Hey, if anyone's interested, now's a good time to try and catch up. A really good arc is finishing up

Spoiler

an epic battle scene just happened last chapter that's been building up for a long time

and the next book will probably be coming out in the next month or two.

Spoiler

Also, Ryoka hasn't been in the latest book which is great because she wasn't one of my favourite characters either.

 

So I just finished reading this story (up to 6.02) after 2 weeks of quite heavy reading.

It's very much a slice-of-life fic, especially the earlier books, but I dig that.
Erin is a very likable character who always brings something interesting or cringy (in a good way) to the table.
I really disliked some of the characters POVS, some of which filled too much.

Spoiler

Emperor Laken, however plot-relevant he was, and Ryoka

Ryoka is so unsympathic, I nearly put the fic down a few times. Her long chapters and pissy attitude really made me cross my fingers that she wasn't the focus of the next chapter.

Spoiler

That said, in book 6 (so far), she's much more pleasant to read about! It honestly made me smile. She is awkward and still prone to being a bitch, but she does her best not to. Really glad that the author took that direction with her.

The author does a great job of humanizing "baddies", e.g. Goblins, necromancers, while still maintaining that just because you're a Goblin, you're not a misunderstood angel. I felt it got a bit preachy at times, but I've learned to look past it.

In general the wide cast of characters is very well done, allowing for some good breaks with the main characters.

Spoiler

For example Niers, Flos, Magnolia

I really like this story and I will follow it eagerly from now on.

4.5/5 stars, rounded up for extraordinary length.

 

Does anybody still follow this? I read up until Tyrion Veltras' Seige of Liscor and the end of that book, but i couldn't make myself read about Ryoka and gave it up. Has anything interesting happened?

 

You should read on about Ryoka, the author's gone in a different direction with her and has developed her character more. She also has only had like 4 chapters I think in this book, the arc solely about her is less interesting then the arc later that intersects with her about the backlash Magnolia's nobles are having for supporting her coup of Veltras' army.

If you like Baleros characters you can skip the first few chapters of slow liscor action and read those and come back to the liscor stuff later. I enjoyed them personally but I do think they dragged on a bit.

Edit: I feel like I should mention that this book has been a lot less Erin heavy with only half being about Liscor at all. Some people haven't really liked it but I enjoyed the Chandrar and Baleros arc's.

 

Last few chapters are about a witch coven. Really digging it. Besides that though, it's very bland considering right now its Durene pov arc. Consensus from the fandom is that Durene is worst waifu ever, her character is bland af and I tried very hard to like her but nah. She's just annoying, hopefully pirate can flesh her out better later on.

Anyone else still keeping up with this? It's at 4 and half million words almost iirc, and there's been a few(3-4) very long chapters this volume that were around 25k.

 

I ground to a halt around 5.21 and though I keep meaning to try again, I can't muster the motivation. There's been a lot of focus on characters I don't care for, plotlines I don't care for, etc. I didn't even know a Durene pov arc was happening, and my desire to slog through half a million words for the pot of shitty waifu at the end is near zero.

 

My feelings exactly. I've read some of the sixth book, and I'm just not feeling it.

 

Yeah that's fair, if I had stopped a book ago I don't know if I would bother to catch up myself. I've been keeping up with the updates of twi weekly and even then I find myself skimming at times, the only other web serial I follow now is PTGE which I binge every few weeks.

I noticed I haven't given a review even though I've been following this since Glimmer put it up for review so here it is.

The problem with TWI is that it's so long even though it really doesn't need to be, and the plot is also very meandering and aimless. It's on volume 6 and it feels like we've barely reached the halfway point to a lot of central plots

Spoiler

Antinium going back to Rhir to connect with those left behind/and or fight the God there, Flos going to war, Magnolia's plot to to bring peace on Izril, Erin connecting with Niers, more info on the spell that brought the Earth people besides that it was the Rhir king messing up.

Not to mention the inconsistencies and low quality of Volume 1 and 2, which just based on them I honestly wouldn't want to recommend to a new reader knowing they'd have to slog through a bad start. The quality has definitely gone up throughout though just in terms of writing but...That brings me again to the pointlessly Huge wordcount. It's at around 4 and a half million words. That's absolutely crazy but at the same time sort of admirable, to their credit they've never had a lot of pointless filler chapters but they have had a lot of weird detours that weren't necessary (fanfic writer- turned knockoff author that promptly disappeared, the vampires with aids and etc) and they start a pretty much a new plot thread to loop in with half of their mini-story arcs and it's become repetitive in how much the story wanders away from Erin and the fanbase doesn't like it either. Recently it hit the #1 on that topwebfictions site when it came back to an Erin arc after so long.

Also the fact that the author has pretty much forgotten Toren for like a whole book.. I'd be more interested in seeing what happened to Scott Kent (guy who killed an earth person and joined in the iPhone chat in book 2) then having a weird Jesus Ant arc(minor spoiler that Pawn started an antinium religion and apparently that was enough to create a heaven for them) or even how Selys' prophecy ties in with the Goblin King's key over that.

To the author's credit they are trying to lessen the chapters but a short while ago they wrote a 30k chapter in like 3 days and only managed to edit it down to 24k.. So, I'm not holding out any hope that they're going to manage drastically changing their writing style. They're just to used to bloated chapters now. And it works for them I guess since they make triple what erratica does on patreon.

All in all I would give it a 3.5/5. Rounded down to 3/5 because I figure the author is going to milk this for a few more years before it ends and RIP I'm not interested in reading a 10 million word web serial. I still like this but I feel like it's gone down over time, I would've rated this a 4/5 last year.

P.S

Spoiler: major spoiler

the goblin genocide arc feels a bit cheapened since Pyrite got rezzed, still really think they didn't all have to die. Noears for example was plenty skilled to gtfo in one piece and he was a great character. Also fuck Laken. Blind annoying shit, my hate of Ryoka transferred to him ten-fold, and even Durene is just a lesser version of Garia with even less personality.

 

Still keeping up with it.
The Laken chapters are very hard to get through to the point where I am just skipping most of them and reading the discussion reddit for a brief summary.

Imo TWI has very little re-read value (perhaps owing to its immense word count), so even a good chapter is a bit meh.
I feel that the story got a bit out of hand for the author, as they go off on a tangent for 50-60k words at a time.

Despite this, I still keep up as the Erin and Antinium chapters are top notch. The latter chapters dedicated to Ryoka has also been quite nice.
It also has some nice character pieces (Wistram Days, Niers, Embria).

 

Embria is debatable, we still don't know a lot about Relc retiring and her backstory on her military career. It was nice to see her character development but she still strikes me as too similar a character to Ryoka.

My favourite character arcs to see upcoming would probably be one from Ken, Blackmage or Clown.

 

Erin finally linked up with Niers? What chapter?

 

Spoiler: Niers doesn't link with erin quite yet

Niers doesn't link up w/erin yet, he's busy trying to prepare to leave Baleros. He's gotten a bunch of screen time with his students and a massive game of tag. Look for the D chapters in vol 6

 

Spoiler: The latest chapter had a really nice plot twist

The Drakes finally retaliated against the Izril nobles for them attacking Liscor and trying to start a definitive war between their races.

Also Wiskeria finally found her Witch's Craft and it was a cool moment for sure.

 

I've really not enjoyed the last few chapters.
I've tried to spoiler anything major, but minor spoilers are in what I've written below.

The return to Ryoka in Volume 6 started pretty great. She was much more likeable and interesting in my opinion.

Spoiler

The vampire

plot was pretty meh, but still I liked it.

The Baleros parts are very enjoyable. Not much more to say there.

But then we come back to Laken...
I enjoyed his chapters when he was starting out. It seemed like he understood the system intuitively and was able to get far that way. But as time went on he became less interesting and more irritating.
We've had around 9 "E" chapters in Volume 6, and switching the perspective to Durene did not improve my already pretty low opinion of the "E" chapters. She is just not interesting. Even Ryoka comments on it in the story. She is incapable of having her own opinions or make her own decisions, and expects Laken to fix everything no matter what. Boring.
I had hoped adding Ryoka to the mix would make the chapters more readable, but instead that just made me dislike Ryoka again.

Spoiler

The retaliation of the drakes

is an interesting storyline, but it gets dragged down by boring village politics and Ryoka trying (and mostly failing) to understand witches.

One final thing that has been annoying me, with the return of Ryoka: One of the most interesting things about Ryoka,

Spoiler

not having any skills or class

, is as far as I remember not even touched upon. There has been mentions of this being very important, but then nothing happens with it.

 

Absolutely, on the TWI discord where I usually go to talk too about the serial everyone was wondering why

Spoiler

Ryoka kept on dropping the idiot ball again with the Witches, like with bothering Belavierr and not understanding Hedag. It really made her unlikeable again in a lot of ways.

Durene is so vapid that it's so irritating, I kept on hoping that pirate would expand on her more but no she's continuously just the 'idiot farmer girl' with the sad past and it's so annoying.

Spoiler: Ryoka

I figure her having no skills or classes will be touched on more in her next arc/the continuation of this one. I think Fierre might give her some of the 400gold, so Ryoka could use that to buy one artifact or something. Her not having skills was talked about when she fulfilled one of the criteria to become a courier so when that comes back around she'll probably try and figure something out besides getting better at the wind. Iirc, one of the other criteria is to have a Courier sponsor her into the ranks so maybe Hawk/or some other unknown courier like someone who knew Valcleif will mentor her and give some tips.

I also hope Octavia can finally level up off that Haste potion and maybe be able to reproduce a lesser class version but that's a longshot.

 

@DeathShade What did you think of the chapter today-if you've read it?

Spoiler: I was a bit disappointed

Like the comments on the chapter itself, I was a bit put off by the Belavierr switch. It was absolutely great in the moment reading it that it even happened and I found it pretty cool, very devious, and intriguing as hell. The moment after where everyone attacked her was a bit weird as Charlay/Prost for example didn't really have any reason too.

I liked the background info in the chapter about how Bela has [Immortal Moment], why exactly Wiskeria rightfully detests her mother (the griffin prince being vivisected over an unwise wish), Wiskeria's Craft not being specifically 'Justice' but more Order/law. All of these gave more background info, and were nice to see.

Wiskeria being able to take down Belavierr is a long time from now. So, it's unlikely that'll be plot relevant for a long while(so she'll be another thing to add to the loose plot threads list from now on) I hope it goes to another Erin arc after this, and Niers meets up with her before the end of this book.

Another thing now is that I hope Ryoka wises up a bit and doesn't view Belavierr as some sort of 'sympathetic' immortal anymore after this debacle. The fae were similar in their morals to Bela I'd say, the reveal of her mortal self/personality being a bit wicked makes sense. During their immortal moment where Belavierr tells Ryoka that's the way she is, it felt like she was also trying to disabuse ryoka of her notions/similarly I think she also might've given her a bit of a charm against the fire? I dont see how Ryoka would've gotten away with only light burns on her face/skin/hair probably bald -though its not mentioned.

I could buy Ryoka attacking her after the Califor reveal though, that makes sense of course.