Ethereal Artifacts (Book 4 on going)

Information

Status

Hiatus

Year

2023

Author

JenniferWells

• Ep. 139 The Fallens
  Aug 3, 2024
• Ep. 138 A Zombie Lord
  Aug 2, 2024
• Ep. 137 Recovery (Book 4 Start)
  Aug 1, 2024
• Ep.003 Unusual Discovery
  Aug 6, 2023
• Ep.002 The Quail
  Aug 6, 2023
• Ep.001 F199 District
  Aug 6, 2023

Reviews

Community Reviews(8)

• AsamoriHeliosRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  I am always interested in strong female-lead stories. Cora, the MC of this story fits my need.
  To be honest, she was not that "strong" at the very beginning. She has some flaws but later I found her strength inside as the story going on.
  The plot is a typical apocalypse/post-apocalypse dystopian with EMCs and superpowers one, WITH A LOT OF BLOODY ZOMBIES! The development of the plot was fine to me.
  It is also a very typical young adult style. And, everything you would expect from this topic: bullies, prince MC/cheer leader girl/nerd friends/muscular football guy/...just with superpowers instead. lol.
  As far as my current reading progress (chapter 12), it's still on the starting stage. I only got a glance at this dystopian world with very limited information. Looking forward to the following development!
  The language is ok. I see nothing wrong but not flawless.
  For the superpower, a.k.a “Anopower” in this series, it seems to have a lot to dig in the future. What the heroine has sound the most interesting one. But there is still no clue why such thing could happened from the science point of view. (according to the principle of conservation of mass)
  We will see how the author explain this next...
• HirambeRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  Expecting a gradual unfolding, it was nice to see I was wrong. The zombie apocalypse is a grim premise, yet the execution is astute. The narrative style is very similar to others I've read and seen but you can never have too many zombie stories lol.
  The story accelerates beyond expectations, maintaining an engaging tempo. The trajectory flows well, displaying dexterity in plotting. Character depth fluctuates. Some characters remain underdeveloped while others, like the protagonist, shine in complexity. In simpler words, some characters' flatness contrasts with the protagonist's development. This fiction's strength is definitely its escalation, presenting a potent cocktail of tension and grimness. The plot surges, gripping us in its journey.
  Worldbuilding eludes excessive exposition, divulging key details, and enriching the grim ambiance. In this landscape of devastation, survival hinges on ruthless action. A more intricate exploration of the grimness would deepen engagement.
  Grammar cheffs kiss, barring minor issues. The narrative disrupted by structural quirkiness, sustains a flowing pace. Nearly impeccable, and serves the story well.
  Style thrives in the classic narrative. A refinement of structure and dialogue coherence would refine the reading experience. This work is a promising ascent, on the brink of creating its unique path. The foundation is well-crafted with an engaging protagonist. This story holds the potential to become an outstanding addition to its genres.
• TharsultRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  Overall a solid work. This story starts where I love a story to start--with a weak MC thrust into a situation where they gain a power and now must work to survive, keep others alive, and then finally thrive. For the most part I enjoyed this story, and I think the things needed to make it really shine are easily accessible.
  I did this review as part of a review swap.
  Going through the sections, I'm going to talk about Style and Grammer together, as weird as it may seem. Both are decent, but need editing. "How can style need editing?" you might ask, but the reason is that there are a couple places where the structure is "topic A, topic B, more topic A" and it's distracting to reading the story. If I just switch the flow a tiny bit, it all makes sense and is good--it feels less like "bad style" and more like "mistakes as my writing couldn't keep up with my thinking," so I am putting it down to an editing issue. Additionally, while I found very few misspellings or bad grammar per se, I did see multiple places where the paragraph break was very odd, including a couple in the middle of ongoing sentences. With no negativity to the author (my first drafts are certainly worse than this, I totally get it) I think this needs to be given to a decent copy editor or perhaps a formatter (since I saw few speling errors, just these weird breaks to new paragraphs). I am also aware that costs money, so perhaps it is unfair of me to focus on that, but I think it would really help the work alot.
  On the counter side, the prose is frequently great, so I didn't take nearly as much as I might have if we were just talking the typo-type issues. I felt the heat of the world in the first couple chapters, the brightness of it, the hard work of the fishing boats on the ocean. The slow descent into concern and surrealness as people and animals start to disappear and the world goes bonkers. The descriptive elements and prose are excellent, but the structure and weird break point typos need fixing--
• InfinityphoenixRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  Cyberpunk zombie apocalypse! Granted, we've yet to see the more technological and sci-fi aspects of it all, but so far, the world-building is looking awesome.
  Style: Easy to digest, and has a good pace for action. A minor issue I've spotted is that in the first few chapters two different people had dialogue lines in the same paragraph, and sometimes sentences have a random empty line separating the two halves of the sentence, but it's not a common issue. The author needs to work on being slightly more descriptive, however. They describe personality well, but personality characteristics don't let me form a mental image of character appearances.
  Story: Martial artist girl awakens a special ability to use invisible weapons and has a fascination for ancient weapons, so ends up being great at fighting zombies. I like it. I also like the fact that the zombies in this world aren't from a virus or similar, but become zombies due to solar radiation making them mutate. I think a bit more explanation for why this caused them to demonstrate such characteristics is recommended. One complaint I have is that Cora gets involved with people who are a bit clique in how they act. I'd appreciate it if not everyone was out to get her, although I understand in a post-apocalyptic setting it's a product of the environment.
  Grammar: No problems. Spelling is fine, commas are used appropriately. Can't say I have any issues.
  Character: Cora is... decently developed. She has unique characteristics. But everyone else is kinda bland, which contributes to the clique conflict. Anyone with a somewhat unique personality like her master gets turned into zombies, so Cora doesn't have anyone around her who is that interesting. But the world she's in makes up for it.
  Overall: Cyberpunk zombie apocalypse. I can't think of many stories with this setting off the top of my head. But so far I'm loving the world, although I feel like the author has taken a bit too much inspiration from Chinese zombie apocalyps
• Conrad StokesRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  Disclaimer: This review is for a review/comment swap with the author. I have read over the minimum 10k words.
  I read the blurb for this fiction and thought, “ok, interesting cover, but I’m not sure if I am going to vibe with the content”. Wrong.
  Story: The author has a slow burn in the beginning, but not a tedious one where the MC is not doing anything other than staring at her navel. This slow burn really pays off with some of the twists and eerie reveals that happen as the plot progresses. Coupled with some well done foreshadowing, the author had me invested.
  Style: I think this can go I hand with the story in the sense that not only did I appreciate the way events unfolded, but I liked the way that the author had characters deal with conflict and do things such as lore building/time skips. They felt organic and not rushed/forced.
  Characters: The MC is ok, not someone who made me roll my eyes with constant lame quips, nor is she a cardboard cutout. She is a quiet character, but the author develops that in a way that makes it seem natural. Other characters are pretty cardboard-y though, sometimes they show up for a scene and then that’s their use, they’re done.
  Grammar: you’ll see a few spelling mistakes, but that’s standard fare for RR and not a big issue with this story.
  Overall: I was pleasantly surprised where this story went and how it is developing. I’m interested to see how the MC’s journey goes in a well written world that respects the reader’s intelligence without spelling everything out. Good story. Recommend.
• ScruffedUpRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 4.0

  I was requested for a review so I have arrived, like an annoying quail that eats all your grain.... or bird seed. But quail's are walking birds, like penguins, so how did they get to the bird seed? Something is amiss!
  (Quails actually can fly, I was just making a joke about them only doing so when convenient. Annoying little buggers keep eating all my aunts birdseed, any-who onto the review!)
  Style:
  Apocalypse, world building, all done by scratch. I dig it, do you?
  The world building itself is a little light as of chapter 11, I don't know much about the world we are in besides the fact we reside within the 'New Pacific Alliance', and on some world so outside of the Alliances 'fucks to give about' list that its name is a garble of letters and numbers, and is so poor that it more resembles Detroit than anything else.
  All in all, a fantastic start for a happy story about famil- wait wrong review, uh... stuffs fucked mate. The female MC is at the bottom of the barrel, and since an apocalypse is incoming she's about three steps from catching a shiv to the ribs. The story does a real good job of setting the stage, of prepping us for how bad things are, and how they are most likely going to get far worse before they get better.
  I also like the emotions, the writer has done a fairly good job getting the emotions of their characters down onto the page. People aren't robots, nor are they always evil, even if they want to help you they may be forced not to because of outside factors, and if they want to hurt you they probably won't because of the same reason.
  Now that I have praised the book for the good stuff, I gotta get to the 'constructive criticism' part.
  -Chapter names need to be capitalized
  Chapter names count as 'titles' so to speak, they get caps when written. Small thing but it helps make the book look 'presentable' for new readers who find the novel on accident and are thinking about reading it. It looks more professional so they'll think better of it from the start
• LittleSettlerRoyal Road

  ★★★ 3.0

  I'm not sure if it would be considered wuxia, but that's the vibe I'm getting. Let's see...
  Character
  First of all, I love the protagonist. She's a scrappy girl, relatively intelligent, kind, hardworking and more than a little socially awkward. The author did a great job, and I'm sure most readers will root for her.
  Unfortunately, several other characters introduced so far are... Hmm. They over-act. This often throws me out of the story. But it's not all bad, as this occasionally results in something charming. Theon and the martial arts master are two examples. The problem is, it makes it hard to believe the protagonist is ever in any danger.
  Style
  The author writes in 3rd Person Omniscient. On the one hand, this helps with world-building as we get a clear picture of the way things work and so on without being limited to the protagonist's knowledge. On the other hand, it results in too much information about the motives of people, and it feels distant. It's a pity, as I would've liked to have seen things through Cora's (the protagonist) eyes.
  Although I would like to see it in a different viewpoint entirely, I don't feel as though the author used omniscient's inherent advantages well.
  Grammar
  It's perfectly understandable, but there are mistakes of phrasing and unnatural word choices. To take examples right from the premise:
  A girl fights zombies with superpower weapons. -> superpowered
  A post/apocalypse cyberpunk dystopian world to explore. -> post-apocalyptic
  A bite of romance for youths in doom days. -> days of doom (to be grammatically correct). But more importantly, these word choices are very strange and somewhat distracting.
  I noticed similar mistakes every chapter or two. Otherwise, it seemed fine. I didn't see any spelling mistakes.
  Story
  The pacing of these early chapters is excellent. That's largely why I'm giving it four stars, but there's not much more I can say. I'm cautiously optimistic.
  Conclusion
  It's fun for what it is.
  Edit: bumped it up a bit bec
• EiferRoyal Road

  ★★★ 3.0

  My first peeve with the story is the sound effect writing. It's lazy and immersion breaking by itself, but when it's written as to be indistinguishable from someone speaking it, it makes it incredibly hard to parse sometimes. Example in spoilers.
  "Swoosh, swoosh!" A couple of throwing knives darted from her hand
  and here's someone speaking
  "We have Aberrants."
  The world building seems pretty interesting so far, but it's still early.
  Speaking of early, it's hard to really judge the character. She feels too passive right now, but there's plenty of time for her to grow a bit and lots of good reasons for her passivity.
  Side characters feel.. cliché? Cartoonish? Not sure how to describe them really.
  What I've seen from the powers and enemies is very interesting and I'm looking forward to learn more about that.