The Dead King

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

A story of deception and betrayal - set in a magic world.

In his ambition, a powerful ice wizard dared to brew a potion of immortality. After being dead for over 200 years from a failed result, he returns to life on the floor of his abandoned castle. His memory, along with everyone from his kingdom have vanished. This is the tale of how Sullivan Marin restored his castle, his kingdom, and ultimately his memory as he discovers the terrible secret of what really went wrong.

This story is a fantasy epic, containing a power known as the elements. One person can master an element from a pool of many - ice, fire, electricity, light and shadow being just a few. Other physical skills can be mastered as well, exceeding what a human could normally do.

New Chapters are posted on Wednesdays.

Information

Status: Ongoing
Year: 2023
Author: nightsky489

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.3/ 5.0
Followers: 55
Views: 44,013

Reviews

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Community Reviews(3)

GambinoMGRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Since Chapter 1, I've been an avid reader of this fiction and can bodly say It's a very underrated work.The author packs this novel with so much mystery and action that it has you retracing your thought process back to the very first line of the book. The long chapters are also a plus and it vividly keeps you occupied. If you prefer slow reads, "The Dead King" is for you, but if you don't, I highly suggest giving it a try, as it gets highly enthralling.
froghopp3rRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This story is definitely worth your time if you're into a long running story. I've already read 250k words and it still feels like the author is only warming up the potential of the main plot line. I really like the world building and tone of the story, and the pacing isn't a slog like some of the other books in this category. The subplots and arcs provide satisfying conclusions throughout the tale while I wait for the author to finish the grand plot.
The characters are decent enough with plenty of variety - sometimes polarizing, with progression of their strength and personality evolving over the series. Marin is a very "vanilla" based protagonist who the story is mostly centered around, he's very forgiving but that also makes him predictable.
In contrast, some of his enemies and other characters are entirely chaotic and psychopathic in nature, specifically Ryno and Dr. Eisen. It brings a nice balance in being surprised or correctly predicting an outcome, but often feels polarizing as I mentioned earlier.
This story won't be for everyone. It isn't an isekai and the setting and start of the story is very unorthodox. It may turn some people off but that is exactly why I like it.
There's an elemental based power system, but it becomes clear quickly that the elements are much more than a primal force. Each element comes with a unique toolkit of utility abilities that make each user of a different element valuable in a different way. The author continues to expand what each elemental class can do.
Overall I highly recommend the story. The author is consistent in quality and style of writing.
suspiciousduckRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
Quite a few problems with this story, but before I get to the meat of it, I'd like to say that the writing is good. It is simple and to the point. There's no overly done purple prose you'd need a thesaurus for. The world is unoriginal but still interesting none the less, and the author does a good job of letting the story breathe. It's not like most others in the genre where we feel like we're on a roller coaster on a constant loop-de-loop.
Now onto why I dropped this. There’s a lot of telling and little showing. We’re always fed information about how x feels about y or how y feels after a certain thing happened, rather than having that be emulated through dialogue or action.
Secondly, there’s little to no delineation between POVs. It’s often jarring when I’m reading about one character somewhere and it instantly shifts to another somewhere else.
Thirdly, too much ham-fisting for my liking. I first noticed this when:
Loid and crew rejected Marin's offer because they could not uproot their lives in the village. Not five minutes after the rejection mysterious bandits attack said village and it is razed to the ground. Oh look, now they're free to join him.
And finally, my biggest issue is the weak and inconsistent characterization of the protagonist. He's an amalgamation of the “nice guy with memory loss” trope, and that’s as far as his development goes in almost 20 chapters. This is a huge missed opportunity, as his condition lends itself to being very interesting, what with grappling with his humanity and muted emotions being key concepts of an undead nature, at least in other fiction. Here though, it doesn’t seem to change much of anything other than his need for food, rest and a mask. He could have leprosy and the story wouldn’t change much from what it is now.
Furthermore, this one-dimensional "niceness" forces him into actions that are not just naive, but actively endanger those he claims to care about. For someone who constantly worries about being kind to his f