story is all over the place. Parts of it are genius, but that is within a framework and pacing that is a mess.
I will give a clear summary here. The story feels origonal and exciting. The emotions of the characters seem fleshed out. The world feels deep. I think I have been more caught up in this story than most on RR.
HOWEVER, the pacing is a disaster. The world building is chaotic. The timeline doesn't make sense. The levels of magic also inconsistent. The gods are also inconsistent.
.... So yeah, it is something alright....
To the author, the bigest issue you have is pacing. Specific issues below in spoiler, but there are 3 chapters before his death (which is fine if you are going for a slow burn, but your pace after their joining is frantic to say the least... And those 3 don't seem to have mattered at all and were boring and confusing).
If you gave backgrounds slowly to each of these character she meets and built them up, this would be a great arc for each one but they are all rushed. Basically Will's background should have been 1/2 chapter at most and Lu's should have been 1 chapter... Then each arc for the elves, dwarves, plauge, planing to decieve the priest, should have been like 5-10 chapters each... Not 1/2 -1 each
Again unique and interesting story in bit if a mess
Style is there
Grammar is good
Story pacing
alcroixRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
Although I like this story, being an interesting take on a game isekai/villainess reincarnation, the pacing of the story needs to be smoothed out.
Additionally, a simple passthrough with an editor to fix stylistic issues with paragraph spacing, grammar, and sentence structure would greatly help the story. I feel that, in part, some of these pacing issues are due to the textual clarity being obscured by the text's typesetting. Inconsistent rules on how conversations are handled-- sometimes having a framing sentence and spoken dialogue on the same line, in that order-- force the reader to perhaps pay more attention than necessary to understand the action.
In terms of grammar, overall the writer does well. However, again, punctuation and capitalization are inconsistently standardized.
To summarize: my gripes with the story only are with inconsistent styling and, at times, odd conversation and sentence structure. Overall, I very much enjoy the story.
xXSB101XxRoyal Road
★★★★ 3.5
Like stated in the synopsis, the story is about a guy who gets the old transmigrated (whatever the official term is) into the body of a villianess, the first villainess from this otome game that he really loved back on Earth. The story starts out by giving prologues to both the villainess, and Will, the protaganist. Personally, the prologue for Will, at least for me, was kind of a miss, but that might have just been a personal preference, but regardless I didn't really care for it. It basically gave background that this is an alternate history future version of Earth, and sets up a backdrop for what I assume is going to be some story plotpoints later on. The villainess gets a introduction showing whats happening to her, which basically leads up to when Will gets transmigrated into her. It was more enjoyable than Will's prologue, but wasn't anything really notable so to speak.
Beyond there is when Will basically takes control of her body, and she takes a ride as the backseat driver. Here the story, like others have said, mainly flucuates in its pacing and spends the rest of the chapters up to where I have ended going through the fixing of the villainess's current home circumstances (being real vague here).
The main issue with everything so fair is that the world is kind of vague. Yes, we have been getting lore bits and tids and knowledge, like the gods, the powers that people use, countries, etc etc, but it's not really that memorable? Personally, I would enjoy some side chapter, or index, that one can use to look over to get a good overview of the actual world setting itself. Thankfully, the author has stated he plans on fleshing out the world in the next arc, so I'm hoping to get better info dumps to get a firm grasp of the world itself when that happens.
Overall, the story has been a 3 and a half stars for me.
Next is the style. Nothing I have really to say, it's the general style of writing you see with fantasy novels on RR, mainly from the perspective of Will, w