The First Cultivator

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Azura couldn't use magic.  In a world of magic and monsters, this was a real problem.  To hell with that!  If she couldn't use magic she would just find her own way.  She would become something new.  Something never seen before.  A cultivator.  Too bad she would make so many mistakes along the way.

Information

Status
Hiatus
Year
2022
Author
unstablecog

Tags

ACTIONFANTASYMAGICFEMALE LEADTRAGEDYHIGH FANTASYCULTIVATION

Royal Road Stats

Rating
4.5/ 5.0
Followers
850
Views
441,718

Chapters(101 total)

Reviews

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

Community Reviews(10)

  • DefectivebyDesignRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    The story is pretty good, imaginative, well written, interesting, etc. One complaint. The lazy kill off the best friend cliche trope. This is fine for Dragonball, given the wishes. It's not fine when you reboot Star Trek TNG, then put Riker in a red shirt in the second season, kill him off with sloppy writing, and this ruins the mood of every other character, the show stops being good, and the ratings tank. This trope is disgusting, and ruins almost everything it appears in. It's lazy writing, and adds nothing except to ruin the story. Was it necessary? Did it actually mean anything? No. It was cheap and pointless. So the side characters don't matter, regardless how well they're written, because they can be killed off in a contrived fake and cheesy death, usually for some motivational purpose, but in this case the motivation wasn't even needed. I'm not saying you can't kill off characters, but cliche lazy tropes are bad writing, especially when done poorly, and it ruins the rest of the story. Don't abuse cliche tropes, thank you.
  • WistiwasiRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    This was a surprise and a pleasant one at that.  I really like the story and I find the style is good as well plus it has some good humour, at least in the first book.  The grammar on the other hand needs some help, like maybe a lot of help.  None the less this is deffinitely a story to read regardless of the grammar.....maybe try and find some help with proof reading
  • bwfoster78Royal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    The character and story elements are excellent. I definitely got the feels on more than one occasion. Overall, I definitely think that this is worth a read.
    On the other hand, there are some issues:
    1. It could probably stand to have another proofreading pass or two performed.
    2. It doesn't fit into any normal genres. It doesn't remotely resemble a standard cultivation story at all. It is weak to OP, but it really focuses on the struggles of an oppressed population. Again, it's good, but if you're walking into this thing looking for a cultivation story, you're going to have more than a few "what the heck?" moments.
    3. The tone swings wildly from really lighthearted to very dark and depressing and back again often.
    Despite the issues, it is definitely worth a read.
  • doomsdayrsRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 5.0
    I love the premise of this story, and I love the innocence and well written childhood -> adulthood plot. The kids are kids, the adults are adults, no shenanigans here, just well written characters.
    I feel like some things are ex-machinaed in, such as
    The mother knowing martial arts
    But aside from that, I have enjoyed the plot so far and want to see more in the future.
  • luda305Royal Road
    ★★★★★ 4.5
    The technicals on this story are very good. Great grammar, though there are some spelling issues. Coherent easy to read style that brings you along. Probably only significant fault is there is some word choice that seems anachronistic.
    There are two substantive issues with the story.
    First, in the first arc, the protagonist and her friend(s) are children who behave like children. This is an unusual choice for a cultivation novel generally. Moreover, given that she is to become the first cultivator (and possibly cause societal upheaval) it's seems wildly out of place to have such a mentally young character.
    The second arc is a four year time skip right when she moves up a realm in her cultivation. So that means the story itself spends very little time in the first realm.
    Second, there is something long term tragic about the premise. Now a lot of this is speculative, so I'm going to put it on a spoiler
    The background is that mages are a higher class than non mages and that as all kin have too small a mana pool to be mages, they are uniformly lower class. The protagonist (a half kin) is presumably developing cultivation of the punch wizard variety as a means for the small mana pool people to act on par with the current mages. Now, if this only works for half kin and not full kin, that's pretty fucked up long term. If it works for all kin, great, but how does it compare to traditional magecraft? If it's inferior, then sure, you'll end up with cultivator kin, but they'll still be looked down on as inferior mages. Story wise that seems unlikely, so it's probably as good as or better than traditional magecraft. Fine, maybe the kin will have a short initial advantage over traditional mages until the latter accept the equality or superiority of the style, but presumably cultivation would work even better with those with a large mana pool. And then you have the same problem. Long term, the non kin species will be better cultivators and they'll still look down on kin as inferi
  • purs8485Royal Road
    ★★★★★ 4.5
    I just finished the first book roughly 55 chapters. Great story great MC it's built on a great premise as well and the world. The author has set things in is full of things to be interested in. I've read many books about cultivation progression LITRPG novels and such this is the first one. I've read where someone discovers cultivation and is the first to do so. It's so cool how the author presents it even how the author defines terms that we all know and love. You go oh wow that's cool how he Developed that term I'm familiar with Know the story is good there's action there's some adventure there's sadness I won't say what happens, but the author has no problem putting sadness in the story and that makes it good but what makes it great is he also has humor mixed in. It's like you're in a real story a real universe with people and consequences.   You become attached to people. Then the icing on top of the cake there is mystery. There is intrigue there is the occasional unexpected twist. A true story that you can get behind. So naturally, you're going to ask why didn't he give the book us perfect 5.0 Well, one reason and one reason only  Editting. There are some points in the story where editing needs to be done nothing major minor editing, and I stress the word minor, but it does occur. Does it happen often no, but does it happen and should it have been caught? Absolutely. Some of the instances are really simple to catch. I think the author just needs an extra editor on the team.
    There are some points in the story where editing needs to be done nothing major minor editing, and I stress the word minor, but it does occur. Does it happen often no, but does it happen and should it have been caught? Absolutely. Some of the instances are really simple to catch. I think the author just needs an extra editor on the team.
    This is one of the books where I have no problem making a contribution to the author I hope, he sets up some sort of Patreon where we can read a head in the
  • EthyriaRoyal Road
    ★★★★★ 4.5
    Surprisingly little interest for a novel this enjoyable and original - at least, I've only seen maybe one other novel that has dealt with creating cultivation before (I think). To quickly summarise my review - I couldn't stop reading this novel. Literally. I did not go to bed the night I read this. I had an awful next day but I have no regrets!
    The First Cultivator has both a very likeable cast of characters and a very unlikeable cast of characters (by design) and I think the author has done a great job of making their decisions and interactions realistic and believeable (with some exceptions which I will get to later).
    The story itself follows our protaganist in her struggles against her own powers, the discrimination she and her kin face from (human) mages and other species, and a world-ending threat. Lots of mystery and action which kept me on the edge of my seat a lot of the time. Be warned, there is quite a bit of tragedy involved in the story - and the author should probably add that as a tag.
    The cultivation process itself isn't especially profound or anything, but we're still in the fairly basic levels of cultivation right now so perhaps we will see more of this in the later stages.
    I don't have any complaints in regard to the writing style, it's easy to read and I never found myself bored or exhausted after reading anything. Many novels struggle with the "show don't tell" rule but I don't think that was an issue here.
    The grammar and spelling on the other hand could use some work, or at least a pass through grammarly or something. That isn't to say it was terrible or anything, just some missing punctuation and spelling errors every so often that you might notice if you're as annoying as me. I don't think it would take much work to get near perfect spelling and grammer so I'm quite harsh on this mark. For context though, I would rate 3 stars as acceptable so 3.5 is still above that.
    Now then, the reason I dropped stars on the story and characters - in The Fi
  • Slightly_MorbidRoyal Road
    ★★★★ 3.5
    It's not a bad book per se. It just feels like it has been written a bit on the fly without thinking through worldbuilding or planning for who the target group is. This makes for a somewhat jarring experience.
    It starts from a childish perspective. Play games, fantasies, friends having fun, a taste of magic. Then a sudden time jump and bang - we are suddenly in a war story with lovecraftian horrors killing innocents. Then we are back to the childish perspective albeit a bit older - and then we are talking about people being raped as just side mentions.
    Likewise, it is hard to place the level of technology that exists. It seems to be some kind of medieval fantasy world, but then you have talk about litter boxes and the main character can draw water for a hot bath in their home. How? Never explained.
    Writing is workmanlike, an editor would be appreciated for better punctuation, but it doesn't interrupt the flow too much. I'll expect this to grow better as the story grows. Descriptions are lacking in that you really don't get a good picture of how people live, in what kind of culture and society.
    In the end, for me it felt a bit too much as a beginners work. Not bad for that, I hope the author continues to write, but it isn't really the level I am looking for myself.
  • StillnessRoyal Road
    ★★★★ 3.5
    I'm suprised this story isn't more popular, as it's excelent. Not to say it's flawless, it needs a line edit for some misused words and I think the character POV's could be reduced in number to give those remaining more detail.
    The characters are where this story really shines. Especially Azura's relationship with her mom and friends. The author's ablity to show Azura acting her age and her intelligence at the same time was particullarly skillful. Even the less interesting side characters are plot relevant and have their own story.
    This is a coming of age story for Azura, as she struggles to overcome racism, oppresion, the burdens of leadership and protecting her family.
  • Wandering AirheadRoyal Road
    ★★★★ 3.5
    I admit I have some trouble honestly scoring this story. Becaouse it's good, and the author shows really great promise, but is not quite there yet. And I don't want to be harsh, but at the same time can't with all honesty give 5 stars. So I have given 4, but well earned.
    I have some trouble pinpointing it, but if you gave me just the first couple of chapters I would have bet money on author being very young and this being one of their first stories. There is just this sense of... simplicity(?) to the writing that I associate with teenegers. Now having read the whole thing, I can say it;s not quite true, becouse for all its simplicity of style there is surprising robustness to the story I didn't expect at the beggining (also mentions of work in authors notes, there is that too). What I mean, and let me reiterate, the author shows really great promise, but is just not there yet, be it inexperience or whatever other reason.
    Let me elaborate. When I write robust I mean the story has quite everything one could hope for and expect from a title like 'first cultivator'. There is discovery and harships in developing new power. There is conflict, general sociatel upheaval, and conflict resulting from something new appearing. There are political machinations, intrigue, backstabbing, conflicts of interest. There is character development, characters making hard choices and being influenced and changed as a result. Ok there is a distinct lack of mysticism and philoshophy that characaterises a good cultivation story, so maybe not quite everything, but close.
    At the same time its all very simple. I don;t know how to put it better; direct, forward, lacking nuance, I don't want to say shallow not to sound insulting but it fits.
    The cultivation system is a bit disappointing, as it can be summed up to 'gather enough mana and put pressure untill it condenses into ki'. There is a bit more to it later in the story, which could give hope that its just the rist stage which is like that, but