Webnovel Story. Genre(s): Fantasy — # of Chapters: 14
TQ 3 PD 2 CF 2 || RL 2 CL 3 — Overall: 12
Important Note: There is a big difference between a webnovel–a story of the internet and mobile world–and a published book. Besides straightforward editing, published stories are constantly polished to be more engaging, meaningful, and clear. So a successful webnovel doesn’t equate to the same caliber of a published novel. This is due in part to an online writer typically being a one man/woman show. Thus, reviews will be given as if regarding whether this could be a published print or e-book.
All 14 chapters were covered in this review.
Technical & Writing Style:
Overall, your writing technique is sound. You also have a distinctive style; however, the strength of this distinctiveness fluctuates between chapters. The beginning and ending chapters of Arc Zero contained the best writing. With the actual start of the main story, there is a stark drop in writing quality. It’s still good, but after a strong background arc, it noticeably pales in comparison. However, it shouldn’t take much to get this up to snuff and consistent.
The original TQ score was 2. Reviewing this after doing many more assessments since, this should be a 3. There are still some minor errors, but overall spelling and sentence construction is correct. For example, at the end of chapter 14: “Tossing a small glance at the letter[,] Kal left[,] shutting the door.” It should have a comma after letter and left. Even though this is correct, this is somewhat awkward for reading as the commas sandwich the most basic/shortest independent clause (a subject and verb). A better construction would be: “Tossing a small glance at the letter, Kal left and shut the door.”
Characters:
As it’s early in the “actual” story arc, the development of the young MC Kal is lacking compared to Arc Zero’s MC, Leon. His character is well fleshed out; although his backstory is rather brief in the time of span it covers. Somewhat similarly, his brother, the antagonist Itgar, is developed to a pretty good degree, although, not as much. Due to the brevity of the ‘history’ or beginning of the runeless, the other characters, such as Leon’s wife Tallia, are even more underdeveloped in comparison. It might not be of importance as this arc is just a beginning backstory of the story world’s foundation, but it would nice if Tallia, his children, or others, got more developed since they seemed like promising characters.
Moving onto Kal and the main story, the characters in general are pretty good considering the few chapters. None of them have been as developed as Leon, but I can easily foresee it happening as the story progresses. Kal is but a five-year old child, so his character might be trickiest to handle as he is also the MC. Such a young protagonist will be hard to pull off realistically without making him seem too mature, but too childish, and readers might not be attracted to him. After all, this is a novel, not a children’s story. As long as his childhood is sped up to a decent age of at least 8 or 9, this shouldn’t be a big problem considering you were able to skip many years in Leon’s arc.
Plot:
From a 1, PD is upped to 2 after reviewing more stories. While inconsistent in description between chapters, overall, the amount is higher and employed more skillfully than other stories. The fantasy plotline is also more unique as it lacks tropes such as reincarnation, systems, and other worlds.
Conclusion:
The idea of runes and runeless is quite original compared to many of the mainstream stories on Webnovel. Add your above-average writing skills to the mix along with high-potential characters, and this is a novel that is sure to attract many readers. Improving the technical writing is simple and consists of basically proofreading for punctuation errors and reconstructing sentences for more fluid reading. World-building is sufficiently done with continuing information in new chapters. The beginning arc is somewhat inconsistent in its time lapses and heavily focuses on two crucial events: the initial spar between young brothers, and Leon’s demise. This may or may not be an issue. The greatest area for improvements is character development, but from what I’ve seen of your abilities so far, I’m not particularly concerned. Only many more subsequent chapters will tell if the high starting potential will be grasped.
Archdale Virtual Bookshelf 