(Disclosure: I am a longtime friend of the author’s.)

The author has a lot of talent as a storyteller, and a fair bit of experience as a hobbyist in a few genres, mostly writing short stories. He’s able to craft unique characters, describe settings well, and otherwise develop a charming, memorable tale.

This story especially will resonate with role-playing gamers—which I’m not, so there are probably a bunch of little in-jokes and hints that I’m missing out on.

I don’t think the story summary really does it justice. The story (so far) has been less about the universe it’s set in, and more about the notion of an RPG-come-to-life for a few random high school friends.

All that said, I think this is one of his largest efforts, and his first foray into a serialized format, and the story does suffer for this. Each update amounts to maybe 2 or 3 novel pages of text, fed to the reader 3 times a week. It’s through this tiny straw that the reader is introduced to a minor sea of characters, 5 or so different settings, and some explanation of the story’s universe.

There are lots of concurrent mysteries and unanswered questions which would be intriguing if they didn’t require the reader to keep track of them for weeks at a time while they’re revealed painfully slowly.

I enjoy reading it, and try to catch up on it at least once a week, which seems like a reasonable trade-off: by the time I’m finishing up the last entry, I’m just starting to "get into" the story again. I look forward to seeing how the story develops and resolves, and hopefully the author will continue to enjoy writing longer stories.

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