The Crystal Keepers: Shadow of the Gray Death

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Following the events of The Crystal Keepers, Shawn and Manie find themselves heading deep into the dark heart of Talmoria where they will encounter their biggest dangers yet. In an attempt to find a cure for the Gray Death, Shawn and Manie must return to Denengear, the city where Manie was raised, and sift through the ashes of her past in the hopes that an answer lies somewhere in the ruins.

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2022
Author: JMArlen

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 1.3/ 5.0
Followers: 15
Views: 15,903

Chapters(26 total)

Reviews

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Community Reviews(7)

DragonBlade501stRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
The character dialogue of this story make the dialogue in "My Immortal" seem like high class writing. Like my brother in Christ, it's a talent to make this top tier trash.
English teachers should purchase this book to show how not to write stories. Like this should be listed as a feel good story for making me feel better for not writing this.
Thank you, and keep it up. Soon this can take My Immortal's place for Worst Written Story on the Internet.
GravemourneRoyal Road
★★ 2.0
A project of clear passion and a love for Fantasy, and its many garnishments, that leaves the palate feeling as if it's already tasted this particular dish with more spice and a more filling recipe elsewhere.
The first chapter alone pulls cliches from some of the most famous works of the genre with none of the nuance present in the originals. That alone was a disappointment to see, but add to that names and places pulled directly from some of those titles feels... tasteless at best. It feels less homage and more copy paste in the execution. The most glaring example being the Cloud District, an affluent neighborhood of the city the opening chapter largely takes place in.
Which is a further disappointment, as some of the descriptive choices alone are interesting and fresh if not nearly as effective as the writer might have hoped. This is further marred by the fact the author takes the time to detail the color of the main protagonist's hair on multiple occasions within the first dozen or so paragraphs, taking away from some of the genuine interest I had in the (admittedly unusual) writing style. Taking the time to make the transition from idea to idea, and tightening up descriptions would fix a lot of these issues. Additionally, describing the physical attributes of a character, while they can be important as with why she has a shock of blue hair in the first place, doesn't need the overly consistent reminder of its existence. As the reader, in my case at least, it pulls me from the story and disrupts the flow.
Some of the character interactions feel genuine... with most of it feeling forced, like its dragging the plot along out of sheer necessity to get the story off of the ground. Another (minor) frustration was the constant switching back and forth between the main protagonist and her sister's inner monologue in the first chapter. It left me feeling a sense of literary whiplash from the constant swinging back and forth. And it's even more unfortunate that much of be
JouhumRoyal Road
★★ 2.0
The second Crystal keeper.
The biggest problem of the story is that is structured in such a way that makes it almost impossible to enjoy it. The first reason is because it is a sequel obviously. Concepts events are thrown at you without warning and no matter how much you read about them they won’t get any clearer. This results in me just being thrown out of the story being unable to keep up when a character drowns on for 200 pages about a rock I have never heard of.
But you could argue that this work isn’t meant to be consumed on its own and you need to cough up like 7,99 to get the full experience—you now like DLC. It just makes me wonder why he would upload the sequel for free, knowing full well that most people never heard of it or are unwilling to buy it. But I will save for later, because I will first explain why it doesn’t work on its own.
Let’s take a look at the writing style. The best way I could describe the writing style of the crystal keepers is undercooked and way too ambiguous. There are several lines in the books where the writer tries to be profound or evocative with the prose but more often than not it just ends up being confusing at times. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that most scenes have a severe case of empty room syndrome.
You will find two character standing around a room throwing words at each other without a scene of where they are or what the environment is even is supposed to look like. Further the non of the characters are even interacting with the surroundings. This of course results in the reader being unable to fully immerse themselves into the story. But even if it didn’t have white room syndrome the story have a annoying habit of regurgitating what is going on in the story. As if the writer accidently left in his editors note in the prose. Or it goes to the opposite extreme where the story is extremely vague and I have no idea what the character is even supposed to feel.
A second consequence of this is that the dialogue ha
NilsimusRoyal Road
★★ 2.0
This book, and likely its prequel were clearly created from a place of love for fantasy and everything the genre contains. From the hand made map to the endless barrage of world building and location hopping it is easy to see a creation made only after hours of blood sweat and tears were put into its development.
So it's a shame then that I cannot recommend this story in any meaningful way.
Firstly, putting a fiction on this site with a prequel that is behind a paywall is not exactly the most friendly of openings. It doesn't help that to understand even a fraction of what occurs in the opening chapters of this book you need to have read the first. Characters and concepts are thrown so hard and fast at the reader that it's impossible to keep up.
Even with the paywall and the rapid-fire deluge of pseudo exposition, this book is dragged down by several more issues. The pacing has already been mentioned, but it is massive detraction from the overall experience. The characters, scenes and world need time to breath, but the author gives none of them the time they clearly deserve. Again, part of this is due to this book being a sequel, which in itself isn't a negative. If the first book was as available as this one, I would be more willing to give the series a shot. But as is, I am not paying $7 for a book I have little faith will worth reading.
It may sound harsh, and to be fair it is. But the quality of writing, from the oddly simplistic and repetitive prose, to the stilted dialogue, and the above mentioned pacing, all are a turn away and only serve to increase the barrier of entry. And then you get something like chapter 3 which according to the author themselves is unfinished. I don't get it.
And that leads to the last major issue I have with this 'series'. And this is easily the least valid and most subjective. But I'm not sure something like this belongs on a site like Royal Road. It's complete* probably. But what's to stop any future entry from being paywalled? Stub
ALJohnstonRoyal Road
★★ 2.0
I’m going to start by saying that this story is clearly made with passion, the love for this world and the characters is clear in the writing. Taking the time to hand draw maps and create a real world shows just how much passion was put in to this fiction. However I can not recommend this fiction to anyone unless you can get past a lot of problems.
Despite the love put in to the story some of the writing is atrocious especially the beginning , I have read anime fan fiction written by pre teens that is written better than a large portion of this. The later chapters improve greatly but the beginning is VERY rough. If you can get past the writing you are in for a decent enough story but again it just feels bland despite the love put in to it.
I’m not going to sit here and say that the hate coming in isn’t warranted because it definitely is, first handful of chapters which are obviously the first thing you see are terrible the story is maybe a 0.5/5 during those chapters. If you can get past the antics of the author and the first few chapters I feel like 2/5 is where I can feel the most comfortable rating it because world/characters are great honestly but the story is lacking in a major way.
I truly hope to see you come out the other side of all of this a better author who can turn everything around but until I can see some significant improvement I can’t rate any higher unfortunately.
AmbergisRoyal Road
★ 1.0
I thought there was some promise to the story and characters, but felt the writing itself needed refinement.
The writing felt stilted at times, as if the writer was trying too hard, overwrought similes, using a complicated word when a simpler one would do better, that sort of thing. This disrupted the natural flow of the narrative for me.
YamaoiRoyal Road
★ 0.5
I read the first chapter, and while this writer has promise, he needs a lot more practice. This writer loves to tell the reader everything, but I don't feel like I'm 'experiencing' the story. He tries a little too hard with the similes and metaphors, but they fall rather flat.
The beginning starts out incredibly weak, and I'll be honest, chapter one didn't hold my focus. I kept thinking about other things rather than being engaged with the story. Most of this had to do with how it was narrated, but some of it was the weird dialogue. The bit between Manie and Veronica where Veronica is explaining the festival was just telling through dialogue. It's similar to when an author drops something relative to the plot in dialogue to move the story along instead of simply moving the story along.
There were a lot of unnecessary and repetitive words that try to make the writer seem like he's a wordsmith bit it just comes across as eyerolling. You get this at the very start of the story when he mentions unseen wind...
I'm not sure I'll continue reading this one. There's no heart in the dialogue and no experience in the story. It's all just telling.