The Cursebreaker

Information

Status

Hiatus

Year

2022

Author

YoshikageKiraStan13

• Chapter 1
  Jun 22, 2022

Reviews

Community Reviews(8)

• ScruffedUpRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  I was requested for a review, and as such have finally gotten around to doing one.
  Style:
  The story follows the rather obvious tropes of new world-fantasy. We have a new world, new rules, and new laws that we are being brought through as we read. This also comes with the added benefit of a new culture, and plenty of terms that originate from it. Normally this can get rather hectic as, we the viewer, can't really understand right away what a dozen new (or outdated) terms mean from the start, however the author was nice enough to leave us an explanation at the end of every chapter about what different terms mean, so we are never out of the loop.
  I recognize the extra effort towards world building, especially when it's something that most people don't even bother with, 5/5.
  Story:
  The writing itself, and its entertainment value are not to be understated. Most of the time when reading for a review I have to basically speed run 5-10 1-2k worded chapters and attempt to formulate a review with limited material, I didn't have to do that here. The chapters themselves are decently written, entertaining, and each one has enough content that they manage to actually push the story forward significantly instead of spending 2-3 chapters on a single scene. This is great for a number of reasons;
  A) theres enough content to read as of 2023-06-23 (chapter 18) that you can easily spent around 30 minutes to an hour actually reading the novel, meaning you aren't stuck with 5 chapters and either abandoning it to find something else to read, and that each update per chapter has enough content that it actually feels worth the wait. No one wants to wait a week for a chapter update that contains 1k words, you won't even remember what happened last time if that is the case.
  B) The story itself actually progresses every chapter, instead of spending 3-6 chapters on a single scene you can actually feel the story and world progress, and as a side bonus the 'next chapter' button doesn't get annihil
• PR135TRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  The story is pacing right, I like the characters and the dialogue is quite nice, The world building is quite likely my favorite part of it, It's structured like a mind palace, and the description of the world and how the characters act is spot on, 5 stars, Would love to see more of the story, so updates are important eh.
• Consistent MilkRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  *The rating has been updated.
  A gripping synopsis that made me instantly want to read the story.
  The overall formal writing style might not be everyone's cup of tea but those who like might be able to enjoy this, if it did not have a glaring fault - the length of its chapters.
  I don't think anyone reading on this site will be able to go through the 1st chapter in one sitting, especially since the story is exposition heavy, has long dialogues, slow paced and is very formal in its overall presentation. I myself had to stop reading somewhere on the 1st chapter. Later on I came back to it, only to realize that I have to painstakingly search for the point where I had left off.
  Without that fault, I think this story is worthwhile to read through.
• HippioScipioRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 4.0

  Overall - As other reviewers have said, the author has clearly done a lot of thinking about their world and has tons of small details of world-building to share and that's great. However, this kind of writing can really swamp the unprepared reader. But, other than this issue, I found the fiction to be interesting to read.
  Story - Best aspect of this fiction no doubt.
  Style - I've already mentioned my issue with the author's detail-oriented style but other than it not really being to my taste, the author's writing style is of good quality.
  Characters - Well done.
  Grammar - No issues so far as I could tell.
  TLDR: The author has created a very detailed world and the story they are telling can benefit tremendously from it.
• BullerRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 4.0

  As in, 'I have no real idea when people were talking or people were thinking.' The author liked to put in thoughts in the middle of paragraphs and regular sentences 'something like this where it becomes hard to figure out whether or not it was spoken.'
  The difference between spoken and thinking was too small and without proper distinction in formatting in where it would be, I had trouble with skimming the novel. Highly suggest to standardize formatting to site-standard. It's a plus that it has short paragraphs but grammar might also need some work. 4/5 for now.
• woseRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 3.5

  Overall:
  A gripping fantasy story with impressive worldbuilding, drawn from some serious research, even if it can be too much at times.
  In detail:
  Cursebreaker has been a fun read so far for me. In fact, I went through the existing content in a few hours, with breaks in between. I enjoyed the way the author has been handling his action scenes (which can be a hard thing to pull off at times) and his worldbuilding is SOLID. The research the author's made is really showing through and, considering myself kind of a history nerd, I enjoyed finding the sneakier references thrown in the world overall.
  Now for the bad stuff: the story does, unfortunately, have a case of the "tells don't shows" which takes away from it, with long exposition that takes me entirely out of the flow of the story I've enjoyed so far.
  Furthermore, the world building can get to be a bit much sometimes. I really appreciated the author adding the notes inhis final chapter explaining the days of the week in the story but I'd much rather he set up an outright lexicon/crude gazetteer in a separate chapter I could flip back to. In fact, it would probably do a lot of good. A map (even a crude one) would also do wonders, given how important grasping the setting and its powers is.
  Will be keeping an eye on this story to see how it improves.
• Ramingo RamosRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 3.5

  The Cursebreaker is a pretty straightforward story where the path ahead for the MC is clear from almost the beginning. What makes it interesting is how they'll get there with all the politics and possibly romance (?) along the way. The writing style is okay, it's not my cup of tea, but some people do like it.
  What I disliked, and what drags down the vote, is the insane amount of exposition present that kills the forward progression of the story, too many names too quickly, and the mid-chapter POV switches.
• Raz ScrivensRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 3.5

  *This review has been updated (update underscored.)
  I had mixed feelings about The Cursebreaker, I would say mostly positive, but I did have some issues with it as I'll describe below.
  STYLE (3.5)
  The style of writing is decent, and I appreciate the very high-fantasy feel that it conveys early on. The opening paragraphs are excellent, in my opinion. Unfortunately, later on, there are very long chunks of expositional dialogue written pretty much like narration, not actual conversation. It affected the immersion for me quite a bit. Like the extended dialogue during what could potentially be a fight scene? It didn’t really work for me. They’re discussing political fallout and power vacuums while in a standoff? At least that's how it seemed to be written. I think these devolved into essentially info dumps that made the story drag at times.
  On top of that, there’s a random POV shift that’s not explained and has no direct bearing on the rest of the chapter, as far as we know so far. I think that would have worked better as an extended chapter of its own or at least an interlude that connected to the other events more immediately.
  STORY (4)
  The Cursebreaker has the makings of an intriguing story. Demon slaying, curse breaking, a sword of legend—these are all things that I want to know more about as a reader. I also appreciate the European country analogs making it all sound very legit. “Alemanian.” “Iberistan.” Etc. Worldbuilding is one of the most fun parts of writing for a lot of people, me included (usually.)
  Sadly, too much of this is lost in long-winded dialogue that stagnates the progression of the story. After 10k words, not much has actually happened, although we’ve been told a great deal about things that already happened in the past and a bit about things that might happen. There was an interesting twist at the end that I won’t spoil here. I admit it seems obvious in hindsight, but I didn’t see it coming—the mark of a good twist! It’s not mind-blowing but it does