Deviant's Masquerade: The Anthology Series

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

The world 's a big place, and it has a lot of stories that are just waiting to be told.

This is especially true in a world where heroes, villains, magic, fantasy and horror all abound for those willing to look for it.

Who knows there may even be a special brand of madness all for you.

Just remember to beware what lies beneath the masks of those who attend the Deviant's Masquerade.

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2019
Author: Arthicern

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.5/ 5.0
Followers: 78
Views: 126,762

Chapters(115 total)

Reviews

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

Community Reviews(10)

B. A. Baker (Thedude3445)Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Deviant's Masquerade has a huge gimmick that sets it apart from most every story on Royal Road-- it's a shared universe anthology, with different tales set in the same world, but each with its own cast of characters and its own non-intersecting plot (though that might change later on).
And so before you jump in, just make sure you're aware so you don't end up being all "grrr" about the fact that each story is more like a novelette than a full-fledged story, and most of the stories end not with firm resolution, but with cliffhangers to be continued at a later date. If you've read the superhero web novel Graven, it's very much like that, but significantly longer.
Each of them, for their own part, have a very high-concept premise, with lots of action and interesting protagonists. They vary in quality and execution, but they are generally pretty solid.
Episode 1 - A man named Jericho stumbles on a bank robbery and decides to get involved... This protagonist is scatterbrained, hyperactive to the point of absurdity, and probably not the best character to ease you into this fantasy world. And yet, that's probably for the best.
Episode 2 - A depressed girl named Molly is saved from the brink of destruction by a mysterious, handsome, absurdly powerful man. And now she's thrown into a whole new world. Molly is very relateable in a sad way, but overall this story is very silly--there's a literal musical number--and highly entertaining... at least until the story gets into a bit of LitRPG-esque exposition drudgery.
Episode 3 - Two siblings live as normal teenagers involved in drama at school, while hiding their true identities as ravenous monsters. The roughest of the bunch, it's paced really weirdly with a ton of fight scenes piled up one after another and not much payoff for the character arcs, but it does include some of the darkest stuff in the series so far.
Episode 4 - A single father raises his four children, all of whom have superpowers and protect their small town from
SophoclesRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I rarely give ratings and even fewer reviews, but I had to make an exception for this novel. While some may be off-putt by it being a collection of stories instead of a cohrent whole that is for the benefit of world building without using massive dumps an the world is completely fleshed out.
The stories tie in together with characters from other stories being referenced or mentioned showing how everything is interconnected. The characters are amazingly unique each with their own mental issues adding a flavour of madness which differentiates it from other masked novels like worm.
Zachary DugasRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
So, how do I- how do I discribe this? Well just like the title said this is different, and that is in no way a bad thing, rather it makes for a refreshing read, it’s almost like a serial novel.There are few authors who could pull this off, in fact the only other author I can think of that does this is andrzej sapkowski, author of the last wish(Witcher novels). He did this because the last wish was a polish episodic news paper novel with a chapter released each week and to keep readers attention each chapter needed to be a self contained story. It is a style that I love as it feels like you can hop in anywhere and it will just work and honestly it does.
this style leads to a very cool world building effect where we see the world in contridicring truths, as each character the chapters follow see things a little(or a lot lol) differently.
I hope in future episodes we will get to follow these characters again to see how they have changed and or developed over time, even if we only get to see that change by effect and not as the change is happening.
loved it more than I would have thought, can’t wait to see where this leads.
SandsforeverRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
I have a problem with anthologies especially when they are good like this because i get to attached and they end too fast
Love the style and flow so far
The characters haven't been flat
I will update (after I finish more episodes) and (if) my feelings change
tldr worth a try
LooseLeafOolongRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
Admittedly when I read the first chapter I was a bit overwhelmed and had to put it down a day before continuing. Seemed like a lot was going on and the unique narration style was jarring. But from chapter 2 (Episode 1.2) onward the story flows very nicely.
As I read Episode 1.1 to 1.15 I kept thinking "now this is exactly how dialog is done."
It's very easy for writers to write spoken dialog the way that people think rather than the way people actually talk, but for this novel, the author definitely does not have this problem.
The dialog sounds exactly like how people put in those situations would speak, and the characters' personalities are revealed through an expert mix of dialog, unsaid thoughts and body language.
I wasn't a big fan of the training stats portion of the latter part of Episode 2, but in the sense that it reveals aspects of the magic system it could be necessary.
One small comment I had was that I would like to know more about this city the story is set in - how it looks like, how it feels like, its history.
The dialog is so good you can almost imply how the setting is - the dark urban noir feeling comes out well. However, it is still "almost" because there's the little part of me that wonders how everything really looks, rather than how I think Jericho/Rook etc view their surroundings based on their conversations.
Otherwise, it would be perfect, and even still this is definitely worth reading.
As a side note, I really like the "broken male" character trope and the character of Jericho sucked me right into the story such that I could not stop reading Episode 1 even if I tried. Particularly his interactions with Rook and their tragic dysfunctional relationship was just on point for me.
Looking forward to seeing more of that particular story arc play out.
So far finished Episode 2 and will continue.
AnjinRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
So, I read, and am reviewing, Episode 4. I'm going to come back to that point.
I will briefly go through the main reviewing categories, as per RR, but I must say that I think this story is greater than the sum of its parts if you just look at those criteria.
The USP here is what I am going to loosely term 'soul'. There is a genuine feel-good quality to this episode that is really well handled. The story focuses on family, and the relationships between children and their guardian. Was it effective? Well, I'm happy to admit that I'm going to call my folks after having read this.
On to the conventional...
The style is nice, light and creative. The writer uses italicised thoughts as a way to inject a human element throughout the story. It might not be for everyone, but it worked for me. Personally, I enjoyed having that extra voice, that differed depending on whose arc we were following. If anything, I'd say this could be exploited a little more, with some increased variation between characters. This will be tough, though, because the author has a strong voice themselves.
The story... I did a u-turn on the story. The episode is more thematically driven that plot driven, so I almost didn't score story at all. When confronted with a lengthy aside in the middle I then wondered if it wouldn't work better as multiple episodes, each with its own scenario to keep the themes and characters on track. However, the last few chapters changed my mind entirely. I saw the reasoning behind the format (and there were even hints at tie-ins with other episodes). Mainly though, there was a lovely twist at the end, that even explained away questions I had after the earlier chapters.
The grammar is a bit up and down. There are typos and odd mistakes that do grate a little bit, but they don't make it unreadable. A bit more attention wouldn't go amiss, but I know what it's like trying to create and edit at the same time.
The characters, at least in Episode 4, are either adorable or badass, and
VreasqueRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
Deviant's Masquerade is a collection of loosely connected stories occurring within a world filled with paranormal, supernatural, and superhuman people and events. Admittedly, I was apprehensive of the story at the start because its a multi-character anthology and not a continuous narrative; however, I was pleasantly surprised by how good the stories were at grabbing my attention and keeping me interested.
As of the end of the fourth episode, each of the stories has provided an interesting cast of characters who cover a wide variety of personality types, character goals, and personal motivations. In addition, the world of Deviant offers an equally versatile array of powers from magic to otherworldly lycanthropy to interdimensional shenanigans. Another strength the author has is the portrayal of interpersonal relationships and character flaws. As a reader, I was able to get a distinct sense for each of the characters which made even the perspectives I liked less more enjoyable. The variety kept me interested along with the well-written characters and cool stories.
However, the story's variety is also one of its weaknesses. Since the author is good enough to make you curious about the various powers and character backgrounds, the continuously shifting perspective can be very frustrating for those who want to know more about a specific power type or become attached to one of the characters. Lastly, the author employs a style using parentheses to convey internal thoughts as well as mental dialogue; however, the prose suffers at points because the internal thoughts can become mixed between characters at points and sometimes those internal thoughts are inserted into the middle of a sentence which is a bit odd at best and jarring at worst.
At the end of the day though, I thoroughly recommend this story to those who are fans of urban fantasy. It's a very cool setting with an interesting cast of characters. I especially recommend the story if you are a fan of this particular
TwinLampSkyRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
It should probably be noted that I am writing this review after having only read the first two episodes. (so far)
If you like reading screenplays, boy, you found what you're looking for. The majority of the story is delivered through dialogues, both internal and external, with brief sentences moving the story along between them. It works very well. I was hesitant at first, because I'm a reader that usually enjoys descriptions and more omniscient style/delivery, but by the end of the second chapter, it had me hooked.
Succinct and not pulling any punches, the prose is quick and gives you only what you want to know, with the fractured arcs aiding the author's style by allowing you to read the story in pieces and take breaks between them.
Pros: Fast-paced, cliffhangy, don't-want-to-put-it-downy, unique style
Cons: Story/dialogue cliches, sometimes too fast-paced
MejiroRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
An interesting and very ambitious take on... well, several things, with a mix of supers, magic, and (later on) litRPG and portals. It definitely isn’t small in scope, and makes some unusual choices in delivery.
The opening 'Jericho King' arc is fairly straight-forward standard action-badass stuff, but is a well-crafted piece of characterisation and world-building, giving enough broad strokes to pick up on without settling for lazy info-dumping or summaries (I suspect there's a very detailed world-document somewhere, or Arthicern is really good at pantsing it!) The characters know about their world and communicate to each other fairly naturally about it, making the broad details obvious, while leaving a lot of murkiness and plothooks for the future.
The second arc is very different – it dips into the magical side of things, showing both the darkness and the light that happens when you start mingling with powers from beyond the grave. The characterisation is great, although the second half is slightly saggy stat-dumping for spells and digging into the magical mechanics (full disclosure: I’m not really a fan of litRPG, so discussion of the difference between precise ranks of spells is not something I find engaging!).
The third arc (Raimundo Morales) is almost a halfway house between the two above – Raimundo is relatively balanced and in a decent place, with a family and an (almost) girlfriend, but has major secrets and blood on his hands. There’s a bit more of a glimpse into how the world works, with the end exploding as everything rapidly goes south. This feels very much like the start of the character’s story, rather than a story in itself – it’s good, but feels as though it’s getting everything in place for the start of the character’s development and arc.
The fourth arc (Sol Grey) continues towards the more ‘slice of life’ side of the setting, with a single Dad to 4 super-powered kids, and how that works. There’s quite a lot packed in here, with a load of set
Justin KRoyal Road
★★★★ 3.5
Style could be better. I like the frequent use of dialogue to convey the meaning of the story, but the italics make reading difficult and more confusing as to who's who when speaking.
I like how there are different people each time; however, it makes doing a character rating difficult. Some are good, others I didn't like as much. there also isn't enough depth, since they change so often. they seem superficial, since there's not enough time to delve.
Running a few chapters through grammar checkers, I got a score. I used this score to compute the grammar score here. On average, I find grammar on here to be around 70-75% on the program. THis store was below average, at 63% for the chapter I randomlly selected.
As for the story, the world itself is thought out. There is sufficient detail there. some of the ministories are better than others, making it difficult to give a single rating. For works such as this, a rating per ministory would be good. Based on the world building that seems to be a heavy focus, I'd rate it at 4 to 4.5 stars; however, the different ministories lower it to 3.5 stars.
Overall, my rating is higher because I enjoyed many of the stories and the interstory ratings caused the individual to fall.