Rune Mage

Information

Status

Ongoing

Author

KatrinHollister

Reviews

Community Reviews(4)

• soapsyRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  A fantastic story that draws you in hook, line, and sinker. Seiren is a dynamic lead who doesn't pull her punches and listens only when it's in her favour. At this point, I'm genuinely confused as to why this doesn't have more reviews.
  Your style is flawless. When you write, there's this distinct emotional tinge that every character takes on, making it incredibly easy to connect a character to a feeling and giving them a lasting impact. Chapters after she was introduced, Loren still left behind a little fizzle of energy whenever she was mentioned. Even then, you have this dry (for a lack of a better word), witty way of wording things that made me chuckle even when I probably shouldn't have - and that's always a good thing.
  I have nothing to say about the grammar. Maybe there was a misplaced comma here or there, but honestly? It's more than readable and the little mistakes don't bother me, so that's a 5/5 for me.
  Story-wise, it took a bit of time for things to get there, but once you reach the meat of the story it's fascinating. The dynamics between the characters and the kingdom is all geared towards a tense, dramatic payoff, and the more that we read the more mystery and breadth the story reveals. I am in awe of how much ground you're covering in a single story ad of how many ways it can branch off and still be fantastic.
  But a warning! I understand that you don't want to dump buckets of information on your readers, but it would be nice for us to get a little primer on the different types of magic. I know that I genuinely don't understand the difference between burst and flash magic, despite your explanations of both, nor do I understand why a mage might prefer one to another, or even how many different magics are commonly used. Even just a little more concrete explanation would be great.
  I can also see that this story is heavily inspired by FMA. It's not a bad thing; just be careful that it doesn't run too close to the FMA storyline (although I highly doubt it wil
• JHeresyRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 4.0

  Wow. With a bang. Well written and it pulls you in.
• MetafalicaRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 4.0

  I cannot, in good conscience give this a higher rating than 4 stars, nor does it deserve one.
  Let's go over things point-by-point:
  The grammar's pretty much on point, so that's great.
  The style is confusing to read sometimes, scenes blend into each other, it's not always clear who's speaking, a few things feel very sudden and wierdly placed.
  The story feels very similiar to Fullmetal Alchemist, as someone mentioned earlier. But this is thankfully only relatively early in the story and the feeling fades with time (and chapters). Other than that, I enjoyed the story.
  Now, onto what I find to be the most important part of any novel. The characters.
  The characters felt mostly okay early on, so there's that. But later on, the characters stop being as coherent, at least the good ones. They say and do things that don't fit their character up to that point, at least I feel that to be the case. The villains, however, tend to stay in character. Heck, overall, some villains were better characters, better fleshed out.
  TLDR:
  Check the title of the review.
• GaskRoyal Road

  ★★★ 2.5

  Rune Mage should be a novelty to anyone familiar with Full Metal Alchemist as they are very similar.  Unfortunately, for me, the two main characters here are just not likeable or sympathetic; Seiren is irredeemably petulant and amoral and her sister Madeleine, Rune Mage’s analog to Alphonse Elric, is a weak attempt at a moral guide at best.  Having read up to chapter 29 I can say that there were some interesting background plots that held promise.  But as Seiren becomes a Dr. Mengele like character and Madeleine flip flops from begging for death to free herself from her sister one moment to offhandedly pardoning her with statements like: “Maybe we could use a death row inmate instead, Madeleine said, but the jeer was half-hearted. The wound had healed and the sisters were closer than ever before.”  It just became impossible to continue reading.
  I don’t object to evil or deranged characters on principle but I do appreciate some amount of logical consistency in a story.  You cannot have a protagonist who is carrying out twisted and murderous experiments on people without any discernable remorse one moment suddenly become a coddled child whose thoughts inexplicably morph in a matter of days to: “Seiren's stomach churned. The thought of using magic to kill instead of aid was sickening.”  Well you could but that would require a split personality disorder to match the character’s muddled thoughts and motivations.
  TLDR: At this point the story would be salvageable for me if Seiren were tweaked to be more tolerable and if she didn’t jump right away after graduation into Nazi death camp research unless you made the story properly reflect some plausible build up and consequences for such a decision.