[Story] My Promise From A Pale Death God

Title: My Promise From A Pale Death God
Author: LaDiDah
Genre(s): Fantasy Romance
Tags: Survival, Romance, Action, System, Fantasy, Female Protagonist, Magical Realism, Dystopian, Slow Burn
Audience: PG-13
Main Lead: Female
Status: Ongoing
AVB Assessment Score: PDE 2 CDD 3 SWB 3 || TQ 3 SV 2 || Overall: 13 (score explanation)
Number of Chapters: 51
Chapter Length: Medium
Reading Level: Medium
Date of First Release: February 2021
Date of Last Update: April 2021
AVB Reviewed? No
Available on Platform(s): Webnovel
Number of Views: 27.1K
Number of Reviews: 17
Synopsis:
“We came into this world alone…” Vale starts.
“… and we’ll leave it alone.” I continue with a really inappropriate victorious smile.
“But in-between we’re in it together, El.”
All I want is for Vale to survive what’s coming. He’s my best friend, my family, my world. I need him to survive.
Even if it has to be without me.
If you promise me you’ll live.
I promise you, I’ll try.
___________________________________________
In the Before, calamity struck the human race.
Fragmented into a few surviving metropoles encircled by mutated monsters, humanity in the After is tightly regulated by an iron-fisted Artificial Intelligence System whose primary directive is preserving as much of humanity as it can.
To prevent the remnants of the human race from being over-run by the wilderness beyond, the human enclaves are protected by ancient energy shields… but the energy they require to function?
Death energy.
___________________________________________
El lost everything when her parents were killed in a bombing at the age of 3. Growing up in a Youth Institute, the only thing she loved, the only thing she wanted to protect, was her best friend Vale.
Now 17, El and Vale’s cohort is about to matriculate into the feeding frenzy of the Entrance Exam for their City State’s Academy where if you pass you join the upper echelons of training that can help you survive the chaotic war against the wilderness…
… or you die, and the energy siphoned from your death feeds the shields that protect everyone who’s left.
Without parents, resources, connections, or a System identified Talent in the hours leading up to Matriculation, El is pretty sure she’s about to wind-up dead at her city’s annual Entrance Examination without even trying to battle it out for a limited seat, and chance for survival.
However, El has someone she wants to protect…
… and sometimes that can make all the difference.

Review(s)

Easy_Tiger: Excellent start to the story. Love the futuristic, dystopian setting and the character work has been top-notch. The protagonist is a grounded and interesting individual and I look forward to seeing how she navigates the dangers of her world. High-quality writing, good pacing, excellent world building. This web novel comes highly recommended!

NakedApron: There’s really not much to say about quality and character design. It’s an absolute joy to read about El’s thoughts, but I reckon it might feel a bit too much sometimes? The same problem with World Building. I can see how much you thought about the World and how it works, but I feel like you’ve lost the mystery factor at some point. When I was reading the first chapter, I was thrilled and all, but after a bunch of info-dumps about seemingly unrelated things… it got a bit tedious for me. For example, there was a bunch of info about the seven families and the Old man Green, but they feel out of place. I understand that Green was needed to explain what a stiletto was, and the families were needed to explain the social hierarchy, but at the same time, you could’ve written about them simply, and most readers would be able to guess at their functions. I guess I can say that it takes a long time to get to things. Though, it seems to take up a bit after chapter 4, so I guess that’s alright. I don’t know how to feel about this all, but I know it’s very, very good, so ❤

Clone_v2: Truthfully, it’s not Earl Grey, that being my cup of tea. That isn’t to say that it’s not a good read, A book can be phenomenal without being for everyone. So the question this review seeks to answer isn’t whether I enjoyed this webnovel, but rather whether this webnovel is enjoyable.
A developing habit of mine, I’ll start with the writing. Somewhat of a self taught expert on webnovels, I can say with some level of confidence that the majority, not all, but the majority are poorly written (or translated) The algorithms of this website encourages such neglect in the actual craft of writing. For that reason, with few exceptions, I lower the standard of what I find to be an acceptable grasp of the conventions of writing in a published work of fiction when consuming a webnovel.
This webnovel is one such exception. No lowering of the bar is necessary. While I can’t say the author’s use of grammar is perfect, it’s polished enough that any mistakes went largely unnoticed by my eye. I’m sure if I were to sit down and analyse every sentence I’d find some obscure grammatical convention that had been misapplied, but that’s the kind of focus it would take. Unlike most webnovels i’ve read, nothing blatantly jumped up at me. That’s a victory unto itself.
Grammar aside, the prose generally is excellent. The words flow uninhibited by clunky, unnecessarily long sentence. The vocabulary is sophisticated and it’s yet accessible, and the standard conventions of writing are consistently applied. (You wouldn’t think thing one would have to even mention that last point, but some works of fiction on this platform have changed me.
The best part of the writing is how the author captures the voice of her main character. She’s emotive, deeply in tune with the inner workings of her heart and she has an insightful perspective on ongoing events. To put it simply, she feels real. The highest compliment I can attribute to a fictional character, she feels so real. I can relate to her, emphasis with her, argue with her when she frustrates me with her flawed, but deeply relatable actions. She’s not perfect, she’s better than perfect, she’s real.
If I had to hold one thing against the author’s writing, it’d be that her choice of emotive language may have detracted from the impact descriptive language can provide. I understand that Vale is sad because you told me, not because I see it for myself.
What of the story? I can say this, it is fascinating. A ruined world administrated by a cruelly pragmatic artificial god powered by death energy? Fascinating premise, unfortunately the plot lives two steps shy of its full potential… at least in my mind, and at least for now.
While the premise is utterly unique, the execution is a touch cliché. “Oh I get it, it’s hunger games, or the maze runner, or the 100 (okay, i’ll admit, i haven’t read, watched or whatever verb attached to whatever media manifestation that series belongs to)
The plot so far has too much of the feeling of YA for me to fully endorse it as something I’d be excited to read, but this isn’t about me. I’m not everywoman, it’s not all in me… I mean i’m not a woman at all so I can’t be everywoman, I just really wanted to fit that lyric into a review of mine at least once…
The point remains, however, It’s not about me. Does it feel like YA? Yes. Do I enjoy YA? No. But is it good YA?
Absolutely.
My Promise from the Pale Death God is not my cup of tea, but it is good, and I mean really, really good. When complete, I would not be surprised to hear it’s…
“Coming to a theatre near you” (You have to do the voice, it doesn’t work without the voice.)
For the author: Apologies for the delay in my review, like gets complicated.
Writing Quality 5/5
Stability of Updates: 5/5
Story development: 4/5
Character Design: 5/5
World Background: 5/5
Overall: 24/25
A+