Eternal Paragon Of Slaughter

I'd like to start by saying this is the first review I've ever written on this platform. I will be doing it in parts, and author, take what I say not as an offense or something of the type, but as areas that, IN MY OPINION, can be improved. Writing quality: The novel has a standard writing style. It is not much different from a lot of novels here, yet has only a few mistakes I could really notice. In fact, most of these weren't problems with the words themselves, but with punctuation and its stability. For example, in the earlier chapters, " is used to show thought, then it's nothing, and now it's ' contrasting with nothing sometimes. While it's not exactly ununderstandable, it's a little frustrating to try to understand if it's a thought, simple narration, or someone speaking. A few times the space after or before . or , is missed; however, it's not much and can be practically ignored. Overall, I'd say although the prose is not something out of this world, it's good enough to read. Stability of updates: It's good, at least for me. One chapter a day with decent length and overall no grammar mistakes, as said previously. There's nothing much to say here. Story Development: The story is still at the start, so I can't judge much on this. There are a few things that I disliked, however. One of them being the fact that the story jumps too much between POVs. It could be a stylistic choice, but still a little too much in my opinion. Almost every chapter, there are around 2 POV jumps, which distract us too much from the MC, considering the novel basically don't develop him until now. Still on that topic, let's go to the next part. Character Design: I don't know if this category is solely for design itself, on the appearance, or if it encompasses every part of the character--from appearance to motivations to characterization. So, for the sake of this review, I will assume it's the latter. Well... initially, I'd like to say one of my main problems with the novel up to this point (Chapter 24) is the MC himself. He is, in fact, somewhat cunning and smart, as he has at least 700 years of life, according to himself. But sometimes he is too... how can I say it, edgy? No, I don't think that's the right terminology. It's more that he feels like a parody. Like, he is edgy, and that is not the problem I have with him... I like lots of edgy characters. However, because of the problem said in the earlier topic, the POV jumps distract us too much from the MC himself. We don't understand his motivations (yeah, he wants to kill and become powerful, but why?). We basically don't see anything about his mentality besides the acting-for-benefit thing, and his speeches take too much from the chapter itself, which could be better done as making him do stuff, instead of simply saying. This is the case of "tell, not show," which is a point for improvement in my opinion. One example I can see of it is the following part: In a certain chapter, the MC is annoyed by his maid, for which he throws a vase in her direction, hurting her. This shows the MC can be annoyed, doesn't like to be annoyed, and solves this problem through violence. This is good, as it shows the MC still has emotions through actions and not simply by him saying "look, I have emotions!" However, this action contradicts a lot of his self-speech. He talks about how benefits are the only thing that matters, how being scheming is necessary to achieve success and how he sees himself as above mere emotions. But this action of harming his maid brings no benefits besides her shutting up, which could be done in many other ways. But my problem is not him having harmed the maid, as I think it adds characterization to him through the "violence is the easier answer." My problem is how he contradicts himself in that aspect and sees himself as someone who is unaffected by human feelings. And this is the point of my previous topic. The MC can pass as a shallow wannabe because we basically don't deepen into his own philosophy or motivations. Besides the MC, the other characters are decent, though a little too caricature. We have the scheming clan leader, the talented "try to pass as good" guy, the scheming elders, etc. World Background: I will take this category as "World Building." It's decent-good. My only gripe is, we are thrown into too much that we don't even understand what it means at the point. We don't know how strong a "Rank three formation apprentice" is or even how hard it is to get to that rank. The explanation will only be given a few chapters later, and before it, it's basically useless information, as we don't know what that rank means. Besides that, we still had no information about formations--something we should have had already. As an example, in RI we are told what a Gu is, even if initially only the basics. In SS we are told what a Core is, though also the basics (which I don't know if it deepens, as I only read up to Chapter 25 of SS). Which doesn't happen here. So what I mean is, you are basically showing us information about a power system we have no information about. So it's confusing. Even if there are other novels that use this power system (which I doubt, as it seems somewhat original), we need to know what a rank-one, two, or three formation means before we are told someone is "peak rank five formation." The world itself has not much info, but I won't say it's needed at this point, besides a little more explanation about the clan area itself--where it stands, how is the academy, etc. There is too little description about this stuff, which needs to be deepened and increased, as I imagine a good portion of the novel will take place there and we don't even know how big is the area. Well, that marks the end of my review. In short, your novel has great potential--you just need a little more polishing with the chapters and power system, then you're good. Of course, that's only my opinion. TL;DR: Good novel, has common problems that plague most of the novels on the website, such as too much exposition without explanation, too many POV jumps, and not enough attention on the MC to justify why he is the way he is. Overall, I'd give it a 7/10