The Baron von Bickenstadt

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

A man wakes up in the body of the leader of a mercenary company who happens to also be a Baron. He learns of the slavery and cultural destuction the Empire is engaging in and resolves to put a stop to it, by any means necessary.

In a world with technological development and philisophical thought all over the place, how does one man mean to unite people under one banner? Follow the exploits of the Baron von Bickenstadt as he attempts to create a coalition of disparate peoples to overthrow the Empire, free the enslaved, and raise up the poor and downtrodden.

[participant in the Royal Road Writathon challenge]

Information

Status: Completed
Year: 2021
Author: randompug

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 3.8/ 5.0
Followers: 128
Views: 93,164

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(3)

TealiciousTeaRoyal Road
★★★★ 3.5
The overal score is lower than what it should be. I believe this to be a four star but one factor drops the story down.
Style.
Three stars because...
The paragraphs are too big. Fun action scenes are hidden in the middle of huge paragraphs. It may work on a laptop screen or printed paper but it is brutal on a phone screen.
One big paragraph is difficult but okay. But nearly all of them in long form fiction. I'm here to be entertained not strain my eyes!
The big paragraphs make the fiction unnecssary hard to read. Most of these paragraphs can be broken down.
Lots of blank space is good for the reading quality for most readers. I bring it up because it has become a quality issue rather than just a matter of taste.
I am also including formatting errors in here to but I know the author is fixing them and the effort is well appreciated.
Once the paragraphs are smaller then I can get a better impression of the authors style.
Story -
Intriguing with nauces the best aspect of the fiction so far.
Four stars.
The fights, the larger drama at play it is all very interesting.
Characters -
As is common with miltary fantasy a large cast is introduced. I might have recommended going a little slower... I think Arslan (manga/anime) does this well by building up the core cast slowly.
But we get to know everyone fast but they don't have any deep feel to them yet? Which again is okay but something to work on.
I'm not saying we need a full pysch profile or intense drama. This is a miltary fic. Just more personality and clearer character design. There is a good foundation but in the editing room I think with a few careful touches the characters can be enchanced.
The Baron is an interesting and nauced character that succeeds in what he was created for.
Three and half stars.
Grammar -
The cumbersome paragraphs which I am putting as a style issue. Same with formatting.
The grammar is mostly fine except a few minor issues. By this I mean typos and sentence structure. It is readable and can be
JcW SweRoyal Road
★★★ 3.0
I liked the premise of this story, or rather what I tought was going to be a story about a reincarnated intelligent person in a fantasy setting that through military and political manoeuvers rise in power. Maybe even build a strong kingdom with inventions, trade etc. I personally love those stories. That is however not what you get in this story..
The MC and the supporting characters more feel like a bunch of teenagers with the same personality quirks. They love fighting and the fight scenes is roughly 50% of the story in total so far. The behaviour of the different characters doesnt correspond to their age, education, position in the mercenary company or position in a fantasy society based in a early renaissance world. The MC also makes huge blunders in regards to not being secretive about things when he should.
Rebuilding of a conquered province/city is basically just solved like it's nothing. The population of said province in comparison to the size of the company the MC leads does not make sense what so ever (Also, the dialogue feel a bit stylted and almost directed to the reader rather than being between characters in the story.) .
If you do however want to read a story mainly focused on fights and long and detailed fight scenes and don't care that much about the world building, dialogue, intrigue, progression of characters and society in stories. Well then you are in luck, because then this story definitely is for you.
I might be a bit harsh in the review, I do think the author is on to something here, and if they are going for a story mainly about the fight scenes, then I'm positive there is alot of readers searching for just that kind of story. Then they will probably be excited to read the story if they read this review. If the author however want to write a kind of story I described I want to read in the beginning of this review, they should seriously consider a rewrite.
Anyhow, thanks to the author willing to share their story on RR. It takes guts, and l
Peter_the_greatRoyal Road
★★★ 2.5
It starts out with a interesting story but then it devolves into modern ideological and political crimes they are irrelevant to the story why do we have to corrupt all fantastical forms of entertainment with our ideological disasters why not make it a pure otherworld experience why bring in ideology and antideological struggles.
The direction of the story is a relevant issue that can be criticised along with the great length my imagination has to go for racist, bigoted medieval people to care about anything more then the immediate future and their local region also people back then weren't as disconnected from reality as we are today meaning they didnt have as may intelectual aspects to threat over. Medieval people were supremacist and they saw it as a moral good to impose their culture it couldn't be possible for a modern mindset to be viable and realistic back then. Do you want me to continue our modern mindset is not common to history and took thousands of years of cultural evolution to make us able to accept people that are different back then that was not there yet.
Imported from 1.5 star in order to not lower the score too much. Instead of focusing on modern struggles focus on telling a good story or tell a story in a better setting. We have enough to struggle over in our every day we don't need politics and ideology shoved down our throats at every opportunity avaliable it is a writing sin to bring ideology in a holy roman empire setting.