{"id":12849,"date":"2025-09-05T13:19:22","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T13:19:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/?p=12849"},"modified":"2025-09-05T14:01:56","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T14:01:56","slug":"web-novels-vol-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/web-novels-vol-15\/","title":{"rendered":"Web Novels, Vol. 15"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.royalroad.com\/fiction\/102816\/by-her-grace-a-progressive-isekai-light-novel\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">BY HER GRACE<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>This stands out for having an unambiguously evil protagonist, sort of like a solipsist version of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/youjo-senki-saga-of-tanya-the-evil\/\" title=\"Youjo Senki: Saga of Tanya the Evil\">Youjo Senki<\/a>&#8216;s that doesn&#8217;t believe in meritocracy. It also ends up highlighting the flaw in pretending to be harmless to make it easier to dispose of your enemies; most of the time you are, in fact, harmless. Fortunately the protagonist herself eventually realizes this and begins to take more direct action.<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.royalroad.com\/fiction\/66382\/the-nested-worlds\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">THE NESTED WORLDS<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>An extremely interesting setup, if a bit forced, and feels like it could be something along the lines of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Snatch_(film)\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Snatch<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Baccano!\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Baccano!<\/a>. Unfortunately for me, the random cliffhanger at the end of the first chapter utterly destroyed any interest in continuing.<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.royalroad.com\/fiction\/115372\/fragmented-flames-portal-fantasy-adventure-comedy\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">FRAGMENTED FLAMES<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>While this starts out very good with fantastic character interactions, the pacing rather quickly runs off the rails during that forced event in the forest. The whole thing is supposed to be them dealing with being five separate perspectives, and yet they&#8217;re already merging ten chapters in? Barely a week after being split?<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.royalroad.com\/fiction\/105229\/the-dark-ladys-guide-to-villainy-book-1-complete\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Dark Lady&#8217;s Guide to Villainy<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>Not enthused by the idea of a grown woman with her own apartment and ideal job being forced to go back to school.<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.royalroad.com\/fiction\/108300\/arcanist-in-another-world-a-healer-archmage-isekai\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">arcanist in Another worlD<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>While there&#8217;s nothing I can point to specifically, this kind of feels like reading a cultivation novel without any of the cultivation. It&#8217;s an odd sensation and I ended up having to drop it only a few chapters in.<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.royalroad.com\/fiction\/117525\/god-of-velmoryn-litrpg-progression-high-fantasy\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">God Of Velmoryn<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>It&#8217;s strange. Objectively speaking the protagonist here isn&#8217;t any worse than <a href=\"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/tensei-shitara-slime-datta-ken-danmachi-ii-familia-myth\/\" title=\"Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken &#038; Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka II: FAMILIA MYTH\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tensura<\/a>&#8216;s personality-wise, yet for some reason his behavior comes across as absolutely infuriating. If that doesn&#8217;t bother you though the story seems interesting enough.<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.royalroad.com\/fiction\/117332\/becoming-the-dark-lord-litrpg\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">BECOMING THE DARK LORD<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>This starts out extremely rough, requiring some significant suspension of disbelief to reach the point where the companion is introduced. And&#8230; I can&#8217;t say it&#8217;s worth it. The initial scenario is reminiscent of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/arifureta-from-commonplace-to-worlds-strongest-5-11\/\" title=\"ARIFURETA: FROM COMMONPLACE TO WORLD\u2019S STRONGEST #5-11\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Arifureta<\/a>&#8216;s, and like a lot of series trying to tread that path it doesn&#8217;t seem to understand what made that dungeon escape work.<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.royalroad.com\/fiction\/116833\/clause-of-covenant-lawyer-isekai-litrpg\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Clause of Covenant<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>Well, the presentation certainly leaves much to be desired with basic text that appears bolded by default even though it isn&#8217;t (the actual bolding is a shade brighter) and system information that kind of blends into the dialog at points. If you can look beyond that it&#8217;s basically an intermittently amusing absurdist collection of events. <em>Quite<\/em> heavy on the absurdity; don&#8217;t expect any logic here.<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BY HER GRACE This stands out for having an unambiguously evil protagonist, sort of like a solipsist version of Youjo Senki&#8216;s that doesn&#8217;t believe in meritocracy. It also ends up highlighting the flaw in pretending to be harmless to make it easier to dispose of your enemies; most of the time you are, in fact, harmless. Fortunately the protagonist herself eventually realizes this and begins to take more direct action. THE NESTED WORLDS An extremely interesting setup, if a bit forced, and feels like it could be something along the lines of Snatch or Baccano!. Unfortunately for me, the random cliffhanger at the end of the first chapter utterly destroyed any interest in continuing. FRAGMENTED FLAMES While this starts out very good with fantastic character interactions, the pacing rather quickly runs off the rails during that forced event in the forest. The whole thing is supposed to be them dealing with being five separate perspectives, and yet they&#8217;re already merging ten chapters in? Barely a week after being split? The Dark Lady&#8217;s Guide to Villainy Not enthused by the idea of a grown woman with her own apartment and ideal job being forced to go back to school. arcanist in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1187,1192,1186,1198,1190,1193,1194,28,1199,1197,1188,1184,1191,1185,1196,1195,30,511,1189],"class_list":["post-12849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-related","tag-3vilwookie","tag-arcanist-in-another-world","tag-aturato","tag-becoming-the-dark-lord","tag-bleedingtears","tag-by-her-grace","tag-clause-of-covenant","tag-fantasy","tag-fragmented-flames","tag-god-of-velmoryn","tag-godwithwings","tag-north-drake","tag-philip-r-johnson","tag-stepan-chizhov","tag-the-dark-ladys-guide-to-villainy","tag-the-nested-worlds","tag-urban-fantasy","tag-web-novel","tag-zanafar"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12849\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}