Title: To The Far Shore
Author: Warby Picus
Rating: M (probably)
Genre: Sci-Fi
Status: Complete (but epilogues at random)
Library Category: Other Fandoms
Pairings: OC/OC
Link: Royal Road
Summary:
Post apocalyptic Oregon Trail.

Mazelton comes from a clan of radiation wizards who harvest the cores of living beings to power their magics, but he's not really in to it. Not that anybody cares about his opinion when they send entire armies to exterminate his family. He has to run- from mobs, cannibals, soldiers, sailors, cholera, cattle, thieving sales-monks, starvation, mechanical horrors, vengeful spirits, negotiating your own marriage, and poison of every sort. Fortunately, his not terribly nice family has trained him to survive apocalypses. A world recovering from the last apocalypse should be easy.

Review:
Sometimes, the world ends. Records show that this has happened at LEAST four times.

Sometimes it only ends a little bit, and civilization collapses a little bit. That's happened a LOT more.

Mazelton (Ton, of Generation Zel, of Clan Ma), is surviving through his own world ending. The city of Old Radler falls, his family with it, and so he sets off on a journey to find peace. The problem is that the world is still ending, still recovering from the last apocalypse, and he's not entirely sure what's going on.

One of the best things about this, for me, is something that I can definitely see turning other people away. Mazelton is on a journey to find safety, and a new home. He's a little self-centered, and a little cowardly, so sometimes, he decides he'd much rather sit in his cart with a cup of soup than carry on the plothooks that were dropped on him. Plot elements just... disappear, because he's not interested in them, he's on the Oregon Trail, and running away from everything he ever knew.

There's a whole load of world building (which makes sense, as this is book 1, the author's halfway through book 2, and writing another book at the same time); but things are in that weird uncanny area where I'm not sure if it's sci-fi or fantasy.

Mazelton is a radiation wizard. Except it's all well-understood science, because he has a gene-tailored body that his ancestors probably paid a lot for, and it's just the peasants that don't understand. Then other characters have powers that are similarly magical, but also gene-tailored in.

The story wanders across desolate realms, where people live in the torn-down remnants of prior civilizations, searching for the repositories of knowledge because every single civilization realizes that apocalypses are... kind of unavoidable. But that's okay, because the oral histories of the great houses, the genetic memories of the biomancers, and the spirits of the Aelf will help carry on their legacy.

Nevermind that peasants and Dusties don't look favourably on blood sacrifice. This confuses Mazelton, who became a Dusty to get his end away, but he reconciles it by not thinking too hard on it. He'll eat meat if he has to, but after the first (they think) ecological collapse, people tend to be vegetarian if possible. But in hard times, eat carrion.

Or human, if needs must.

I'm on my second re-read (third reading total) of this, because it's absolutely entrancing.

The first time, I got in trouble at work because I took too long on lunch, and because I was reading at my desk.



There's a LOT more I could say on this, but I don't want to post much in the way of spoilers.

5/5.

I am waiting for the author to publish this, because I actively want to own a physical copy.

 

My thoughts on this story are pretty mixed. Bad start(up to ~5%), absurdly great middle(up to the climax where the

Spoiler

ultra-collectivists (forgot their name, it's been a while) attack the caravan.

) at ~65% or so), and thoroughly mediocre, aimless ending that completely aborts the MC's character arc as well as undermining many of its central themes, particularly that of self-discovery, of self-acceptance, and of journey over destination. Very disappointing.

And then comes the epilogues... As much the latter third of the story disappoints me, it's nothing compared to what I feel for the abortion clinic dumpster fire that are the epilogues chapters.

Why learn to accept your strengths and limitations when you can just solo train yourself in a few months to be the best radiation wizard ever? Why let go of the past, of the disdain of your family and your own self-hatred and survivor's guilt, when you can just prove them wrong by becoming a demi-god of magic? Why let go of your fear for the future when your desperation fueled blind-marriage trek across an entire apocalyptic continent actually works out dandy, your stranger wife being perfect for you(and you her)?

I didn't think it was possible to write something great purely by accident, but this work, particularly the epilogues, made me reconsider because it seems to me that the author missed the point of his own work entirely. (It's possible I'm a bit bitter lol)

Up to 65% my rating would have been an easy 5/5, but the formless mess that is the latter third brought that down to 3.5/5, and the epilogues brings that down again to 3/5.

 

I’ll check this out I generally don’t like anything on royalroad though.

 

There’s a great deal about this that I like, and some things that I do not.

I’ll edit in a full-er review later, but rating wise I’ll give this a 4/5 in particular for its very ambitious world-building, although I concur that it doesn’t end as strong as it starts.