I glanced at one of the School For Adventurers writers blogs and I noticed that they were asking for people to contribute reviews here. I’ve been here before then too, but, all the same, I may as well contribute my piece.

Well, it’s rather brutal.

The nutshell: There is no nuance. The world and characters lack depth, cohesion, and realism. There are some odd contradictions at times, and on the whole it feels rather trite. The story doesn’t feel particularly well thought out and, quite frankly, it crumbles apart upon reflection. If one were to fix all the flaws in this story, I think it would require a rewrite. Still, if you like reading fantasy and fanfiction, then you probably wouldn’t have too many complaints about reading this. However, if you have higher standards and/or like to think a lot about what you’re reading, I encourage you to avoid reading this.

On to the in depth review:

It was a while ago when I was surfing the internet that I chanced upon School For Adventurers. With little better to do, I started reading it and finished it, as I am wont to, in one day. Even so, within 20 pages of reading it, I was already certain of this much: The writing is bad with flaws that remind me all-too-powerfully of a fanfiction writer at work. Truth be told, I genuinely felt as though I were reading fanfiction, even though this isn’t . . . 

Writing: The writing itself is sufficiently amicable, but it doesn’t leave much of a strong impression, and it’s hard to really imagine what the authors are describing. The main problem is that everything feels excessively superficial because there’s no real depth or subtlety.

Characters: At first, the characters fill out somewhat generic roles, but attempts at developing them still leave a lot to be desired. It feels like "developing characters" is being confused for adding traits/backgrounds/desires instead of making the characters themselves more, well, human by letting us see what they’re really like, what makes them the way they are, and why they do the things they do. Without that, the characters feel somewhat odd and two-dimensional.

Avery Rystendale, the most focused character in the story, is a princess rather concerned with keeping up appearances and upholding the dignity of the crown, although she personally doesn’t care for the regalia of the crown. It seems to me like there ought to be some tension between the part of her that doesn’t really like being treated specially and the part of her that demands, for the sake of her royal dignity, that she is treated specially, but we never see that. What’s worse is that in some bouts of character development that would feel closer to character derailment (if not for the fact that we never particularly have any real understanding of what kind of person she is) she professes and engages a rather strong and dubious interest in necromancy (evidently serious enough that she is threatened with a fate worse than death for it), theft, and assassination. If you were wondering about the disturbing contradiction between her concern with the dignity of the crown and her actions and interests at school . . . it’s merely sidestepped by her sisters who explain it away as "the kinds of mistakes people tend to make at that age."

The second most focused character is the reclusive and disinterested Wysteria Ling (aka Raven). As for the reasons underlying these steadfast traits, they are readily left unexplained as they become gimmick traits to define her by. She possesses a loyalty to her comrades, however, and develops somewhat of a drive to become a more capable combatant. That more or less sums her up.

Still a main character, there is Rai Ravin, who is apparently a charming and witty rogue who evidently fails at being a rogue and is a far better healer. He has a low opinion of his combat abilities against bandits, in spite of being confident enough to take on a rival country’s Warrior Supreme in a duel potentially to the death a few chapters earlier.

There is also Fell Farmington, an indentured servant who dreamt of being a warrior and wound up a student at Eastridge. He was bullied and beaten up back in his hometown and is bullied and beaten up at Eastridge. In spite of being a main character, he receives next to no development of any form in the story, although the current editing process promises to correct this in future revisions. He does, however unsurprisingly, become a warrior strong enough to take on the bullying.

As for minor characters, particularly noteworthy is Rakam, a staunch if somewhat mean-spirited warrior who is at first barely mentioned but later becomes one of the most developed characters in the entire story. Although we do not get much insight into his background, Rakam has possibly the best characterization of all the characters.

There is also Annalise Emberlynn, a noble who schemes against the princess for no reason.

The Setting: We never gain too much insight into the setting of Eastridge. The Rune system which is pivotal to the world is never explained, even though nearly any in-class lecture or discussion on runes would’ve given them an opportunity to do so. Oddities include not being told the difference, if any, between the Hide rune, which provides invisibility, and the Invisibility rune. There is also political strife for reasons unknown. The entire portrayal of politics and diplomacy is rather childish. (It seems that in Eastridge, mere social events and polite language will do the trick.) The machinations of the school are somewhat explained, but also somewhat arbitrary.

Plot: Well, it has a plot, and the plot goes a long way to fuel the story. Unfortunately, several of the plot points revolve around particular runes, and, for lack of understanding runes, we as the readers cannot make much sense of it. These faults excepted, the plot manages.

Site Design: The site design is fine. The underlying HTML code isn’t, but that’s Dreamweaver for you. I personally wouldn’t mind the ability to flip through the pages with left and right buttons, but there’s no feature like that so I devised a GreaseMonkey script of my own to remedy it: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/33644 Aside from that, I notice they have two author blogs about Eastridge. I think they should merge the two seeing as it’s pointless to visit two separate blogs concerning the exact same material.

1 of 1 members found this review helpful.
Help us improve!  Register or log in to rate this review.