Team Player

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Born in a world where portals have broken through the edges of reality, Alexandretta Morrison is excited to be a brand-new member of the Golden Swallow Survey Group. She has always wanted to be a corporate sponsored Surveyor, with the responsibility to risk her life to enter the portals and exploit them for the good of the company, as well as reducing the magic flows that would threaten people outside the portal. She is definitely not secretly the child of a famous ex-Surveyor in hiding. Her new company is definitely not performing dangerous experiments with the portals that endanger her life and the lives of everyone nearby. Alexandretta would never interfere with a company approved project in an attempt to save the lives of her fellow Surveyors, and the public at large. After all, she is a team player.

Information

Status: Ongoing
Year: 2024
Author: WanderingLeaf

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.6/ 5.0
Followers: 400
Views: 160,519

What readers say about Team Player

“Axe wielding daughter of retired/killed legendary super cop(?) discovers that the path to her dream job is is a leaking septic pipe winding through cadaverous structures of corporate systems. Integration does not go smoothly. Terrible bosses, no mention of…”
reil-rhiilRoyal Road5.0 / 5
“Set in a realistic world with fleshed out characters that seem to have a background and life outside of the book. Alex is looking for a way forward in life and it just happens to involve beating aliens over the head and taking their stuff. Throw in team mat…”
HiddenslothRoyal Road5.0 / 5

Reviews

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Community Reviews(10)

reil-rhiilRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Axe wielding daughter of retired/killed legendary super cop(?) discovers that the path to her dream job is is a leaking septic pipe winding through cadaverous structures of corporate systems. Integration does not go smoothly.
Terrible bosses, no mention of salaries, hazardous working conditions, and rebellious attitudes abound.
Thankfully, nothing cuts through red tape, quite like an axe.
HiddenslothRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Set in a realistic world with fleshed out characters that seem to have a background and life outside of the book. Alex is looking for a way forward in life and it just happens to involve beating aliens over the head and taking their stuff. Throw in team mates who have their own reasons to be there, a boss you can't seem to get in the good side of and parents that are rightfully protective of you. Great story!
Spelling and grammar both seem to be great.
Looking forward to more, thank you.
Seadevil23Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I have loved the story so far as it keeps the reader continuously engaged. Another reviewer described it as grindy, but I disagree. This story has continuous progress that doesn't drag on in dozens of chapters for each incremental gain like many other stories on RR, while at the same time the story doesn't get bogged down with page long character sheets and only a few lines of "system" messages in every other chapter if that. It is a well balanced progression that purposefully avoids the grind.
STYLE: The style matches exactly what I'm looking for, fast pace progression without getting bogged down in constant, extended action sequences. The author does a great job of presenting the tension of each situation, but keeps the combat realistic with quick sequences.
STORY: This is another area that keeps me coming back. I enjoy an event balance of combat chapters and character/plot development or world-building chapters. This is often seen in portal or VR stories, but is balanced perfectly in Team Player.
GRAMMER: No issues noted with grammer, and I enjoy the author's unique writing style.
CHARACTER: Alex is a well fleshed out character that makes realistic decisions based on her personality that has grown throughout the story. The side-characters are also unique, especially her family that has their own personalities shining through with limited "screentime". I did take a half star here since the cast of fellow players is quite large and I can mix them up during some group discussions, but only a minor critic that continues to deminish as this supporting cast gets more chances to shine through.
furball tigerRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
TLDR: very well done, engaging story with quite a bit of action.
Most of the action is very well written, but there were a few later spots where it sagged and I skimmed, but very few out of a lot of (and I mean a LOT) fights.
The characters are well done and believable (sadly believable in many cases, matching folks I've known and don't miss).
There are a fair number of spots where I felt the MC's reasoning wasn't made clear, but I'm a real stickler for clarity to an unusual degree. So most folks may not have issues w/ it the way I did?
The world, and the system and skills and so on, is unique and interesting and serves the story well.
Over time it drifts into an almost-superhero kind of vibe, but without the usual cliches, despite being a fantasy portal story. So, be aware of that. I don't love superhero stories, but I've read some really great ones to be fair. The heroes aren't policing society, they're tasked with containing portals full of magic and demonic (or undead-like) monsters.
This responsibility is the focus of the story, as society responds with it's usual half-assed, half-corrupt, semi-competent fumbling by a mixed bag of lifelike players; greedy, desperate, idealistic, etc.
Organizational culture/organizational behavior (as it used to be called in business schools) is a recurring theme, and it's handled well; not called out explicitly to beat the reader over the head, just implemented in very real ways.
Overall, it's very well done, and very well edited. I was initially put off by the blurb, but that may just be me, and I'm glad I read it.
It's definitely one of the better written stories on Royal Road.
(to be entirely transparent, my normal pref is for SoL stories focused on relationships and characters, but I'll read anything if it's well written)
nakmiraxRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Great story and Book 1 was a wonderful example of taking a new spin on litrpgs, worldbuilding without too much exposition, and masterfully written battle scenes.
Everything is from the perspective of our MC, who is an unreliable narrator with more, plot relevant, insight into how the system works and the build she wants to pursue than most random MCs and other in world new system initiates. She feels very human, with her own personality quirks and foibles to flesh her out. Some lack of foresight feels plot contrived to artificially give growth given the resources she has at hand before the story starts, but it doesn't detract too much from the story.
The MC's Mom being a former badass system user should mean that she is much more aware of the importance of combining skills as much as possible and have a more thorough understanding of what deeper combinations work. The fact that she doesn't know more of this going in is weird. It does allow us, as readers, to learn about this importance at a much more natural pace though.
Other characters range in quality. Some are well written and feel like real people, but others feel a little more shallow. This works for the most part as not all villains need to be complex characters that you can sympathize with. Not many others get much flashing out though, so it can be hard to care about most of the extras other than caring about how they affect the MC.
Book 1, overall, was very well written and was structured in a way that led to a natural feeling growth of understanding of the world as a whole and the system they find themselves using. Some of the earlier contrivances are easily swept under the rug as they help the pace of the worldbuilding feel more natural rather than having a bunch of heavy handed exposition dumps.
Book 2, so far, is more mixed. The things that lead to conflict between the MC and the apparent antagonist seems like stuff that should/would have been easily avoided in any moderately functional organization. Wh
BurrowedLurkerRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
The writing is excellent, the story beats make sense and flow nicely. The characters feel like individual people, with what limited insight we have to them through Alex's POV. The author also doesn't linger on unnecessary fights or training, simply glossing over it by denoting the gains, only focusing on the actual story being told (e.g you won't have to sit through training arcs or every fight that Alex comes across).
The author already had my interest with their other work, Common Clay, and Team Player has only deepened my trust in their work, so please don't hesitate to give it a try.
Clear HeartRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
Leans heavily into the themes which are established early and reoccur frequently throughout the story. Prose is decent, characters are consistent, there are a few small typos resulting in incorrect words being used not caught by a spell-checker but they're unobtrusive and infrequent. Lost half star for having a very established core loop between books 1 and 2 which gives a very unfortunate kind of predictability. Later books continue to adhere to the established themes but they do a decent job of lampshading and reacting to the very clear patterns they encounter. Likewise, Alex (the protagonist) is a flawed but not stagnatn as a character and it gets her into trouble, albeit she learns from it which is nice. Books 3 and onward do continue to rhyme, so if you do not enjoy the first book, you are not likely to enjoy others. If you enjoy book 1 but become disatisfied with book 2, it at least becomes less formulaic after that, but content remains consistent: The author is decent about actually setting up expectations to be subverted around book 3 onward.
A list of themes I've noticed is available thus for those interested:
- Authority is always untrustworthy
- The powerful will usually act to pull the ladder up after them
- A well vetted support group within an organization is important
- Middle management is evil.
- Constant improvement is necessary to succeed
- Support your peers over authority
- Take matters into your own hands but...
- The nail that sticks out attracts the hammer.
- Anything good about a corporation will always be undermined by their collective pursuit of profit.
FlugufrelsarinnRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
Really loved the start of this story. What it does well, it does very well. Im invested in the MCs story, i can feel her excitement and action scenes are really cool, but after a while, i realise that shes living in a cardboard world, with cardboard enemies and a shallow plot and it lessens the experience. Action scenes are really cool but I need more. More context and more emotional investment. More depth. Her friends are more real than her enemies, but they also need more color. Does Alex have emotions? Who are her friends, Really, and can we get to know them better? What universe are we in?
In book two the plot feels like a rework of the plot in book 1, with no advancement at all, and im reminded of a neverending crimeserial on tv. I like how its written, the action still feels smooth and it hooks me in, but longterm it lacks depth. The worldbuilding is shallow, the antagonist is shallow and the plot is reused.
Flesh out the story please, its just rags and bones at this point and i feel sorry for it. Thanks for the books though! Im not letting Alex go.
HvrdRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
This is a fun story to read, and I really liked this. It has an emphasis of cool action scenes and a lot of grinding. The MC has a goal of becoming one of the strongest in the world, and they are certainly driven enough to achieve this.
Characterwise, the MC is a moral paragon. I have been reading a lot of anti-hero stuff lately, so this was surprisingly refreshing. The MC is really hardworking, knowledgable, and straight up badass in a very deserved way. There is a cast of pretty good side characters, with their own motivations and agency. However, and this could purely be my subjective opinion, there are times when I feel like the chemistry between the MCs closest group is wrong. I think I counted six or seven character interactions in a row where the cast where ribbing the one snarky friend in a way that was basically "haha we are such good friends, we can be a little mean to you". To me, I was left with the feeling that they were only being mean to him all the time, and it weirded out the rest of the character interactions around him.
Otherwise, while the antagonists haven't been super interesting or very deep, they have been a major challenge to overcome, leading to character exploration and growth. The antagonists are corporate people doing bad stuff, mostly due to greed and lack of consequences for their actions. This ties in neatly with the MCs goal, but don't wanna spoil a cool moment.
Stylewise, the story is very grindheavy, which I personally like, but I can understand if others don't.
Also, the grammar shouldn't trouble you.
Overall, this is a very fun story with an MC that very driven and hardworking, which makes their badassery seem deserved. Read it if you like progression and cool action.
Ps: Also a bonus to read if you find the corporate world to be rather greedy and evil at times, with the government not doing much to stop it.
Pps: Would recommend a youtuber called generic art dad's yt-shorts on private equity (and his other stuff in general) if yo
PeteygRRRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
...between loving this and hating it. On the one hand, the characters are well written, and likeable.
On the other, it's starting to really not make sense why the bad guys really really really hate her. It doesn't make sense. Sure, she's a bit cocky, but she really works well with others, goes out of her way to develop her teams, and gets results. In any other normal company, anywhere, that would see her star rise even if she didn't get along with her boss. It doesn't make sense why they keep trying to push her down.
Despite this, the effort she makes to overcome the obstacles that are placed in her path are commendable, and she is relatable enough that it doesn't feel forced, except for the whole generic Bad Boss plot armor thing.