Somnium

Information

Status

Hiatus

Year

2020

Author

Fernicus

• 8- Dungeons and Dragons
  May 5, 2020
• 7 - Negotiation
  Apr 18, 2020
• 6- Choice
  Mar 13, 2020
• 5 - Risk
  Feb 28, 2020
• 4 - Home
  Feb 14, 2020
• 3- Cabin
  Feb 7, 2020
• 2- Snail
  Jan 27, 2020
• 1- Cold
  Jan 24, 2020
• Maps
  Feb 21, 2020

Reviews

Community Reviews(7)

• RaelikRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  Fernicus uses an enthralling descriptive form of storytelling. The environment and people feel real, as do their struggles.
  I like the development of Ria's character so far. She is already starting to show some growth at chapter 5
  They have created a bleak winter landscape in which the characters have to struggle to survive.
  Chapter 5 is a little system heavy but this is expected in a litrpg and if the first few chapters are an indication it won't be the norm.
  Grammar and style are good. Nothing too serious in what I've read so far. Nothing has made me stop to wonder what is being said, and there are no glaring mistakes. It flows with an easy cadence that makes the paragraphs seem shorter than they are.
  It's a little early to rate the story itself but the author has been sprinkling in some plot elements that I can see.
  Don't let the blue boxes at the start of the chapters discourage you from the story.
  I look forward to more.
• ArcticFeverRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  Style is good, I love how descriptive everything is. It's obvious that the author put effort a lot of thought and effort into it. Dialogue isn't blocky and the story transitions nicely.
  The story is taking a little while to develop but it has a lot of potential. Will know more later.
  I'm not too strict with grammar. I didn't have many problems with the grammar. As long as it reads well I'm fine with it.
  The characters are interesting and have lots of room to grow. I personally identify with Yuki in that I daydream a lot so I might be biased.
  Overall, I really like this story.
• wordsinalineRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  Well I am confused and pleased so far by Somnium.
  So far nothing radically novel, reincarnation into a fantasy world with LitRPG elements, scary monsters and stat screens.
  The nice difference is, the Author has the good sense not to rush the slow brew of their story setup. The deliberate, visually descriptive survival experience of the main character Ria is engaging, and the 19th century level technology supplies are fun to learn about.
  The prose is in a strange state. It's both ambitious and a little in need of refinement. The better sentences are wonderfully evocative of the snow crisp landscape, and there are little things which make me feel like the Author is experimenting with they way they use language.
  Grammar's probably the weak link here right now. Gotta get those possessive apostrophes down. I also think the author would be well served by experimenting with the hyphen, there are a lot of incomplete sentences lying around which strike me as more of a style choice than a mistake? Like there is supposed to be a sound stop in the middle of a thought. But a hard period seems inappropriate for these, try that hyphen.
  There's also a recurring habit of starting a paragraph with an incomplete sentence, which appeals to me but doesn't 100% work just yet. Gotta get that camber on, sentence rhythm is the heart of poetry. Try reading your prose out loud when writing. It can provide some great insight in where to refine your pauses and stops.
  I think someone mentioned in comments that the alternate POV chapters would be well served to be delivered as independent updates, as opposed to packaged with Ria's story. Jason's in particular is so unconnected, it makes me curious how he'll become a part of Ria's arc. But it's not of particular issue, and a bit charming to see the foundations being laid for the long term story.
  I'm hoping that the survivalism aspects don't get overshadowed as the more RPG-like elements come to the fore, but overall I am pleased at the pace, tone,
• VelaraRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 4.0

  Overview:
  Somnium is an ambitious GameLit survival story, that executes the VR-RPG elements in an fresh way while also  integrating them into the plot.
  However it is also a story that at times suffers from the scope of its own ambition. Numerous POV characters are introduced into the story quite rapidly, sometimes multiple with in a chapter and as of this review are given little screen time to breath. This over ambitious breadth also applies to plot lines, as many of the POV characters seem to come with their own independent plot lines, which given time have the potential to be great. But can at times leave the story feeling unfocused
  The writing also suffers from a significant number of grammatical errors.
  If you can overlook the grammatical and pacing issues, Somnium has fascinating meta plot to intrigue you. Additionally, Ria's story, which has been the main focus to date, is a great example of a survival story done well. And despite limited screen time the personality of many of the POV character's shine through.  Consequently, I'd describe the story as flawed but promising.
  Overall: 4/5
  Style: 4/5
  The author's description of environments is engaging and helps to drive the tension MC vs the Environment that is crucial for a good survival story. On occasion I found some of the more flowery descriptions left me a tiny bit lost on exact locations of things, but on net I'd consider this to a strong point of the story.
  However, stylistically the story utilizes multiple mid-chapter perspective switches occasionally to good effect, but often in ways that left my puzzled and dissatisfied. This effect is compounded by the author utilizing the same section breaks to denote scene changes and perspective changes both of which occur quite frequently.
  Grammar: 2.5/5
  At the time of writing Somnium is unfortunately plagued by grammatical errors.
  Most commonly, apostrophe errors. Ill instead of I'll. Lets instead of Let's. It's self instead of itself.
  Another frequent error is t
• David MuskRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 4.0

  Disclaimer: The author is looking to improve as a writer and specifically asked for critical feedback. If I come across as harsh, I’m only trying to help. :P
  Grammar:
  It definitely needs some work in this area. The biggest culprits were missing and extra apostrophes (I counted 7+ in Chapter 1 alone.) Mostly, these were instances of mixing up its/it’s or your/you're.
  There were also some interesting sentence structure choices such as mixing up the order of nouns and verbs.  There's a lack of commas in some areas, and many sentences flow far too quickly with no room to breathe. There were also cases where full stand-alone sentences were separated by commas rather than periods.
  Style:
  I’ll start with the good here: the author makes frequent use of similes and metaphors, which is always a plus for me.
  Many of the sentences have the potential to flow well, but they’re not quite there yet. I can see the author getting inspiration from works with more poetic/lyrical prose, but this sort of style takes practice to develop an intuitive feel for the rhythm and word order. Not to mention the grammar issues I listed above. Many sentences are also too wordy and could benefit from trimming the fat.
  My advice: keep reading well-written works that inspire you, take notes about what works, and apply those techniques to your own writing accordingly. I do appreciate seeing a more descriptive style in a litRPG, but this sort of thing just takes practice.
  We also see a lot of phrases like this, which create a disconnect between the reader and the character:
  “Rhia saw, Ria heard, Ria felt, etc…”
  Phrases like these can make the readers feel like they’re being told about the character rather than experiencing the story through her eyes.
  In contrast to this, we get a lot of the character’s thoughts in italics. Sometimes, up to four or five paragraphs in a row as she mentally works through the litRPG system in Chapter 5. At this point, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the story would have
• BeeqsRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 4.0

  LitRPGs are admittedly not my cup of tea generally speaking, but I've decided to give this one a go and I think it's promising so far.
  -Style-
  Overall, I like the author's approach to description and worldbuilding. Objects and places are described vibrantly and there's no ambiguity in my head as to what I'm looking at. This may sound like a small point, but it isn't. It strikes a nice balance between providing enough description to put the images in my head without having so much that I become disinterested.
  I also like the use of the tables for displaying character progression. Some of the LitRPGs I've read just use plain text, which is visually uninteresting. If we're going to go for the RPG feel, let's ****ing go for it and those spreadsheet tables do that nicely.
  One thing where I am not as much of a fan is the internal monologue. There is an awful lot of it and I generally prefer that character thoughts be little accents as opposed to being quite this central. It's possible that the author intends to front load this to walk us through the character becoming acquainted with their system and it will diminish later, so I'm not knocking too much off for this gripe right now.
  -Story-
  I like where this is going so far, but it's of course still early and I will revise this later once more of it unfolds.
  -Grammar-
  Here there is some weakness. Sentence structure has improved, I think, as it's gone along. Comma usage is a bit inconsistent. In some places they seem extraneous and actually distract me. Apostrophes should be used in some places where they currently are not. An example is "natures bounty" in Chapter 5, which should say "nature's bounty".
  It's not unreadable or anything like that. Just a bit on the rough side and it can easily be fixed via editing.
  -Characters-
  I was actually going to give this a four star rating until the additional POVs started playing a bigger role. I don't fully know what to think of them yet, so I may revise this upward once we get to kn
• AnjinRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 4.0

  I enjoy a good LitRPG as much as the next person, but what drew me into this story was the tension around the need to survive in harsh conditions. I almost forgot that this story was set in the game world, because I was so enticed by Ria's battle against the elements and basic human necessities.
  As other reviewers have mentioned, the grammar is not this story's strongest point, although it's not bad, by any means. I find that most of the grammar issues could be addressed with a few more go-overs, and absolute credit to the author for continually revising their work. The author is very involved and very passionate, and I think that's great to see.
  What's perhaps a bit more jarring is where grammar has been sacrificed for the sake of style. Chapter 4 had numerous examples of incomplete sentences being used to convey disjointed internal thoughts. For me, this didn't quite work, and broke the flow a little. However, I respect the author's decision here and acknowledge that people have different approaches. Personally, I preferred the approach in Chapter 1, where the character's internal voice was tagged on to the end of a narrative paragraph in italics. I quite enjoyed the play between the events unfolding and the personal impact thereafter.
  The characters have thus far been interesting, and it does feel like we are on a journey with them. I like the less is more approach, and feel we become quite involved with the characters as we peek over their shoulders and watch their progress.
  However, the main reason I give this fiction a huge nod of respect is because I've been reading this sitting in South Africa, on the tail end of a brutal summer. Yet, somehow, the author made me feel very, very cold. It's that ability to really set a scene and convey a sense of the surroundings that talks to all of a reader's senses that I think is the real accomplishment here.