Oathbound

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Your soul is a commodity traded by powerful beings that attempt to outwit mortals with tempting bargains and the promise that a soul is just an ethereal thing they won't ever have to worry about.

Enter, Albert Carol: Idiot teenage boy and waste of space with no future.

Killed due to mysterious circumstances, Albert needs to negotiate his way out of selling his soul to the so-called Grim Reaper and try to earn his mortal life back. But Death doesn't give up so easily, and Albert's soul doesn't seem to be the only thing he's after.

New Story Theme Song:Bonesby Imagine Dragons

What to expect:

-A contemplative strategy game of words and agreements akin to Death Note.

-Discussions of death and value

-Complex characters

-Disguised motives and identities

-Light action

-Subterfuge and system breaking

[participant in the Royal Road Writathon challenge] - April 2022

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For those arriving at his work from other older versions of this story this is the most modern version (V4, if I don't count all the little micro-rewrites that happened between V3 and here).

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2022
Author: WorryWrite

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.3/ 5.0
Followers: 14
Views: 14,733

Chapters(36 total)

Reviews

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

Community Reviews(2)

RydeniusRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
I'm really surprised that this story hasn't even been rated yet, much less reviewed. The story has an interesting concept and start and a writing style that is engaging, easy to read, and brings out the main character's personality.
This is a preliminatry review that I will update as I get further into the story, but for now, here's the scores:
Story 4.5:
At chapter 6, there isn't a lot of the story to have make a judgement on yet, but the jist seems to be that the main character has been targeted by Death and gets swindled in order to get his life back. For better or worse, now that the deal has been struck, Albert has to make good on the contract and perform his agreed upon tasks.
My main subtraction on the story front is that the negotiations with Death were stretched over two chapters and felt a bit round-about and meandering. Also Death seems to be putting in a lot of effort for a likely 'meh' return, though that could change as more of the story is unveiled.
Style 5.0:
I thought about docking this half a star over my mentioned issues concerning the negotiations with Death, but the use of short sentences for emphasis and the way the each character's protrayal tries to make them memorable by illustrating their traits through 'show' rather than 'tell', I think that out-weights the other considerations.
Charater 5.0:
The main character is relatable and a bit quirky—really all the characters thus for have a nice amount of quirkiness to them and make me smile at times as a reader.
Grammer 5.0:
The grammar is pretty great, with only an occasional minor issue or two per chapter.
OnyavarRoyal Road
★★★ 3.0
I am generally pretty critical with stories, and my ranking goes from decent and enjoyable stories (2 stars) over good and great stories up to the best stories I can imagine (5 stars, and only for finished stories). So here I grade with "good" in the overall score, and next I'll give my reasoning behind it.
The grammar is pretty decent, although a few errors were noticeable even for me as a non-native reader. But overall, I must say that not only the grammar, but also the writing style is pretty good: there is a good mixture of dialogue and exposition, it's mostly clear who speaks to whom and where they are, etc. The start of the story threw me off with in-medias-res (after the death of Albert, he has to negotiate with Death's persona), but afterwards it was made pretty clear how the story is going to be structured.
Very barebone Spoilers next, on what the story is all about: The first five chapters are having the exposition, and the MC Albert has to sign a contract with Death, is going to be revived in the normal world of the living, with a catch. Then the "action" starts, i.e. finding a partner and go collecting souls. (On this topic I'm going to admit, that grimdark urban reaper stories aren't exactly my favorite genre, and I was thrown off by the tag-list when I missed the clearly stated key words "urban" and "grimdark".)
So I read just 10 chapters to form this judgement: I find the whole story premise weird; and the deal between Albert and Death not overly realistic or beneficial to either of them; the arbitration space and the overall world-building is pretty sparse and then I don't get the motivation behind throwing Amy into the mix. The story and plot is clear-cut and understandable on its own, I just don't find it appealing at all - personally. None of the three main characters (Death, Albert, Amy) are really enjoying what they do, and especially Albert is unwilling and at best motivated by fear. What should then motivate me to read+enjoy this? But I'll rat