Soldier of Fortune
Self-Published
Community Rating
Description
Soldiers may have a lucky knife, or lucky boots, but never a lucky sword. Because all swords are lucky, and it's all the same sort of luck. It points both ways. Labeling a sword "Lucky" is taunting both the gods of fortune. The old man who plays dice, and the ladies who do not. There are only two types of soldiers who would touch such a sword. Those who don't know what the symbol meant, but if you've been a soldier long enough you know the symbols. And then there's the sort of soldier who does it anyway.
Those soldiers, if they don't die, stick close to them. Because if they don't die, then they really do have one of the gods of luck on their side. The longer they live, the tighter you stick to them. Until their luck runs out, and if it runs out in battle? Then run. There's no contract or oath worth fighting for in the face of that omen, child. Because if a Soldier of Fortune dies, then either the Old Man is rolling his dice or the Ladies are clipping their threads.
And if they're working together? Then you can't run far or fast enough, because the web is woven and the dice are loaded.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is a story about a sword, a dying old man, the slave boy that he saves from bondage, and a spy. The sword's not magical, the old man isn't a hidden master, the boy is just sort of special, and the spy's not very good at her job. Yet they disrupt the status quo of a powerful Orthodox Sect and destroy a clandestine clan, shaking the foundations of an empire.
Information
- Status
- Cancelled
- Year
- 2022
- Author
- A. Stargazer
Tags
Royal Road Stats
- Rating
- 4.7/ 5.0
- Followers
- 430
- Views
- 59,697
Chapters(23 total)
Reviews
No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!
Community Reviews(10)
- B.Z. HardingRoyal Road★★★★★ 5.0Overall: So far I've really been enjoying this story.. There's lots of classic xianxia moments where you get to watch the MC appear effortlessly and cluelessly awesome from other characters' perspectives, and the characters are overall very well balanced. I like the mature theming and it's an interesting mix with the typical light novel aspects while not being too gritty or overbearing.
Character: By far the characters are the most polished and enjoyable part of the story so far, besides the obvious with the fun OP xianxia beats. There's comedic and solemn interactions and they're all written very well. 5/5
Story: The story so far has been enjoyable. I think it could do with some more serious conflict, but the sort of solemn approach it has going on is interesting enough too. I'm curious to see what it looks like going further. 5/5
Grammar: There are often mistakes with homonyms, but it's pretty clean for RR. 4.5/5; needs a bit of editing
Style: The style a little on this one. It's better than most stories on RoyalRoad, of course, so I'll give it a 4.5/5, but there are some occasional glaring issues that would likely be resolved with some editing passes. Most notably, weirdly long, uninterrupted dialogue gets annoying. The character work shines through in those long passages, but they should be cleaned up or broken up with beats etc. because as-is they are off-putting. Prose flows decently well--very good for RR, top-notch in fact. Author clearly has a strong vocabulary. - Brandon CarterRoyal Road★★★★★ 5.0You said you started this and it turned into a monster. Well, I'm glad it did, because you've got a great story here.
Grammar - Nothing worth talking about. Didn't really find any problems.
Story - You start it right in the middle of things. I mean, the old guy's about to off himself, how more middle of things can you want? I love the idea of listening to your luck, and it mirrors a concept that will show up in my own story at some point in the future. I have zero complaints in this area as well.
Character - All the characters, large and small, have a place in your story. I really feel like I'm reading about a grizzled old war vet on his last legs. The kid feels like a kid. Your nobleman, brief as his part was, felt like a nobleman.
Style - This is the only part that wasn't 5 star for me, and my reasons aren't really problems exactly, more of a polish issue, I'd say. Part of me feels like we get way more information about the channels and ki and meridians and whatnot than is important to the story in the first few chapters.At some points, it begins feeling like exposition. Now, you handle it pretty well, but I think you could get away with a lot less info sharing and we wouldn't suffer for it. Takes away the magic in places, but that's okay.
The other part is the blocks of text we get at times just feels so weighty. Like, I feel like MORE paragraphs would make it flow a little better. Break up large blocks of dialogue with some body language, or just into separate paragraphs. Those two things are the only real problems I had at any point, and again, these are both just polish and editing things, I'd say. I'm not even going to let it impact the overall score.
Overall, I love what you're doing here. You've got a great voice, and a knack for setting a scene and speaking in-character. Well done. - CalaventeRoyal Road★★★★★ 5.0That's a grand story about how Fate can influence the life of a MC .. and how that MC will influence forever another MC.
It's a story about Fate, and people being moved by fate, some deliberatly following fate, some being moved without their knowledge..
it's a story about domino effects, about the butterfly effect.
it's a story built in a grand world, one with sects and clans and mercenary orders, and an empire, and other countries and politics, internal and external, mortal & cultivator & immortal, that mesh together well in a weaving that is impressive.
It's a story using a cultivation system that I never heard about, so close to the usual that it's easy to follow, but different enough that you discover new things :) - DestroyatronMk8Royal Road★★★★★ 5.0Soldier of Fortune is an odd sort of cultivation story. Odd, and extremely good. If follows a pair of Awakened, one a slave boy, and one an assassin. The series goes out of it's way to make contrivance a part of the story, with Fate showing it's hidden hands to the reader.
STYLE: It's extremely well written, with excellent prose, good dialogue, and outstanding fight scenes. The descriptions are vivid without being verbose, and it's easy to follow what's happening at any given moment.
STORY: The story itself is an absolute banger. it starts simple enough, but the world and the characters get progressively deeper and more complex the farther you go. There are a lot of twists and turns that you don't see coming, and so far all of them make perfect sense in hindsight.
CHARACTERS: The Characters, especially the MCs, are flawed and likeable. Most of them aren't terribly complicated, but they are distinct and vivid, with clear motivations and consistency in their actions. Pretty much all the characters get some level of character development, and not all the arcs are for the best. (For the character. All the arcs are good for the story.)
GRAMMAR: If there were any mistakes, I didn't notice.
So, yeah. It's good. Go read it. - Gladiola12Royal Road★★★★★ 5.0This is a book that should be in print already. It is well articulated, captures your attention, paints pictures that makes you feel you are part of the story. "A lovely day to die" was such a perfect opening line. I love that Mal has the privilege of one last hurrah. He saves Baty..whose name I love for its uniqueness .
- LiteratiRoyal Road★★★★★ 5.0First of all, if you didn't understand the synopsis you are not alone!
It is not really about a lucky sword nor is it one of those stories where the MC gets OP by being lucky.
What this story is hilarious in it's own drab way. It does not focus only on the MC and weaves a rich world around the surrounding cast of characters. There is progression, and cultivation but believe me it is unlike any cultivation story. I highly recommend you read the first 100 or so pages. My favourite part right until now is
the neck stretching by the military orders. - Shyan BrightlyRoyal Road★★★★★ 5.0This is going to be my first favorite and first perfect review because I think this author did a fantastic job on this story.
I'm not a cultivation fan, I don't even really get the genre... though this may change my mind. But this just worked for me on all levels. Lets go through them.
Style: Right off the bat this is well writtenand polished. It reads like a published novel and I really appreciate that. Everything flows. It doesn't suffer from excessively flowery vocabulary nor does it under season its sentences. perfect balance.
Grammar Score: Very few mistakes, if any. I can usually spot a lot here on RR but didn't see any with this guy. So kudos for being thorough!
Story Score: This is where the fiction really shines. The story. If the author is pantsing this, they are doing a damn good job because there is a lot of good foreshadowing and well rounded plot arcs intersecting and weaving around eachother.
I was so sad when a certain thing happened to a certain character, and thought I might stop reading at that point! But nope! The author kept me hooked and that's awesome.
Character Score: Mal is a great character, the boy is a great character, and the sinister master is too! I love how all have shaped as the story moved forward. I think so long as we kept the characters fresh and dont' start recycling tropes / plot archetypes, this story will remain fresh and interesting in terms of its characterization.
Overall: Well done! I want to read more :) Oh one thing! Why soldier of fortune? It made think this would be a military sci fi fic! - VisorRoyal Road★★★★★ 5.0Even though I thought this story wasn't very good, I'll still give it 5 stars anyways because if I bothered to read up to the end of one volume, it doesn't deserve to go unread.
All the antagonists are stupid, and all the heroes are stupidly competent. We are supposed to believe that a spy family that has been operating for hundreds of years is so stupid that they just send spies in one after the other to infiltrate mercenary groups to acquire information about someone that is literally dead, and whose name was incredibly common knowledge among adjacent mercenary groups? Even though these mercenary groups work for the same nation they do, and there is no reason to believe any of it is protected information? No, they just walk in like lemmings to get hanged by le based soldiers. The author is clearly going out of their way to tell us "These people are so stupid they deserve to die."
There is this constant wank of muh mercenary groups, muh whispers, muh hidden masters, to the point that the actual spy organization that is operating in urban areas is rendered completely impotent. And they are our main antagonist. The only other people that antagonize our genius protagonist are a "prodigy" that ends up getting surpassed by the protagonist's mentor before any fighting even transpires, and his former master as a slave who is played almost entirely for laughs because he is just a fat, stupid dweeb, and all his plans are doomed to failiure.
The antagonists all get killed by the EPIC PATRIOT WHISPERS that kill all of them, and the spy faction doesn't even know this enormous faction even exists. The spy faction does not even get a single win over the EPIC PATRIOT WHISPERS because the author feels this need to shit on them all the time, and it is extremely obvious. I thought perhaps this was just putting them on the back foot before an empire strikes style come back, but nope, they all get tortured, and the faction is defunct. Keep in mind this is the only antagonist for the e - luda305Royal Road★★★★★ 5.0"He frowned, wondering why two children interrupting his suicide mattered."
This gem of a sentence appears in the first chapter and, in a nutshell, captures the entire prologue and first book. An old soldier dying from liver rot is about to go out on his own terms when the tug of luck or fate brings him to these two boys. And that makes all the difference in a world where Luck and Fate are real and have profound impacts on the world. The author originally said it was only meant to be a short story consisting of the prologue chapters, and that would have been great. The way he extended it to another volume was near flawless in concept. - vernkeithRoyal Road★★★★★ 4.5This is one of the few works I have actually gave a review of. So you can believe I'm impressed. The writing is good the characters are very well fleshed out. The MC is decently well written and the plot armor is believable. All in all a very good read. Could use some better proof reading though.