《Ancient's Smashing Reviews》Graveskies
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And here is another where I could only read a bit before stopping because holy monkey sauce Batman it was triggering to read. I read the first chapter, skipped the second one as soon as I saw what it was, and only read about half the third. I couldn't take it.
TLDR; Girl-Power Fantasy Mary Sue takes flight and does gymnastics while people die
Main Character - So we have a Mary Sue right from the start. She is the most kick-ass of them all, has an attitude with those close to her, and is loved by everyone and everything, except the diety, which plays about as well as a girl with daddy issues. And by Daddy Issues I mean, right from the first line, 1. Life is not worth living. 2. Happiness and attention is defined by the number of gifts quite literally rained from the sky from day to day. Where normally entitled princesses who never grew up beyond 3-years old like this define it by the monetary value as phones, shoes, and luxury cars, this case has it by powers like a drug. While she already has the power of... flight. Now, if everyone was given gifts except her and she was given nothing and left to deal with being the bottom of the barrel of society, this could pay off. But she has gifts no one else does. So this was painful to deal with. This plays about as well as Hillary Clinton's daughter thinking she doesn't love her after the third rich mansion she gave her just because she didn't buy New Zealand. And then to add the fact that the one person, the diety, who doesn't give her attention, is the only person she wants attention from, is just mind-numbingly entitled. Yes, I get that its a god, and that is good to want their love, but that love is defined by physical gifts here, turning him not into a god but a sugar-daddy. So yeah God-Sugar-Daddy is everything to her.
Meanwhile the rest of the cast exists only to show how great and glorious she is with nonstop praise. I mean, for God's sake, the general of the entire damn army is her second-best buddy and has a thing for doing anything and everything to mingle with the soldiers (in this case portrayed, only her) except actually doing things that involve being a general until the plot decides he needs to be told to do his job. I will get more into this later, but this is relevant to the main character showed just how entitled the Mary Sue is.
Side Characters - On the surface the interactions are fun. There is bickering and stuff, showing how close they are. However, rather than be individuals, they are just mouth-pieces whose introduction is spent telling the main character how great she is. They have minimal individuality. They have some, but it is so minimal as to be ineffective. The kid she babysits is the only one remotely decent because he at least forces her to show a different side of herself and test her, instead of the general and lover just acting as mirrors for her to pose in front of going "yes! praise me more!" I mean, quite literally, the lovers entire existance is bsaically "your so great", "your so great", "have i told you your so great yet?" and I wish I was exaggerating what she says but at one point she is so god damn desperate to praise the MC she actually asks if she has done it yet today after she had already done it multiple times. Meanwhile the general's entire purpose and existance seems to be "Hello best buddy! yes, there is a high value mission, YOU MUST GO ON IT!"
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Grammar and Word Usage - The author's first language is not english, so far as I understand. So overall it was average, which is a positive then, as my expectation was below-average. I would suggest looking up what "Purple Prose" is though, because its all over the place. The flow of thought and narrative is constantly interrupted or goes in strange directions with no relevance to the scene, or makes leaps and jumps.
World Building - Overall not bad. The information given was relevant, most of the time. There was a bit too much being thrown at us all at once early on, so I would suggest instead of overloading people in chapter 1 to instead spread out the information a bit more over time. At times the information given was told, and at times shown. I can't say I liked the world building execution, but nor did I dislike it.
However, the problem comes down to how the world building is used within the plot, where quite simply nothing make any sense, everything contradicts, and only succeed in making the main character more of a mary sue with each passing moment.
Plot - So, even on a surface level, the plot doesn't make sense. You have the whole God-Sugar-Daddy bullshit with the Main Character already having one of the greatest gifts she could have asked for. She is a soldier in the military. An officer of some kind like a corporal judging from how she has at least one subordinate. Which, you know what, that is highly respectable. But it makes her personality just nonsense.
So Chapter 1 starts off with her melodramatic nonsense going "woe is me, I can fly but woe is me". Immediately bickers with her lover, because I guess the second thing we needed to learn is she is gay and has an active sex life and gets regularly drunk while on duty despite being a low level officer and is extremely obstinate and is a horrible morning person despite not suffering from hangovers. And all we learn about her lover is that she wants to praise the MC. So... yeah quite an MC. They are on the front lines in a trench, which tells the reader to expect guns and artillery to be used. And she leaves the trenches to go and get breakfast.
First off what the hell are the trenches for and how is this the border of an active battlefield if there are no bullets flying the moment she stands up out of a trench and casually walks to camp to get breakfast? What she was even doing in the trench to begin with at this point?
So she goes to camp to get breakfast and immediately runs into the general of the entire military, because he has to be hanging out with privates, corporals, and specialists, instead of with officers and communications department ready to receive information on a moments notice. This isn't just a one-time thing, but apparently his hobby to pow-wow with the grunts. If it was a one time thing to boost moral and show his face, or if they happen to have to get breakfast from the same location, then fair enough. But he comes across as a lieutenant AT MOST, from his behavior and choices. Because, as is the obvious theme, the Mary Sue is so great. We could stretch it to him being an extremely sociable Major or Captain, as I have known a couple that do that alongside their regular duties. But a general? Is this story serious? If so, then the general is simply incompotent at his job, and when you introduce the guy who is supposed to represent your military at a high level the first thing we obviously want to know is how damn incompotent he is!!! :D
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So we get something about her gambling with the general, which made me beat my face into the wall, but I imagine it will have a role later in some plotline.
And immediately his watch chirps to let him know, are you ready for this? CONFIDENTAL CLASSIFIED INFORMATION OF A MISSION! This is why generals and high level officers don't pow-wow with grunts while on duty. They get given classified information and the last place you should get it is a damn cafeteria and the last people you want exposing it to is all the grunts, leaks, and spies between here and whoever the enemy is. Its like this general hasn't even heard of the words "derivative classification". Because the watch giving details openly to people who are not in the Need-To-Know and his own words reveal 1. Location 2. Number of soldiers 3. Time of mission start 4. A few of who those soldiers will be by name, then I would classify this mission as Secret to Top-Secret classification and he should be fired because of the leak, which is called "spillage" in military terms.
So, moving on from the raw incompotence and stupidity of the spillage, comes the stupid stuff. His first choice for the mission is the MC, because girl-power fantasy mary sue, and the MC's lover.
*breath in. breath out*
1. A soldier on the front lines has to carry 90-140 pounds of gear and equipment, while being 140-160 pounds themselves. Then, if any other soldier is wounded, the first soldier is expected to be able to carry their wounded comrade to safety. This comes out to a total of 350-400 pounds soldiers have to be expected to be able to deadlift and run. Not just run, but be able to run a mile in seven minutes, and be able to do that for several miles to get to proper safety. Now, the expectation is slightly lower for women, because no women is expected to actually be able to carry anyone due to the weaker muscle fibers and difficulty to make any muscle, but this is still the overall ballpark of what is to be expected. Otherwise the soldier will have to live with the knowledge of being too weak to carry a comrade to safety, and all the trauma that comes with the full knowledge of their incompotence and how much at fault they are.
There is a reason women avoid the front lines even when in the military. The women dont want to have to live with that, and the men don't want them there to try and fail and just get shot in the process.
And the general's first pick is them. Because Mary Sue.
2. The MC is intimate with her lover. And the General's first pick is a pair that will be, by default, emotionally compromised. There is a reason you do not get intimate with any of your peers or your chain of command. It is illegal for a reason. And this guy is a general.
This is the world building folks. This is how we start the plot. We are not even half-way through chapter 1 and I'm already triggered by the plot starting because of stupidity. The general is an incompotent retard.
So the mission is to go to enemy territory where baddies are moving PoWs deeper into their own territory. Because it is inside enemy territory the default pick should be SWAT or whatever accounts for the most elite in the nation. But don't worry, we have the mary sue! So she is the first pick alongside her lover, and he needs to pick 28 other people.
And she goes out of her way to pick one herself instead of the general who was tasked with it, because Mary Sue don't need to answer to chain of command or take orders or any of that red tape stuff. She is a girl in a girl-power fantasy. She can do what she wants.
And her pick is a 16 year old kid who, even after being told there is a mission, refuses like a 9-year-old being told to get up and get dressed for school. And he is faking being sick. And apparently he is of a low-birth in some kind of caste system.
Why hasn't he being shot by a firing squad yet? Why is he refusing a mission with people's lives on the line? Why is he selected in the first place by people who clearly know how much of a brat he is? Why is he acting like a 9-year old while in the military and his birth being low caste instead of the quiet and snappy obedience warranted by his story details?
Bigger question: Why is everyone incompotent and have no redeeming qualities?
So they get into a truck and move on when the lover has to get all intimate immediately like a hooker in need of a cocaine fix and drops the oh so lovely line of "have I praised you yet today?" the only thing missing was a lapdance. Which there might have been, hard to tell.
And they come across the convoy and the baddies step out and yell to fire at them.
Chapter 2.
I couldn't care less about a single one of them and we get an entire long as shit flashback chapter about how they met. I can't even begin to describe the number of problems with this, but lets lay a few out simply. 1. Too early to care. 2. This breaks up the pacing beyond repair. 3. Flashbacks are even worse than prologues because they bring the story to a halt, and prologues are already bad and rarely used well at all. 4. Why should I give a flying shit about how the Mary Sue and her mouth-piece hooker met? They aren't much in the way of characters to start with so I have less reason to care about how they met.
So I skipped it.
Chapter 3
So the baddies and goodies charge at each other with swords. The MC and lover stepping out of the truck, flying into the air, doing a bunch of aerobatics together like its the goddamn ice skating olympics while people charge at each other, take the time to get philosophical about the meaning of life and how complete they are while in the air and a lot of other mind-numbing stuff and then decide at some point they should probably be involved. So the MC whips out a sword, flies down, and starts fighting like anyone else swinging a sword around, while her lover swings a mace around. Someone in this mess can do earth powers and they take one flicker of a glance at a random baddie and instantly know his power is ice, and all the power levels and limitations he can possible have and at this point I had to stop or else I would hit my face into the wall so much it would bloody my face.
Which I have done. I literally have a scar on my forehead from beating my face into the wall. It was stupid, and it was my reaction to stupidity.
So... I have question. A lot of them, actually.
1. Why is everyone retarded? 2. Why did the people yell 'Fire!' if their weapons are swords? 3. Why are there trenches if warfare is done with swords and a few powers that seem to involve close-quarters combat? 4. Why does the Mary Sue and hooker think that fighting with maces and swords is a good idea when they have wings, instead of say bows and arrows or GUNS!!!! or doing scouting to see what is around or to fly onto the truck and do something tactical? 5. Why does no one have a spear to kill these two and put us out of our misery? Spears were FAR more common in the middle ages than swords. 6. Why are there trucks and communication devices and trenches but no damn guns?! And why can't the girls use that so their flying has at least 1% of a purpose since they seem too stupid to act like scouts or use their strengths in a way that actually uses it for some kind of advantage? 7. How much of a mary sue are they that they can just look at a guy and read what power he has, what his power level is, and all possible limits he has to it and his weaknesses and strengths? This is even more bullshit than naruto, which at least managed to make the bullshit make enough tactical sense to keep from being outright stupid. This doesn't even bother with that, just goes straight to the power-girl-fantasy-mary-sue.
and now most of all 8. Why is the author writing all of her characters as military officers with seemingly no experience or research into anything remotely military?
Now, in terms of wokeness and liberal messages in the LGBT category, which this story threw at us in the first few paragraphs as if it was the first thing the author wanted to get out of the way. If the lover NEVER goes on the same missions as her, and DOESNT preach the MC's praises every single conversation like a good Mary-Sue mouth-piece she is, then she could be nice and they have a cute little romance. But their little romance makes me roll my eyes everytime they open their mouths to speak because of the amount of stupidity that comes out of it.
Overall I didn't like anything. This is a Mary Sue Power-Girl fantasy for an extremely entitled, insufferable, obnoxious Main Character with God-Sugar-Daddy issues. The world building made no sense from start to finish, instead contradicting and bending the universal rules to accomidate the mary sue, as the very definition of a mary sue is. and while I appreciate that the plot is at least character driven, the character driving it is... well this. And I dont know why you would choose to devote chapter 2 to a flashback, for a character like this, in the middle of what should be an interesting battle starting.
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