Beneath the Mountain

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Tsukiko knows something is different about her. Normal people can't see for miles. Normal people don't stay up for days without sleep and food and feel completely energized. And when a plague sweeps through her seaside village killing everyone but her, Tsukiko knows that whatever she is, she is anything but normal. A handsome traveler happens upon the devastation in her village and rescues her from the rampant death. Tsukiko soon realizes that she shares much more in common with this stranger than she could ever have imagined. Thrust into a completely new world, Tsukiko realizes it's adapt quickly to her heightened senses or die.

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2023
Author: sammybkanin

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 5.0/ 5.0
Followers: 7
Views: 1,861

Chapters(5 total)

Reviews

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

Community Reviews(2)

BananaDragonRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I am writing this review based on everything up to Chapter 3 (around 15k words). If anything changes, I'll update my review.
Beneath the Mountain is a capitvating story as soon as it starts. The research that went into this story as well as how realistically it is portrayed throughout makes it a fully immersive experience when reading. Overall, if you're on the fence or unsure about starting this, definitely give it a shot. It's a truly gripping piece.
Style: Sammy is clearly both very skilled and talented when it comes to prose. The dialogue is natural, scenes are clear while maintaining some very beautiful moments, and reads are fully immersed into the scenes. The writing style is able to perfectly capture shocking, frightening, and bittersweet moments without every feeling awkward. It's also very easy to read, and the dialogue or spacing isn't blocky or awkwardly formatted.
Story: SO captivating! There are no info-dumps which is incredibly refreshing to see. Everything is told through dialogues or the character's POV, and since Tsukiko grew up isolated, we experience a lot of the world alongside her. While there were some sudden jumps like in Chapter 3, I am confident that they will be seamlessly intertwined into the rest of the story which can be seen in past chapters.
Grammar: I didn't notice any errors while reading. If there were any, they did not impact the quality of the story. The writing style is incredibly advanced and respectively, the grammar is reflective of that.
Characters: While only one character has been thoroughly fleshed out so far, Sammy absolutely knows how to write good characters. Tsukiko is an example of that, and all the background characters so far like her family have also added to the story. They are deep characters with realistic motivations and reasonings, and they don't feel like detached from reality the way some characters are.
The OxRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Beneath the Mountain is a very promising new fiction. It is very early on, so this review is based just on my first impressions.
First, the writing is beautiful. The characters are unique and sympathetic from the first chapter. Tsukiko's plight is clearly related to you, her frustration, her fear, her confusion, all without tedious info-dumps or preaching. You empathize with her plight, and are curious about the mystery of her origins, which she knows as little of as the reader.
The setting is based on rural feudal Japan, at least as far as I can tell. The names and plants and descriptions are all Japanese, or at least Japanese inspired. Not that this evokes some anime or light novel, it is very much its own melancholy yet beautifully mysterious ambiance. I am intrigued and attracted by the mystery and unknowns that the author has written into these early chapters, compounded by the early tragedy that Tsukiko has already faced.
I am following this book closely, and I hope other will also.