Tasìa Del Alma-Gris

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

No description available.

Information

Status
Hiatus
Year
2020
Author
Ovid Delgado

Tags

ACTIONANTI-HERO LEADFEMALE LEADSCI-FISTRONG LEADPOST APOCALYPTICMYSTERYCYBERPUNKHARD SCI-FI

Royal Road Stats

Rating
4.1/ 5.0
Followers
30
Views
123,056

Chapters(236 total)

Reviews

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Community Reviews(4)

  • wordsinalineRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 4.5
    I want to give Tasia del Alma-Gris higher marks for the fact that it represents VERY different fare than most of RoyalRoad fiction. This isn't escapist speculative fiction, it's more of a proper speculative literary fiction. It's a lovely change of pace.
    The story of TdAG has unfolded (as far as I've progressed) as a mystery or thriller set in a South American women's prison.
    Tasia, the titular protagonist is pitched as a woman with feet planted in two vastly different worlds. She is both a sister of the Catholic church and a talented cat burglar, and the tension between those character traits could be intriguing ground for personal emotional growth or conflict.
    It's a shame though that these two pieces of her life don't seem to fit well together. Her time in the church impacts the story little, except where she provides the occasional prayer. I feel like it's an underdeveloped opportunity so far.
    Most of her agency in the story is based off of her burglary techniques, which she employs in subtle but high stakes conflicts with other inmates, as well as a daring plan hatched with a mysterious inmate with friends in high places. Meanwhile the threat of an unnatural plague scratches at the margins of the story, almost like a breakdown of story genre.
    The plague appears to hint at supernatural or technological origins. Everywhere the 'spores' touch the narrative, the story becomes infected by the mythological.
    None of the mysteries have been revealed by the point I've reached. I haven't pieced together the Author's objective either. Many of the events of the early book appear to meander, and parts haven't fit together yet. It's very difficult to say whether the story needs to be redirected this way or that.
    My instints tell me that I need more focused direction to keep me moving along and invested, but the tough thing is that there are several choices the author might make which would ABSOLUTELY justify the pacing.
    I wish there were other reviewers who had gotten furthe
  • MTurnerRoyal Road
    ★★★★ 4.0
    We find ourselves, in prison set
    Tasia's status quo is under threat
    A dire illness needing treating
    A mysterious group to be meeting
    Through my reading, I was engrossed
    An tale of interest, you may boast
    A real page turner, I stayed up late
    Hooked, I read several chapters straight
    Downsides were more prose than content
    Miss-spellings, grammatical errors, fairly frequent
    These things would be a simple fix
    To make your story flow, transfix
    Your story to me has names of strange
    This is not something to change
    Your story oozes culture different
    Sharing such things can lead to betterment
    I must say I must continue
    I hope the rest is within you
    For I must know what's to develop
    I wish for you in luck envelope
  • B. A. Baker (Thedude3445)Royal Road
    ★★★★ 3.5
    For everything I felt about my time with the beginning of this book, I think the main word that comes to mind for the good and the bad would be this: Focus.
    Our hero for the story, Tasìa, is an inmate in a mysterious prison in what appears to be some sort of vaguely sci-fi world. We aren’t given much context, just thrown into the action and it’s not clear how much of life in this prison is even what it seems. Certainly one of the more interesting ontological mystery setups I’ve read recently.
    However, the story has a lot of issues with what’s being focused on. Some of that is intentional, with giving out hints and details and having our protagonist constantly questioning herself and others. There’s mysterious dreams and fellow inmates with mysterious backstories, and the story’s focus is aimed to keep the reader guessing. However, it also works to confuse the reader enough that the story is sometimes hard to follow. The story takes place in South America, which is cool, but the sci-fi stuff is very vague sometimes and I could get no sense of the world thanks to how little it’s focused on. Then, sometimes, the sci-fi concepts like nano-spores become incredibly detailed all of a sudden!
    And, even almost twenty chapters into the book where I stopped, our hero was still in the midst of escaping from prison, the process of which had begun something like ten chapters earlier. The story’s focus on different details and subplots causes, at least in the beginning, the plot to move at a crawl. Slow-paced stories are completely OK, but it’s the fact that just this escape goes on for so long that made me a bit perplexed.
    The prose is an interesting subject, and may be the reason I kept reading, but also the reason I was often left confused. The prose appears to have been translated, which leaves the sentences sometimes feeling stilted. The grammar is OK, but the individual sentences can be very odd, almost too formal at times. Sometimes I actually like the way that things are d
  • Skylark (Dion Sky)Royal Road
    ★★★ 2.5
    The premise behind Tasìa Del Alma-Gris is compelling and original. It is set in a women's prison in a South American region beset by a mysterious, seemingly-supernatural plague. Much of the early story covers main character Tasìa's interactions with her fellow inmates and guards and the conflict that arises from different personalities being forced to coexist and interact inside confinement. This could make a good story on its own, but throw in a set of mysterious, unsanctioned medical experiments, a secret economy of John Wick-style assassins, and unsettling, eldritch victims of an advanced stage of the plague that has infected every human in the region, and you have yourself one awesome setting.
    There's so much going on, and so many different mysteries to explore. Considering everything takes place within the confines of the prison, I never once felt like the setting was too small. On the contrary, the author makes the prison feel like a sprawling, untamed, uncharted beast, and it oozes with potential. I love it.
    The characterisation in this story is... fine. I didn't feel particularly attached to any of the characters, but nor did I dislike them. They were believable as prison inmates, and distinct, but most interaction between characters was fleeting and transactional - I didn't get much of a chance as a reader to feel like I got to know them, aside from Tasìa herself.
    Tasìa, as a competent cat burglar, is a somewhat fun character to follow on a romp which feels like it alternates seamlessly between elaborate heist, gritty prison drama, and classic Indiana Jones-style adventure. We learn very quickly there's something special about her - something a mysterious, clandestine authority wants - but as of the time of writing this review, we don't know what it is yet. It's a common trope, but this story comes at it from a bit of a different angle, stretching out the mystery in a way that makes it feel bigger and more powerful, somehow, than Tasìa herself. It's a compe