Review Detail of Stire in Sword God in a World of Magic
Review detail
Good plot, terrible execution. Meant to be a warrior in a world where magic reigns supreme, instead got an MC which focuses too heavily on his magical aspects. His personality ain’t so fun to sit through either. God gave him a crazy affinity which essentially permanately destroys anything it touches (slowly eats the world) and gave him control over beings which does the same thing, but like an endless army of them. Then, after that, story goes down from there. MC realizes that he could potentially be an enemy of literally all things living so he became nihilistic and apathetic. Killing innocents, killing children (Mage children obv) and doing anything to further his pursuit of power. He summons those monsters to get more powerful by absorbing the strongest one and then, without caring about the consequences, allows the rest of the weaker ones to just rampage around, leaving other people to clean his mess. Those monsters don’t care about what they be killing either, so naturally a bunch of villages with normal families also just get turned into dust. He ain’t shy in throwing the people who has no beef with him (and even somewhat help him) under the bus if they slightly do anything wrong or inconvenience him. Almost Reverened Insanity-ish but worse since such a personality switch was completely unwarranted, illogical and completely pathetic. I mean, while imprisoned, he taught someone how to be strong and such, but whilst fleeing from the Kingdom, he had to kill him to keep his identity a secret because he recognized him?? What? Why introduce him all together? To change the main characters personality to an unfeeling and uninteresting robot? (There is more to it but if you got to this part then you’ll know what I’m talking about) Honestly it is such a terrible excuse that after seeing no changes later on, as well as the quality of writing taking a dive (often repeating and worthless paragraphs) I decided to just drop the book. Going off in a tangent; don’t get me started on the personality on some of these mages either, despite the book saying otherwise, they DO feel like a hive mind - literally no human qualities on some of these guys, just feels like robots in general. I wish there was some form of rivalry or something with the Magic academy, or more Mage companions that sympathize with the warrior cause (or any new companions in general). Or anything to make the world feel more alive, but no we’re stuck with like 6 people, the rest he just kills off or does not care about them in general. Naturally I did not cover the entire book, and I did not want to either. I wanted readers to know what they’re getting into. This is not a valiant, brave sword man who would shoulder the pressure of the Magic world so that warriors before him may get stronger. But a cold, unfeeling, unholy Summoner, which so happens to have a pretty sword and strong body that constantly brings out an army of plot devices and throws the main idea of the story out the window cause the author himself doesn’t know where to take it. Perhaps the author wanted to introduce plot devices to make the story interesting, perhaps not. I could atleast understand the thinking in some of these decisions, but the story is just all over the place. I personally can’t recommend someone spending money on this book unless you dont mind the MC being a pseudo Calamity Mage with strange applications of Magic and the sword - with the occasional exaggerated panic attacks when he kills something with the slightest bit of significance, of course.
Sword God in a World of Magic
Warmaisach
Liked by 47 people
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Yeah... it just kinda feels like the mc is going through the motions. This has the side effect of making it feel like the author is going through the motions too. Eventually some new characters get introduced, but they are all either obvious plot devices or they die before they can do anything. They are so forgettable and worthless that they seem to only exist to hammer home a point that already was made dozens of times over. That point being "Shang has to sacrifice literally everything to have a shot at being the strongest." But like... they've been talking about that for hundreds of chapters now. Recent chapters (spoilers) see Shang getting mad about a guy making a minor mistake, and Shang malds so hard he officially gets the "Young Master" title. This is supposed to be read as a way to show that he's so powerful that they bend the knee even if he is unreasonable, but it just reads as middle-school syndrome cringe. Not to mention, it also directly counters his whole thing about sacrificing everything since he obviously hasn't given up on stroking his ego. Eventually you have to wonder what the point of it all is. Shang is such an unfathomably boring person at this point in the story. He's so boring that the story is also boring, he doesn't explore, he doesn't interact in any meaningful way with anyone. He doesn't even have any tangible antagonists unless you count time. Every other antagonist either dies immediately, is hypothetical, or is the God who almost never does anything. Shang just sits around training while the author infodumps, and then timeskips. I don't understand why I'm still reading. I think it's just the disbelief in how little the story has in common now with the start. Believable dialogue and characterization was the strongest point of the early chapters, and then the author killed every character and made Shang a nothing-burger power-fantasy. Perhaps, this is all a metaphor for grief. The author has intentionally made you care for and appreciate the characters from early on. Then, as Shang's trauma changes him the story itself fades from it's vibrancy into a monotone blur as a parallel to how trauma can make the world seem empty. Then, no other character is able to be relatable or interesting in any degree to show how even though the world moves on, your ability to enjoy it is restricted by the apathy brought about by loss as you can't help but to compare what you have to what you had. In conclusion. Fell off lmao.
I really agree with this review, not going to add another bad ratings for the author but this sums up what I think about it, also to add something the MC has some progress on his morality and character multiple times in the story and then the author resets it back to zero constantly. I stopped reading the story in 550, where the MC became a totally psychotic power thirsty killer who will murder anyone even if there were some alternatives to killing certain people which were established by the author in previous chapters.
