Operation Heathrow
Community Rating
Description
Volume 1 (Ch1-16): Karine, a.k.a. Monseigneur Tanking, one of the foremost raid streamers of Massacre à l'Alcool (MAA), a MMORPG, prepares, along with her guild, the Death Fiscalists, for the race to world first. While running a dungeon with her followers, she realizes that the game's world faces a wave of unrest that's not consistent with any of the game's bugs. Will Karine be sensitive to the plight of MAA's world, as it's losing control, or will she keep playing the game that provided her with fame?
Volume 2 (Ch17-28A): On Taladu, an alien world facing a housing crisis, a near-bankrupt real estate developer is ordered by the creditors to replace much of its staff, but the creditors impose conditions to keep the real estate developer in operation. Karine is then summoned to Taladu, believing that she would prove better as a project manager than what the real estate developer can get on their own world. She reluctantly accepts this role, hoping to return to her own world once her obligations to the real estate developer are fulfilled.
Volume 3 (Ch29-50): Enno, the Lord of Kaeshana, plans on building a haunted park on his territory, in hopes of attracting commerce and travelers to his land. However, he is about to realize that building a haunted park comes with a different set of challenges compared to regular infrastructure projects.
Volume 4 (Ch51-78): Caroline, a video game streamer that turned to a new game after her last one, Massacre à l'Alcool, closed, was challenged on a stream to write a hockey romance book in November, and to write the book on air. She dives headlong into reading hockey romance books before deciding on the challenge issued by her faithful subscriber, not suspecting that memories of her hockey-playing days are about to resurface...
Volume 5 (Ch79-): Marjorine, a fresh college graduate, works a job she feels is a little unsatisfying and then turns to a video game that promised to fill the voids she feels in her life. What she has yet to realize is that the game will take an increasingly big role in her life. Will Marjorine keep control over herself, or will she fall prey to the promises of its manufacturer?
Note: Cover by Christina Thom
Information
- Status
- Hiatus
- Year
- 2024
- Author
- Yvan Ung
Tags
Royal Road Stats
- Rating
- 3.2/ 5.0
- Followers
- 3
- Views
- 19,731
Chapters(103 total)
Reviews
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Community Reviews(2)
- WilliamGabriel10Royal Road★★★★ 4.0This story gets off to a strong start. It rapidly establishes the stakes the characters place in events. The goals and the situation are established. The protagonist, Karine, is well set up in only a few paragraphs. Her personality as an experienced player familiar with the game is nice.
That said, there are a few issues. Which I intend to bring up below;
The supporting cast is not set up as quickly as I would have liked. There are several opportunities to introduce other members of the guild and characterize them. However, these opportunities are missed and Karine remains the only really established character as of this review. In addition, some of the writing lacks emotional punch and feels like a paperwork report. The protagonists do not seem to be very emotionally invested in events, so it is difficult for the reader to be emotionally invested. I understand the author was going for mundane things in some of these events. But it sabotages a very effective hook.
The main plot deals with an immersion MMO and largely focuses on a series of strange glitches. One which Karine becomes involved in. Owing to it interfering with her playthrough. I am quite interested to see where it goes.
If you like MMO stories, this one might be a good choice.
Grammar is not my specialty, but I didn't notice any serious issues.
Overall, good read. - KT CorbettRoyal Road★★★★ 3.5The premise of this story--the denizens of an MMO world being self aware entities in their own real world who are taken over by the players who control them--is a really interesting one. Furthermore, you can tell the author has a great deal of passion for and knowledge of online gaming, so the way the main character Karine interacts with MAA as game feels believable and dynamic. I can definitely imagine this as a real game with a passionate fanbase. The social and political dynamics of the in-game world are also very well thought out and interesting.
The problem is that a lot of the game-centric parts, like explanations of tanking mechanics, can come off as a bit dry and disconnected from the larger narrative. There are also a decent number of grammatical problems that could be ironed out to make things flow more smoothly.
There are also shifts in sudden shifts in perspective that can be very disorienting. For example, in the third chapter before Karine is about to start the Sun Disk raid, we start hearing from “Monseigneur”, the real person Karine is controlling as she plays the game. This is the first time we see Monseigneur’s perspective while she is being controlled, and it only lasts one paragraph before going back to Karine.
There is also the way the characters don't seem to react to things that they should . For example, in the scenario above, Monseigneur does not expressing her discomfort and/or horror at this happening, she merely comments on a plot point. The most striking example is the way Karine barely reacts to Monseigneur appearing to her as a sort of astral projection for the first time. It takes several encounters with her before Karine has any real emotional reaction to this experience, which is very jarring for the reader.
On the positive side, there are plenty of scenes of intense in-game action and it's clear that the author has a strong gasp of his subject matter here. If MAA were a game in the real world, I would definitely want to play it.
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