The World That Was

Information

Status

Hiatus

Year

2023

Author

J3P7

• Go for launch!
  Mar 29, 2024
• A Final Note
  Feb 3, 2024
• Chapter Three
  Jun 15, 2023
• Chapter Two
  Jun 15, 2023
• Chapter One
  Jun 15, 2023
• Prologue
  Jun 15, 2023

Reviews

Community Reviews(10)

• perfectgeneralRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  The World That Was - by Jay Pelchen
  Matilda (not Stephen and Matilda, Queen Matilda, another one) is from our near future, devastated by a huge solar event. She has a mission to prepare the world from the past using a spherical effect time projection. It is one way.
  So few decent historical stories on here. This one takes a social view of history. How people lived and worked. There is combat, but not what you would call battles so far. The MC plans to lobby her local king. That plan collapses on arrival and things get worse from there.
  Uplift is hampered in similar ways that historic advancement was delayed. The MC has a huge knowledge advantage, but she still suffers blind spots, assumptions and error. The story is mainly kingdom building, dramatic with action and a little romance and intrigue.
  The characters seem self motivated and personal. They are seen to interact beyond the main character and carry parts of the plot. The MC has the body of a weak and feeble woman, honed in martial arts, but still vulnerable to the predations of this time in English history.
  The writing flows unobtrusively with structured scenes and progressive arcs. Language and word choice is at college student level. This could be a much longer story if the writer was prone to excessive description and exposition, like even some well known authors. Grammar isn't an issue.
  I'm hooked so far and I think you will be too. You get a sense of science/education as magic/miracle about the early medieval view. A strong sense of cat among the pidgeons. I do hope she doesn't get burnt at the stake.
• SagecoRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  An early rating given the compelling start with an immediate demonstration of the challenges any time traveller going into such a period would face.
  The author has definitely chosen a challenging concept and period in time.
  The choice to send a female MC back into this time is definitely appropriate, but would also be a greater challenge given societal norms.
  Interesting to see how the MC handles given the sure discrepancy between recorded and actual history.
• cbwRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  I love the idea of going back in time and sciency things.  I initially thought that the story was a bit rosy but in the "later" chapters that gets addressed :))
  I've not noticed anything wrong with the grammar
  Too early to tell about character development but so far it seems good
  It is a bit of a slow burn but that is a plus for me as i get to learn more about the world
• fictionewbieRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  I love this book! Each week I eagerly await the new chapters, quickly devour them and then have just enough time to ponder the plot-lines and characters before starting again.
  As my username suggests, I am fairly new to fiction.  I have wondered at times, though, what it would be like to write a story and I found the author's post on Reddit about an engineering approach interesting (he links to RoyalRoad from there).
  I think where this book is strongest is in the characters.  Initially, I thought this book would follow an intrepid central character as she forges a path through ancient times leaving a wake of characters and action in the dust as she excels at her goal of "saving the world".  Instead, what I found was a story that explores the concept of the future arriving at a specific place and time in the past.  Obviously, this necessitates a rich cast of characters and I think this book is right on the money.
  I didn't expect to care for more than the main character, but the subplots develop at a perfect pace and cultivate a desire to follow the other characters' stories as well.
  The story is not predicable; it is pleasant.  If you care for a story that bends towards optimism and hope (like me), then you'll find this enjoyable.  Though, it's not sappy or quixotic. It strikes the right balance, presenting enough challenges at the right times to make you want to root for the characters.
  It does delve into the misery that would be present in medieval Europe, but you're not inundated with so much squalor and desperation that you can no longer relate.  The characters are not overly-simplistic, but there's not an awkward push for complexity either.  The characters motivations are developed just enough for their actions and the plot to be sustained while still giving the reader the freedom to imagine more details. Exactly what one would want.
  I came as a fan already of the style (the engineer's approach to writing).  By holding true to a couple of core principles on over
• SnowGuardianRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  Well, I haven't written a review in a long time. Let's see what I have.
  This novel is a nice blend of time travel and historical facts. The caracters are as realistic as they can be when talking about people who lived 8 thousand years ago, and that means it's good. The main caracter can come of as careles or ignorant in the begining but gets better fast after a few complications. The scientific part is not too complicated and is well done from my perspective.
• MorhRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 4.0

  It's hard to be harsh sometimes. The author doesn't lack ambition as his RR bio lists his list of PhDs and internships, plus some screenshots of spreadsheets with his story plans.
  That concept of story is what everyone dreamed of and few tried (and even less [aka none] achieved), for a simple reason, it's HARD. "You bring science to the past to kickstart the industrial revolution". Simple to explain, hard to write.
  This would require an exquisite understanding of sociology of the chosen past era to craft a believable story. The encyclopedic knowledge of "Memoirs of Hadrian" from Yourcenar, but fantasy edition.
  But here, this isn't the case. Instead, here is what happens. Plot equivalent: Time machine wizwiz and an enhanced clone of Hitler with a Svastika tatoo on the cheek appears in the middle of Harvard campus and engages the discussion with a local barbarian girl with pink hair "Sieg Heil subhuman, here is your day of glory. The emissary of the Fuhrer has chosen you to bring me to the Harvard Director. I come with the blueprints for cloning facilities and the DNA of Enhanced Hitler that future society runs on. Your era has been chosen as it has sufficient knowledge of genetics to start mass manufacturing of Ubermenschen clones and initiate the cleansing of inferior genes from the world". What happens next is that a mob of angry Diversity and Inclusion zealots lapidate Uber Hitler Clone and the story is over.
  That's more or less the plot of the story. Except that here, the brilliant minds from the future have chosen a 25 years old feminist girl full of certainty about the moral superiority of intersectional postmodernism to announce the holy word to the King of England: Abandon christianity, abandon monarchy, embrace social democrat industrial society!
  At least, the author has enough sanity to create a few evil biggoted characters (random peasant sexist and bishop conservative) who oppose the evangelisation mission of our little emancipated princess.
  But overall,
• HeloImDefinitelyACatRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 3.5

  Time travel to past earth is something im sure most people have thought about, what would they do? what time period would they travel back to? Almost as if you were playing Civ or Rise of empires in real life, but with more involvement.
  This topic is something that JP37 tries to tackle, and in my mind dissapoints from the get-go. I understand sending a female main character back in time, he's trying to set her up to deal with the troubles that being female in medival times had, but there's a huge problem with this. It is shown that in the first chapter, they are able to CHOOSE WHAT TIME PERIOD AND PLACE SHE GOES TO, WHY, OH WHY WOULD THEY CHOOSE MEDIVAL ENGLAND? And the general stupidity from the characters just continues, we see that some vauge descicion has forced them to start early, with absolutley no explanation as to why they couldn't wait to improve upon their technology. Next up it's shown that she could choose what to bring. Now she brought a notebook with instructions, armor, and suplies, great, but NO FIREARMS? For someone who is apparently the cream of the crop of her class, she's idealistic enough to think that she can "SKIP COMBUSTIBLE TECHNOLOGIES" This isn't even no firearms this is trying to avoid literally anything involving gas, even if she wants to get electricity, how tf is she gonna generate it?? This all seems to boil down to the main problem, the MC, and the people in the past, were able to invent time travel, but are somehow completely ignorant of history. The professor apparently "handpicked the possible periods of history" and they settled on MEDIVAL ENGLAND? And the MC, who apparently has no CLUE about anything related to medival england, and acts like a bumbling idiot, pissing everyone off, barely getting anything done, and somehow thinking she can defend herself with only a bow???
  But let's set aside the mistakes, those can be fixed, outside of those the story is just boring, there is no real draw to the story, no real twist, the MC is
• ManlorRoyal Road

  ★★★ 3.0

  The blurb and premise of this story, as well as the beginning chapters, make this story seems like it's going to be a a tale of exploration and enlightenment. A young woman goes back to the past to uplift humanity. But this isn't what this story is about.
  The main character is naive and incompetent. As an example, in the first few chapters she even leaves her weapon unattended, such that a teen boy manages to get it from her.
  This could be fine if the story was lighthearted. But is not. She doesn't fit the story she is in. I am mostly writing this review to address the tone of this story.
  This story is dark and depressing. It really has traumatizing content. Should maybe have trigger warnings.
  The main character promptly gets manhandled, has her tech stolen/destroyed. She later gets abducted, emprisoned. None of the promised uplifting really happens. She does find freedom in the last handful of chapters, but the epilogue hints at her early demise further in the timeline. It feels like she lacks agency and any changes are despite her.
  This story has the harshness of Outlander, without the romance or favourable outcomes.
  If you like that kind of depressing stories about martyrs, then you may love this. It is well written. But I wouldn't recommend it by default.
• FauxpasRoyal Road

  ★★★ 3.0

  It's a really fun premise and I loved the first 10 or so chapters.
  All my issues come down to the main character and the authors plot points.
  The whole premise of the story relies on us accepting that Matilda is the sole person picked be seed the knowledge needed to advance humanity sufficiently to avert a future disaster.
  Done, the institute have developed time travel and she's been training for 12 years.
  And then the plot points. If we've accepted the first premise then the plot points become contrived. She's been training for 12 years to come to the particular point and time in history but is caught flat footed constantly. It just makes me feel like she actually had no training around diplomacy, etiquette, cultural norms of the time, awareness and perception exercises, religion etc. I really can't believe someone chosen for this task would be ... not incompetent ... but caught unawares. That operation security would allow a physical and easily translatable copy of her work to be sent with her, that she would allow it to be stolen. That these risks weren't massively mitigated and planned for. That she's so affected by an assault and likely attempted rape which I'm absolutely not saying is brutal and traumatic, I am saying that as one of humanities specially trained agents, going to this point in time, as a woman, would be something they would have prepared her to combat.
  Really the idea they sent a woman back to 12th century England was a stretch buuuuut I sort of got over that with the explanation about a possible cultural revolution.
  Anyway, this is probably a little harsh, but it's such a huge stumble in my opinion it's hard to read realistically.
  If the circumstances of her arrival were changed so she perhaps wasn't the chosen candidate but ended up having to go anyway, was a drop out but something happened to the other candidates or something and she was sent instead, it would be much easier to stomach.
  In short very interesting but the premise makes the plot
• kazeshiRoyal Road

  ★★★ 2.5

  If you wanted a naive female mc with only some training (to make the character more relatable) it would have made more sense to not have her be the intended time traveler.
  she is presented as the best choice and should be well trained, like an astronaut. but constantly makes mistakes or goes off plan. for this character a better setup might have been something like: an older brother who was chosen, but she got into the pod instead and was accidentally sent in his place.
  she could have gone to the same school and had some training and knowledge of the mission but been a good halfway point between an average person and the best humanity has to offer.