Collapse Point Harmony

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

It's too much money, He told himself. A week's worth just to carry a package? With an extra 100 Abyss possible?

Suspicious but desparate, after giving up going on the straight and narrow, Sid Vicious finds himself taking a job, an anoymous gig off the heavily encrypted black net, leaving him trapped with nowhere to go but deeper and deeper into the inky depths of the underworld.

The worst part?

He just shot the one person who could help him through it.

(HIATUS EDIT - I am planning on at least wrapping this first arc up at least. Though no promises on timing of update.)

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2020
Author: Highlord_of_Iron

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.4/ 5.0
Followers: 4
Views: 18,358

Reviews

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Community Reviews(3)

Mad SadieRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
It's a fun read, well-planned and explained without too much straight exposition.
As far as story and plot, it takes a few chapters before anything is explained. I'm used to not having a clue what's going on in any story I read, so this was fine by me. It's paced well enough that Things! were happening too fast and interestingly for me to wonder too hard about what the hell was going on before the explanations came.
The characters have distinct personalites, which is always a plus. And they aren't annoying personalities, either! Woo!
Grammar-wise, there could be some improvement. The author misses quotation marks here and there, but nothing too bad. Mostly they suffer from an overuse of commas, and have exceedingly long sentences as a result. Either this gets better with time or I got used to it and didn't notice after four or five chapters, idk. Still, I've absolutely seen worse.
The previous reviewer seems to not like the style it's written in. I love it. I have no issue with the way it's formatted, and think it adds a lot to the story. It feels like a deliberate decision, and I think it was the right one. Especially in the second chapter.
All in all, it's a fascinating read and I'll keep up with it!
SiiRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
Overall:
I come out of this story very confused but still intrigued. As I gather my thoughts, I float to a very cyberpunk/sleuth-noir feel. It's interesting and there are some things that need work, but the interest is there. A bit hard to get into and through due to the stylistic choices made by the author, I found myself using a text-to-speech function so I could more easily parse what was going on. Apart from that, I think there is enough of an interesting base for prospective readers.
Character & Grammar:
The stronger points, the author has crafted some very interesting characters. Sid, the MC, is an interesting dude who seems to be caught in some interesting situations. Without spoiling too much about the story, the world the story is set in is so confusing and this makes it intriguing in and of itself. The world itself, I would say, is a character with the number of things going on. The grammar is well handled. A few mistakes here and there but nothing too out there, all it would take is some editing passes.
Style & Story:
By far, Style is the weakest point of this work. The first chapter takes some interesting stylistic liberties with very chunky paragraphs that make it hard to get through. All chapters afterwards are left-aligned, making it feel odd to the eye for most who are used to reading things from a right-aligned perspective. I also felt that the author used commas a little too liberally, which is why we end up with some very long and clunky sentences that make the reading experience harder.
There was also the use of apostrophes to denote dialog rather than quotation marks. I choose to believe that these are stylistic choices but as it is, I have to mark it low due to just how odd it is to read. In all, there are style problems that would benefit from having an outside, unbiased eye taking a look and giving the author feedback.
The story is confusing and there is no way to get around saying so. A few chapters have multiple perspectives that come off a
TwelveGreatApesRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
The story starts with an interesting premise, told from multiple points of view, but with a focus on the main character. Without giving away too much, the plot jumps into gear extremely quickly, and while grounded and accessible, explores some super interesting topics, such as temporal entanglement, causality and divergent timelines.
The world is well drawn, especially considering the lack of exposition. There are no drawn out descriptions of futuristic gadgets, instead the world-building seeps slowly through between the action. It just makes intrinsic sense, which is about as much as you can ask for.
The story is told in a very dramatic and unusual style, narrated like the fast-paced voiceover of an old detective film. Plot points, conversations and witticisms rattle off like bullets from a tommy gun. It’s a very interesting experience, punchy and fast flowing, and when it comes together can be quite brilliant. It's a genuine pleasure reading about the main character (whose middle name ought to be ‘streetsmarts’) expertly navigating his way through a hairy situation. The information given is whatever is necessary to keep moving the plot forwards, and is generally unburdened with any additional clutter.
That said, for the writer of a work, it is hard (virtually impossible!) to be able to assess their work from the perspective of a first time reader, so it can be really easy to leave out necessary packets of information, or quite often include them a sentence or two too late. This work does tend to fall prey to this, especially because the writing style is not overly explicit and forces the reader to keep on their feet. Because of the breakneck pace of the work in general, it can be quite hard to straighten out what is happening while continuing to read, and I found small omissions could quickly accumulate and force me to disengage from the work for a breather.
This is nothing a little editing couldn’t fix, and there is a definite improvement in writing as the story