Flesh Weaver
Self-Published
Community Rating
Description
Rína's dream of independence and perhaps even an apothecary shop of her own are under threat by an impending arranged marriage. Seeing no alternative, she flees for the wider world, but her escape doesn't go as planned. Rína now finds herself lost deep in a forest and at the mercy of a seclusive witch whose doorstep she intrudes upon. But all is not lost as the witch follows the law of hospitality... and may even be willing to take on an apprentice.
What to expect:
- A road-story with a chill slice of life status quo that needs to be occasionally protected using graphic violence.
- Wholesome adoptive mother/daughter relationship.
- Emergent hard magic system with cultivation style progression. (The magic system's simple rules are at a low abstraction level, akin to physics, and everything from souls to the types of magic to cultivation progression to undead and ley lines all emerge from those simple ironclad rules.)
Schedule: There is none, chapters take as long as they take.
Information
- Status
- Hiatus
- Year
- 2024
- Author
- Bi-Dailey
Tags
Royal Road Stats
- Rating
- 4.8/ 5.0
- Followers
- 190
- Views
- 54,756
Chapters(42 total)
Reviews
No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!
Community Reviews(3)
- BurnNoteRoyal Road★★★★★ 5.0Most authors on the site are hobbiest. Which is awesome, but it also means that you can't really expect the quality of someone how does it for a living. It's a rare joy to find an exception, like this story.
The first way that's noticeable is the language. It's more playful and imaginative than what you generally get in web fiction, especially when you're not reading something deliberately comedic.
That also allows the story more subtlety in building the main characters and their relationship. It's quite well done, so far anyway, it's still a bit early to say how it shakes down in the long term.
Plot wise, the story so far lives up to it's promise of slice-of-life with sometimes violent interludes. I'm a little worried whether it will become directionless because a good slice of life, take Beware of Chicken as an example, does still need mid and long term goals, and people doing and accomplishing things. It's not an issue for now as they're still settling into their relationship and the MC learning the basics of magic, but it's what I'd point to as a concern if I had to. Still, the world building so far has plenty of oppertunities for complications.
Speaking of word building: It's lived up to the promise of a fairly hard magic system. It hasn't really done anything interesting to make that more than neat window dressing, but it's early enough in the story that it's still explaining the system, so I'm not too fussed about it.
All in all, a damn fine story, and I'm hopeful the aspects that haven't proven themselves will turn out well. - DefinitelyNotAReptileRoyal Road★★★★★ 4.5First of all, you should probably read this! I don't know why it doesn't have more readers honestly. It's not perfect but it's closer to it than most stories on this website!
To get it out of the way first, the grammar is pretty much near perfect.
The style Is great and falls exactly in the sweet spot between the all too common very plain way of writing that's everywhere in other web novels, and something that's too flowery for a story of this nature. There's genuine effort put into descriptions that go well beyond simple statement of fact, and it is a bit unserious at times, but that serves the story well.
The characters are well thought out: their history and motivations color their actions in a very convincing manner. I was able to empathize with the main character immediately watching her relationship with the witch who adopts her progress was a delight.
The story was not a clear 5/5 for me however. It has a strong start and I was immediately hooked, wondering what would happen next. The worldbuilding is also very strong. The world itself and it's laws of physics and magic is unique and fairly interesting, and the way civilization has adapted to that is inspired! However, I feel like sometimes the story goes too deep into it's magic system. While it is very well thought out and I love learning about it, a few too many times and for a little too long the story becomes an in depth and quite technical explanation of how magic works and how the main character or the with is using it. I wouldn't mind it as much if this information was exposed in smaller chunks, but there are sometimes moments that are chapter long or more (and the chapters are fairly long) that are just descriptions of the inner workings of magic inside the main character. It wouldn't be as much of a problem if the chapters were released frequently, but when we sometimes have to wait multiple weeks between chapters, it's really frustrating to end up getting full chapter that amounts to only esoteric - Strictly WorseRoyal Road★★★★★ 4.5So far this seems to be a really good master/apprentice story with an interesting and distinctive magic system. The magic seems suitably mystical and interesting while also leaning on principles of biology, chemistry and engineering in places and the MC doesn't rush through the early steps of learning it. The nature of the magic has an impact on the wider world building though we haven't seen much of that up close just yet. The characters seem solid and the interactions seem very authentic. The interactions between the MC and her master threw me off a little at first but I really enjoy them on the whole now.