StarSword Online

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

In a near cyberpunk future, VRMMOs aren’t all just fun and games.

Max is a poor teenage boy, born into the lowest societal rung of Gray City known as the Bottoms. To earn money to pay for his dying mother’s medical treatment, Max04428 works as a gem miner in Alethia—the fantasy world within a death game called Starsword Online.

No reality is kind to those of the Bottoms, however, and soon Max’s ever-mounting expenses begin nipping at his heels, threatening to bring his fragile life crumbling down. Overworked and under-appreciated, he takes drastic measures to improve his situation. Namely, thievery... but new thieves are rarely good thieves. When the scheme backfires, Max is thrown into a dangerous world with no friends, very little knowledge, and nothing in his inventory but an unidentifiable black stone he found in the mines.

As Max struggles to level up and gain power in the vast world of Alethia, he’ll need to fight his way through mountain citadels ruled by Yetis and a sky city with an empty throne. Steadfast allies are sure to come to his aid, but murderous enemies also follow his trail, seeking answers to the mysterious item in his possession…

Answers which lead to the very heart of Starsword Online itself.

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2022
Author: MShale

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.7/ 5.0
Followers: 43
Views: 19,057

Reviews

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Community Reviews(1)

skeptruneRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
Overall: The highlight of this story is how easy it is to feel sympathy for the MC. He's very sweet and rational with sensible decision-making while being about as far from overpowered as it gets for a progression story.
Characters: The characters are my FAVORITE part of the story. They all feel incredibly real, well-explained, and differentiated from one-another. That includes the NPC's. The characters all showcase different parts of the human experience and drew my interest in different ways. Some of them, like the MC, are just downright lovable and gave me pleasant warm-feelings in my chest.
Style: Generally great; it never feels like the author is listing or being too verbose. However, there is nothing really unique or special about it. I would call it "standard-issue good." It's not going to be something that I could see a reader criticizing, but it's also far from being the highlight of the story for me.
Story: The situations and plot have solid depth and all flow well. I really apprecciate that I never have "wtf is this" moments throughout the story. The MC especially has very well-thought out large and small goals and there's definitely satisfaction in seeing him check those off. However, there are spots where I feel like there were small gaps. Nothing so significant that I would say it feels like there are missing chapters, but there definitely could be a few more paragraphs in places.
Grammar: Nothing much to say on this, it's flawless enough that I never notice anything wrong and I'm fairly aggressive with the grammar suggestions typically.