Spectacular World

This review isn't going to be too positive, but I hope the author takes it as what it is, feedback from a single reader. 

While the flash-forward helped as an initial hook, the introduction of the setting and characters that followed didn't let me get into the story. Too many things felt noticeably unreal for a story that doesn't seem intentionally absurd. 

Style: the third person narration is inconsistently distant, drifting from channelling the protagonist to omniscience. Not a fan. Character voices sound samey, whether it's the teenage protagonists or various adults. Imagery does its job, but is sometimes jarring. People rolling their eyes at each other 4 times in 9 paragraphs of exchanged dialogue isn't believable body language. 

Grammar: more issues with formatting than grammar. Odd capitalization, unformatted dashes, and some serious abuse of ellipses. Most of this could've been invisible instead of obtrusive by following common standards. 

Story: while I didn't get far into the overarching plot, the described events and world didn't feel believable. They're cartoonish, and it kills my immersion. 

Example: when a stranger at a bank utters a cliched jinx like "things can't get any worse at least", that shouldn't silence the entire lobby. It shouldn't horrify bystanders into fearing an imminent attack by supervillains. These people behave like they know they're fictional. 

The world-building also raises questions. If an incident involving powers as potent as teleportation and Magneto-level telekinesis wielded by supervillains who literally eat children (or don't consider that a deal-breaker in a teammate) can be the tenth notable supervillain incident on the same day in the same city, how is this society still standing? Maybe the story has a believable answer for that, but when believability is my recurring problem, I struggle to trust there'll be one. 

Character: Hope is unconvincing. She's a skinny 15-year-old nerd who's perhaps not actively bullied, but explicitly lonely, and certainly isolated. She's not physically fit, has no superpower, and despite all this, lacks all sense of social and physical vulnerability. 

She's so airheaded she needs to be saved from walking into traffic, will fall asleep in class without a care, unironically needs to be reminded to breathe when she gets excited, and will nail a vicious quarterbacker three years her senior in the head with her backpack for harrassing the prom queen. Her first reaction to aggression from said quarterback is not to flee or freeze, but to try and get her arm up for a punch. 

Fiction doesn't need realism, least of all a superpower story, but I do want characters to be believable enough to empathize with them. Hope didn't clear that bar for me. 

I guess this is a good story but I will have some complaints about it. The first thing is it is long. Like holy cow some of these chapters are just big. Like I like RR because I can binge a bunch of stories quickly, and I guess if you were a fast reader you can do that, but like some chapters are just to big. Chapter 33 for example. I was currious and put it in a word count and the thing was like 8k something. That's like 4 normal sized chapters. Now it also wouldn't be that big of a deal yet somehow the plot is kind of slow at times. If you're going to throw a 4k-6k chapter at me I expect a lot of stuff to happen yet most of it is setting stuff up for later.

Now while that does sound bad I do like a lot of things with this story. Namely the characters. The main girl is sort of neat though what takes the cake are the side characters. i've never felt myself closer to a character then Jack Larison. A 9 to 5 worker that barely cleans up and is down on money. Um yeah. That actually does become a bit of an issue though. Hope is the main character yet I don't really care for her to much. She grew on me so I can't say I hate her but there are a bunch of characters, like a shocking amount, and of all the named ones given scenes in the main cast the mc comes off more as just there.

That leads me to the world. It's big. And honestly I don't have a lot to complain about here. It takes place mainly in a city and things are built up over the chapter being hinted at or implied. Almost everything is given an explanation eventually and there is a ton of things foreshadowed or brought up. A lot of it has to do with a bunch of stuff that happened in the past which is kind of annoying as we're being told about all this cool stuff rather then seeing it, but when you do get to see it it's pretty cool.

The fight scenes are also really good I think. They are wild and sort of all over the place but I really like them. They do have a bit of an issue at places and there are parts that I think were missworded but the scale of them is nice. It feels like it involves these big battles. The main issue is it takes sometime to get there. Like honestly the first five chapters are the worst part of this series. There is some action but it mainly revolves around the mc who is sort of just forced to go along with the plot. It isn't until chapter 6 we get one of the best characters ever, and then from there action starts to pick up.

In terms of grammer I want to be nice and rate it because it's trying. I don't really like giving bad reviews on things but honestly grammer has the lowest here. There are some notable errors and I've seen in the comments a lot of them are pointing out mistakes which isn't a good sign. It's readable for sure and I don't expect a 10 out 10 novel ever on RR but still. It's jarring at times.

TLDR is a pretty good superhero book once it actually becomes a Superhero book.

I'm having a lot of fun reading this so far and I like everything that has been shown so far and how fast the characters are clicking for me. Now that doesn't mean anything is simple oh no far from it, I just like how easy it is for me to just get into. Great story to read at anytime you can and I look forward to seeing much more from the Protagonist Hope but my favorite character is Jack. I haven't been fully caught up on the story yet but where I'm at right now the villain really has me on the edge of my seat and isn't like other villains with similar powers or origins with their powers yet they are psycho still and I really enjoy the fact that the author isn't doing a whole redeemable evil thing with some of the villains we've seen so far. Plus the author didn't forget to add artifacts into the lore either. I always love a fiction when you have more to the world then just powers like there are things there that people made that are just awesome weapons and armor or just inventions that by their mere existence just say this world is more than meets the eye. 

This is an entertaining superhero story that should appeal to fans of the genre. Although I haven't read a huge amount of superhero stories, I enjoy them and think this one has lots of potential. 

Style: The style of this story is casual and pretty direct, there's no purple prose or over description of things really, it's straightforward and pretty clear about what's going on. 

Grammar: I think I noticed a couple typos, but nothing that really distracted me from the story at all, so I didn't have any problems with the grammar, it reads like normal to me!

Characters: Hope seems like a cool main character who I look forward to following as she grows. I'm not sure what the future holds for her but I think she will continue to develop strengths and hopefully become part of a meaningful community. 

Story: I am not very familiar with superhero stories in general, but so far this seems like a good set-up for lots of interesting events to take place. The super powers mentioned seem strong and though I can't really guess where the plot is going to go, it should be interesting. 

Overall a promising start up to where I've read! 

The pros:

The story is a very pleasant easy read with good writing style. I kept on reading chapters after chapters.

The main character is an endearing somewhat impulsive but well intentioned girl. She doesn't act like an all knowing MC, nor does act stupid, it's just right!

Also, there are lots of mysteries. Lots of foreshadowing as well that gives the reader a good chance to make a few guess many chapter in advance, some of them will be right! :) 

Each chapter is very long (like 3 or 4 "standard royal road" chapter, with many different scenes in it), and much action is happening, doesn't feel drawn out, unlike many other stories here on RR and despite chapter size.

The cons:

There lots of flashback and scene transition that are abrupt and somewhat confusing.

Suspension of disbelief. This story will stretch it quite a lot!

For example, the story has many unbelievable plot holes, I am not talking about super power and the like, the premise of such story. Instead, for instance, in Oleander - the main city in that story - there are like about 10 to 20 heroes and villains alike and they have been on status quo for quite a while. Neither winning or losing members, despite some super being extremely more powerful than others. The first 3 super fight Hope is in, one side is clearly the winner, but an unexpected lucky twist let the loser escape. Like every single fight. While it might be a staple of superhero stories to have the same actors in many episodes in a row, this is quite hard to believe here.

Another example. Heroes do not kill. The story feels strongly about that. Meanwhile the villains are killing like hundreds of civilians per minutes. But that's fine, we can't fault nor terminate them for that hey?

The story is fine, the characters are solid, and the metaplot is good but not great. I read a lot of it, because it kept being just good enough to keep me engaged, but in the end the fight scenes caused me to quit.

Fights have wildly fluctuating power levels, determined solely by what is needed for the scene, and the amount of "this is not even my final form!" just got to me in the end.

The plot has few stupid balls, which is nice, but the fight scenes are filled with them and it's infuriating. As almost every superhero author they very rarely follow through on the consequences and possibilities of a person power, though a few attempts are made (to be fair).

Honestly, I would read a rewrite if the author got the fight scenes sorted. It has potential but the author needs to understand things like 'punching a regular guy hard enough that they fly and hit a brick wall, does not make them unconscious it makes them very very dead' and that they cant have the MC breaking her thumb in one scene due to not knowing how to fight, and perfectly karate-kicking fireballs (that are somehow solid) in the next scene.