Transience

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

[Winner of RR Nov 2023 Writathon]

In a world that only knew war for over seven decades, there seemed to be no other reality other than the endless, constant conflict between the two great kingdoms of Trelven and Rhinn along with their vassal states. Meanwhile, in a small, insignificant battlefield somewhere in Trelven, the young warrior Elethien rose up in revolt, promising to create a world where Foresters, a minority race of mages exploited as slave soldiers, could live united as one independent kingdom. Uprisings were not uncommon, but Elethien had a strange statement: she claimed that she was 'blessed by Fate, God of all gods'. Spurred on by her fanatical beliefs with an equally fanatical following, would she upset the delicate balance of war in her quest to realise her own ambitions, or would she drown in her efforts as did many revolts and rebellions before her?

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2023
Author: Little Racoon

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.5/ 5.0
Followers: 222
Views: 38,051

Reviews

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Community Reviews(10)

inolziaRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
The start of this story is quite promising and has a lot of potential. I can already tell that the author has some morals to teach us through this story and I'm interested to know what they are.
Style: This web novel is really easy to read and a bit moreish, I'd say. I'll definitely be reading more when I can next.
Story: Seamless worldbuilding of an interesting fantasy war story. Also, both the dialogue and pacing are flawless so far. I'm liking seeing how the Forester's uprising is disrupting the war and can only hope the outcome will be one of peace...eventually.
Grammar: The author's grammar is great, as is the rest of the SPAG. I didn't notice anything that needed correcting.
Character: Equally seamless character introductions and POV changes. A questionable but sympathetic mercenary who becomes a 'king' and leads a Forester uprising. An intelligent yet passionate prince who 'trains/teaches' students? A quiet king of the same territory and a racist cunt :D They all have interesting personalities and behaviours that I want to see more of.
TLDR: In sum, I recommend this story to anyone wanting an easy-to-read low (?) fantasy war story with several interesting POVs!
TheMadProfessorRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
World Building: This is definitely a well-crafted world with a lot of moving parts going on this background that you don’t have to see to appreciate their role in the greater story. I liked the establishment of the world lore in the beginning. It wasn’t so extensive that it put me out of the story, or made me go “what have I gotten myself into this time.”
I also like how the world doesn’t have the feeling that it was put together just for the scene to do what it needs to do. It feels like it’s been around for a long time and will continue to linger even after the last word is typed up at the end of the story.
Dialogue: Something I’ve noticed with a lot of fantasy dialogue I’ve read on writing sites is they tend to try to be too prim and proper or they go for modernizing Shakespearean dialogue and sometimes it can come off as … unnatural. Almost like it’s someone from another world trying to imitate how we speak but all they know are works from century or two in the past.
And for this work, people do speak in a proper decorum, but it feels realistic. It sounds natural and in a way that doesn’t make people sound like an AI wrote the script and the person making the prompt is hoping to God no one calls them out on it.
Prose: The prose isn’t bad in the slightest. I enjoy reading how the characters think and react to situations and really getting into their heads. It doesn’t become a deluge that you can find in a stream of consciousness form of writing, which is nice since that can quickly become a detriment to the flow of the story. And it helps to give some artistic flair to the story and keep it from being dull and unexciting.
I would definitely recommend this story to anyone who enjoys grimdark fantasies and epic sagas. This is worth your time and enjoyment.
Corbin WitchRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
Overall: I think it’s a fun story about rebellion and war (not to say those are particularly fun topics, but I’m having fun reading it). Elethien is an interesting character to follow, the story is well-told and detailed, and it’s good overall. I’ll definitely be sticking around to see what happens.
Story: The story revolves around war and rebellion, with one of our characters, Elethien, being a part of the rebellion against our other lead character. The world is very throughout, and you can tell the author put a lot of time and effort into crafting it. I never like delving into spoilers when reviewing stories, so it’s hard to give a complete thought without spoiling the story, but so far, I’m liking the tension and battles. The scenes are vivid and bloody, there's some interesting conflict going on with both sides. It’s a fun time.
Style: The story doesn’t do anything that is super stylistic or to stand out, but that’s not a bad thing. I like stories with simple styles. That being said, the way that the story is written is really well done. There are a lot of really great and vivid details throughout the story.
Grammar: Grammatically, I couldn’t find any issues. Then again, I wasn’t really looking for issues, I was just enjoying reading the story.
Character: One thing I do like is how morally ambiguous you feel while reading it. We have two characters that you want to root for, but at the same time, their methods and actions make it difficult to pick which side you think is in the right. I don’t want to delve into spoilers, but I found it interesting to have this kind of situation, and I’m eager to see how much more we learn about them so we can make a definitive stance… Nah, I’m with Elethien, I just like her more.
TheSunGuyRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
Overall at this juncture, I would rate this novella a 4.5 out of 5. There is very little the author has missed, and it is immediately able to grasp attention and maintain interest. The foundations are very strong, and I am looking forward to how this novella progresses.
World building is fantastic, and it is very obviously clear that Little Racoon has a very clear grasp of what their world is, what it does, and what it is going to do. I especially like the addition of dates at the top, as it gives us a sense of how long or short events are going.
Stylistically I think that the Author actually has very little they can improve on (That I can see). Pretty top notch in my opinion, and my only gripes are definitely things that are just personal flavor.
Grammatically this story has few issues that would break the flow of reading. Sentences do not need to be reread in order to understand what is being conveyed, punctuation is at an acceptable level.
For Character and Story, I WISH! I wish I could do dialog half as well as the author of this story! Definitely going to be coming back here just to reread the interaction and flow of character dialog just so that I can one day even come close to the level of skill Little Racoon has.
WilliamGabriel10Royal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
Transcience is a geopolitical fantasy book.
The author has put a lot of work into developing his world and characters. Each one is unique in its own way. However, it has issues. Some of the character's actions seem incongruous with the setting.
In addition, the efforts to make the villains into anti-villains largely need to be revised. The supposed persecution that they suffer from is not shown onscreen so far. Meanwhile, their deeds are far too despicable to have any sympathy for them at all.
Meanwhile, as far as I have read, the heroes take some time to be introduced.
All of this leads to a slow-paced narrative, which drags down an otherwise very good story.
Even so, all of the characters have destinctive personalities. And the writer does a good job of setting them up and evoking a scene.
LAScottRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
There are several themes at play, such as war and peace, classism, gods versus men, man versus man. I really appreciate the intertwined plots that seem to be running concurrently to each other, and I get the impression there’s very little separating either side. Both have committed atrocities, and yet as much as this story is about feudal kingdoms, it feels like mankind is the plaything of more powerful beings, and that there’s no real winning side.
Stylistically, the author gets right into it. I’m still a bit undecided in the pacing. I’ve provided comments indicating as such as it seems like the Foresters uprising happened so fast, and while it’s clear that they are an immediate threat I find myself suspending belief slightly. Obviously they have the power of a god on their side, which does explain some of the more one-sided victories, but it feels fast.
One thing that’s a somewhat refreshing take is that the cast of characters on either side are for the most part unsympathetic. I don’t find myself rooting for anyone, however this is not a criticism as this seems intentional by design and I’m still fundamentally engaged in what comes next.
Grammatically it’s a very carefully crafted story, I don’t have concerns there.
All in all, the author has put a lot of care into this story. World-building is the author's strength, they’ve put a lot of effort into crafting an interesting and comprehensive world. Well done!
ArachnodollRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
Transience is a rich and complex story that starts with a member of the oppressed ‘Forester’ race receiving a revelation from ‘Fate,’ the almighty god in this universe.
The story has a unique way of bringing the various political and geographical nuances of the world to the attention of the reader, never feeling like an infodump. The style is easy to read and binge.
The overarching plot thus far is that of a rebellion of a mercenary race led by their god-queen against the kingdoms who throw away their lives for material gain. We as readers are immediately thrust into the action and it grips you right from chapter 1. I enjoy the way events are developed from multiple POVs to give a wide perspective to the audience. It suits a story of this genre perfectly.
There are no mistakes in the grammar, at least to the point I’ve read. Descriptions are vivid and paint clear pictures in my mind of people and places. Sentences flow smoothly and the story is well paragraphed.
Transience introduces us to a wide variety of characters, providing the POV of a few of the more important ones. The MC’s blind faith and battle twisted personality are slowly unraveling as the story progresses, opposed by the structured hierarchy the Trelvenese king follows, though we see cracks forming in that controlled facade.
Overall a marvellous work that I will continue to delve into and heartily recommend to any fans of fantasy as a whole or complex political kingdom building stories.
Littlegiant7Royal Road
★★★★ 4.0
Great start! Wonderful world-building! This story has a lot of potential.
The grammar so far has been impeccable.
The story is well-written, and the characters are well-detailed. The author's thoughts flowed well and moved the story along very quickly, which made it an engaging read for me (Personally). While I am only a few chapters into the story, I can see the future looks promising.
SheBopRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
I'm very much of two minds about this. On one hand, this is technically very well done. The writing itself is skillful and paints a picture and there is an intriguing hook in the first chapter. The grammar and readability are excellent, things flow nicely, etc.
My problem is that we're introduced to lots of new places, people, characters--and we're thrown into the middle of it without much context besides the summary. We don't know much of anything about one character before we swap to another in the next chapter, because the narrative doesn't slow down enough to give us an emotional grounding point.
Triangle TollRoyal Road
★★★★ 3.5
There is such thing as too large of a scope, and Transience proves it like nothing else. 100 000 words in, and we’re at most halfway into setting up the board where the game would take place. Character-driven multi-POV grimdark military geopolitical kingdom-building (?) story about freedom-fighting and some promise of defying gods? This is doomed to be a slog if one dedicates themselves to explore all these elements, and a half-baked mediocrity otherwise.
I chopped off a star from the style score to mourn all the major battle scenes there were. The author showed us the aptitude to write quite visceral scenes in a certain pair of chapters, which makes the overall blandness of combat almost inexcusable. This is one place where “war and military” fiction cannot afford to spare any expense.
Now, the characters themselves are quite deep and overall deserve a score much higher, if not for one quirk of overall approach to them. The core cast is constantly stripped of agency, which renders much of the personal conflict quite impotent. Whatever mistakes the characters make, the consequence never once rebounds back to them at full force because of that. We can see some setups for this to finally happen, but where’s the guarantee that these won’t be rendered as inept as what we already saw?
The story itself has the major stakes problem. When any failure can spell an end to the entire rebellion, one quickly catches wind that no complete defeat will ever happen. Even as the rebels get reduced to nothing, they bounce back to where they were within a chapter. This is not how it should work. Defeat has to be a real and irreversible option for tension to exist. And for that the consequences shouldn’t be of world-ending proportions each and every time. That’s crucial for the mix and match of genres presented here.
Between style and story exist the POV jumps. While I mostly agree on the reasoning why those exist, they add so much breadth to the story that it’s impossible to develop ev