May 08, 2025
Holy crap you did it, way to go!! Super stoked for you, I could never have pulled it off haha I'm extremely impressed you were able to keep the quality up despite the crunch for time.
It was fun experiencing this story with you, from both the outside perspective of watching you work as an author and from within the contents of the story itself. I don't even know where to start as far as a review goes! I'll do my best.
First and foremost, you should take the title of 'Cliffhanger master' with a lot of pride, my favorite part of the story was that I was never sure what was going to happen, and I believe that is a skill an author needs to keep readers hooked, you got me there completely.
As far as dialogue goes, it was really solid, especially with Adella and Midas, they were so charming! Second place goes to Soren and Midas. I would say all the characters' convos with Kat were the weakest part out of the interactions between the four.
If there's one thing that I would have liked to see differently, is that the story just mainly focused on Midas and how the things he does changes the characters and the world around him. (Although I understand that's kind of already the case) The other characters could have their own first person chapters as it is now, because you did so damn good at adjusting your writing depending on who's point of view we're diving into, it'd be a shame if it didn't remain that way. But I would have liked to have subtle hints come their (and our) way in regards to Midas's past and current supernatural aspects even while they were in the process of handling their own worries and love lives.
When the cult chapters showed up it was a smidge of a tonal shock, but only because other than passing references to the Devil and other mysterious mentions of seeing the future etc in the Midas chapters, I at times couldn't believe if he was serious haha.
If the other characters started noticing strange occurrences and other happenstances like Siel alluded to in the final chapter, all their relationships would have tied together centered around the mystery of Midas. It would have been cool if the other characters got to experience that mystery in bits in the build up to the reveal about his incoming death, cause then their instant belief of his story would have felt a little more natural and the payoff for his survival would have been all the more sweet.
There is another LN on this site called 'The Longing of Shiina Ryo' where you can almost never tell if the MC is lying or exaggerating about things that have happened to him, and I found that having him as an unreliable narrator made the reading experience extra fun. I was giving Midas that same treatment for most of the story, and I really liked him the most because of it.
The Romka reveal, chef's kiss! That was a perfect tie in. I did think she was just a cult member so that was a great surprise, and then to have her prayer be the 'devil' all along was a beaut.
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, I didn't know about the contest when I started and I didn't know about the prompt till well into the story, so going in blind was such a great treat. I will definitely check out your other work as well!
Great job Orionless!
