What Lies Within

Information

Status

Ongoing

Year

2022

Author

mogust

• Update - after 2 years, fiction has been stubbed.
  Jun 23, 2024
• Chapter 7 – Still Fragile
  Mar 31, 2022
• Chapter 6 – Wants and Desires
  Mar 27, 2022
• Chapter 5 – Cloak of Night
  Mar 26, 2022
• Chapter 4 – What Follows After
  Mar 20, 2022
• Chapter 3 – Chains that Bind
  Mar 18, 2022
• Chapter 2 – Gilded Cage
  Mar 13, 2022
• Chapter 1 – Shades Past and Present
  Mar 12, 2022
• Prologue
  Mar 11, 2022

Reviews

Community Reviews(3)

• TealiciousTeaRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  I had fun reading this one. I recommend it. Characters, setting, magic and plot all work well together. Fraser in particular is a compelling young man who is fraught with life challenges but is standing up for himself. I like that.
  There are some weakness in the style, that is how the story is presented. I made comments on it. Take them or leave them they are just my opinion.
• ErdosRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 4.0

  This is not a safe escapist story. It features themes of threatened suicide and non-acceptance of trans-sexuality. It is a story of male to female transition with a supernatural twist. The book is constructed around that theme—that emotional journey set up quite directly but still comes across as nuanced—due to the author being trans herself I gather.
  The principal issue with it is that the text never really creates a sense of place/context when setting up scenes and story. It's going out of its way not to create that connection to the larger world even, which leads to a lacking impression. No impression of where they are in the prologue, no impression of who he's fighting for or against in the first chapter; things like that. — Phrases like “in here” or “after all these years” consciously sidestep building the world.
  This is the author's first novel without ridiculous cover art and with a blurb that promises more than just cliché, which prompted me to give it a go. It is a case of careless construction around a well-thought-out—if self-insert—protagonist, which still gets four stars from me- mainly because the technical writing is good.
  edit: I took out the mention of absent warning tags after their adding.
• AndrobirdRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 3.5

  I've read until chapter 16, so I think I've given this story a fair shake and I've concluded that this story is not for me, mainly because of the MC.
  The main character in this story is incredibly passive and doesn't really take any initiative. Things always happen to them, and they always act reactively. This frustrates me to no end as they have options beyond passively taking the verbal beatings and accepting the limitation of their rights with a tail between their legs.
  It's a personal pet peeve of mine. Reading about spineless characters is just not for me and while there's some character growth in gender related matters, there's none in growing a spine. It might happen later or not, I'm just not interested in continuing.
  The world building also while in parts intriguing, is too esoteric for my liking. Beyond the basic premise of good guys fighting the nasties of other dimensions, it's not really clear what's going on - what the mage organizational structure is, what are the power levels, why there's some weird aristocracy system going on, why knowing some rando ancient language is meaningful or not, who are the extra-dimensional beings and what is their importance to the story or not.
  There's an air of mystery to everything and nothing is ever explained through exposition or otherwise. The questions I have keep stacking up and I have answers to none of them.
  The final nail in the coffin was a deus ex machina moment with some kind of weird power-up which felt like something straight out of an anime. The fights are won with the power of friendship and partial gender transformations. Which is great if that's your cup of tea. It's not mine.