Top The Tower

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

The daughter of a tyrannical warlord, Ablee Urough is six years old, plotting to co-opt her father's dream of conquering the heavens.

Gifted with the powers of Ambrosia, the food of the Gods, she can pass through objects as if they were wet paint, coating herself with their properties.

Now, she sets out to find her own crew and beat Pops to the Tower's top!

Praise for Top The Tower:

There's a gymnastics requirement to join the clergy? The head priest is a gambler? The side character is a card shark that takes him for all of his money?

Holy smokes this is so off meta it's like its own."

-Weavertale (Author of Caravan of Blades)

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2025
Author: Adrum

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 3.7/ 5.0
Followers: 405
Views: 24,090

Chapters(12 total)

Reviews

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

Community Reviews(5)

AceGreenRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Sometimes you like so much about a story that you don't even know where to start the review. I suppose the sensible place is the main character. Ablee is a delight, and the idea for her power is just... inspired.
Some readers on this website might be a fan of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. This isn't an apt comparison; it's more of a reverential one. I'm a huge fan of the series, and one of the things that inspires me most about Araki is his creativity in coming up with powers and then crafting organic situations from them. The inaptness comes from the fact that this story isn't particularly like a battle shounen. The comparison comes from the fact that I think the idea of painting objects to change their properties is a great idea—and the escalation of it, where the MC's power is to create actual living paintings that are small worlds onto their own is just genius.
This isn't a word I just throw around. And if Adrum just had the concept without the perfect execution, I definitely wouldn't use it. I do not think this is an easy power to write. It seems to me that it requires an abundance of imagination not just for the abstract use of the power, but for sensory details.
This manifests, intentionally or not, in absolutely delightful prose and fantastic, engaging description. The world feels colorful. I feel like I'm reading a painting. Was that part of the conceit? I have no idea. But it's what Adrum has achieved, and it's such a satisfying synergy.
Frankly, I'm almost certain it was intentional. This segues into another aspect of Top of the Tower that I thought was exceptional: the ability to write characters from deep point-of-view. This, by my idiosyncratic definition, is when everything that makes up a character seeps into their monologue. It's the way they think things, the kinds of words they use. It's the details they choose to focus on. It's the sense that when you read a character's perspective, everything is truly filtering through their cognition. Ablee's inter
Camadt (Alex Hancock)Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Overall 5/5
Top the Tower is a fantastic tale of young women coming into their own as they forge a path together to reach the top of the tower.
Character 5/5
Since Ablee is mentioned first, I’m going to consider her to be the “first” main character. Ablee has been forced to become someone with powers by her father in the hope that she will become strong enough to further his own power. Her ability to manipulate paint to the point that she can heal wounds, bring drawings to life, or even liquify solid objects is fascinating. Her own spunk makes it easy to root for her as she refuses to back down from a challenge, setting herself up as a leader for the growing group.
Rhody is the next main character, and her meek nature doesn’t mean that she’s a pushover, though she does let Zeph and Ablee do most of the driving (what’s the saying about “if the car is going to your destination, why fight over who’s driving?”). That is also a shout-out to a fantastic soapbox “race” that is in one of the later chapters. Rhody uses Tarot cards to guide her as well as to help her fight, which is also an interesting concept. (I’m curious if we’ll see Ablee make custom cards for Rhody in the future.)
Zeph, the queen of assassins, rounds out the current trio. Of all three, we get the least background information on Zeph so far, but she’s an assassin who likes to make a statement, causing a scene so that everyone knows that she was the one who killed the mark. Her favorite weapon is her pistol, Assurance. And she wields it with deadly precision.
.
Grammar 5/5
No complaints here. Adrum uses colorful and descriptive language to set up the scenes of this colorful world (painter’s pun too much? Lol).
Story 5/5
For a coming-of-age type story where each of the main characters is setting out to prove something to themselves (even if they are hiding it by saying that they want to prove it to someone else at times), this is a riveting tale of self-discovery and learning just how far each of the women
Veri MerriRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Off the jump, I'm still not entirely sure what to make of this one yet - in a good way. The story has a solid base to work from with some of the most unique setting details I've seen in a long time.
Grammar 5/5
I found no issues with the grammar. There may have been an errant typo or two, but nothing that detracted or distracted from the story.
Story 5?/5
As I said above, I'm still not sure what to make of this one yet - although I'm really enjoying it so far. I'm sticking to the retelling portion, so there's not a ton of it to read yet, but the story has so many weird, unusual details that I'm really just sitting here waiting for more now. I want to make sense of it all, and what's here is just tantalizing.
Characters 5/5
First person stories are always tough to really sell, especially when you have multiple PoVs to show. Showing voice can be difficult without making your characters either too stereotypical to separate them or too same-y to make them feel real. Adrum made the voices different enough that when you click into a chapter, you can tell who the PoV is straight away. Especially Rhody, who jumps off the page a bit more than Ablee or Zeph so far.
Style 5/5
The style bounces around a lot, but maintains a steady feel throughout; I think assisted by the characters' voices. But the actual writing style on the page changes up often and remains feeling fresh because of it throughout what's available right now.
Generally speaking right now, I just want more.
WeavervaleRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Grammar 5/5 some small issues but otherwise it doesn't get in the way of readability.
Story 5/5
I have never seen so many good twists.
There's a gymnastics requirement to join the clergy? The head priest is a gambler? The side character is a card shark that takes him for all of his money?
Holy smokes this is so off meta it's like on its own.
This is in particular the kind of story that I'm looking for personally, which means that it takes the highest marks from me.
Do I think that a story is going to do well on its own? No do I think that it's going to be a good story. Yes, so far everything I'm waiting is great and I intend to keep reading.
Characters 5/5
When you're ready in first person, you have to let the character kind of dictate the pace of what's going on and how they interact with their environment. The character is very strong in this one and you can kind of see the difference between the two characters just in the way they talk about their experiences.
Style 5/5
Alright I have never read a story with multiple first person POVs aside from my own so this is new.
Kacey EzellRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
This story hooked me from the get-go. I absolutely love the characters and the author's skill in introducing them and their dynamics. The use of paint and Tarot is interesting, and I'm looking forward to learning more about this unique world as the revised story continues.
Very well done! I can't wait for more!