The Dream Saga

Fantasty, Isekai, Adventure

UPDATE:

I have been informed by the author of this work that following my review, most if not all of the issues that I have pointed out in this review has now been edited and fixed. Taking the author at his word, the opinions in this review may no longer reflect the work that it addresses.

By the author’s request, today I’ll be reviewing the Isekai, fantasy, adventure: The Dream Saga, authored by Wookie0_. I’m going to preface my review by saying, to my understanding, the author of The Dream Saga is not a native English Speaker. This fact, while reflected in my review, should be considered by my readers as acknowledged and dispensed with. I still intend on commenting on the author’s use of the English language even though some might consider it to be somewhat unfair for me to do so. Basically what I’m saying here is that while I understand that the author is not a native English speaker, it won’t stop me from critiquing his use of English.

I’m not going to bury the lede here. This Webnovel is a mess. In almost every way a work of written fiction can go wrong, The Dream Saga does go wrong. That is not to say that there isn’t anything to enjoy about this Webnovel. It is, however, to say that this story is replete with issues that, in my opinion, prevent it from being something I could possibly recommend in its current form.

Being a creator myself, I’m well aware of the courage it takes to put your work out there. I almost didn’t publish this review because, despite its flaws, I do think the story the author is creating is worth pursuing, and goodness knows I don’t want to be the cause for him to feel demoralised and give up. That would honestly be a tragedy. That being said, the whole purpose of taking on reviews for this blog is to provide honest feedback to Webnovel authors, and honest opinions to Webnovel readers. If I shirk on that self-appointed duty, what would even be the point of me?

Alright, preamble dispensed with, as always, in order to prepare for this review, I have read 10 chapters of The Dream Saga. Analysing its story, pacing, characters, world, and writing. I’ll unpack the conclusion I’ve mentioned above.

Story

The Dream Saga follows the adventures of a young man named Kai. Having gone to sleep one night, Kai dreams that he’s being chased by a knife-wielding maniac into another world. Waking up, by coincidence, Kai lives out that dream and finds himself in another world. A strange new world full of magic, different intelligent life-forms, and, oh that’s right, he can command snakes. I’ll pick that thread up a little later.

Having disappeared through some inter-dimensional door, and I really mean a door, Kia finds himself in muddy water.

Okay, technically, it was a pond.

By the pond, Kai has his first encounter in his new world in the form of a playfully violent young woman around his age. Convincing her to allow him to be her guest (Read: slave),

In the time spent in her “mansion”, Kai and the young lady named Skyler develop something of a friendship. Discovering that he has powers, Kai convinces Skyler (rather easily) that the thing for them to do is kill a mob boss and assume his throne. Attempting just that, they fail miserably, when Kai is unable to, um, perform under pressure

As luck would have it, one of the Mobs underlings breaks them out of prison (again, a bit too easily), and they agree to help him find a magic ring. In that quest, they meet the final member of the quartet, a sword-wielding master named Lee Ouroboros.

Throw in a quest giving, somewhat ditzy goddess of space, maybe? And you should have a good idea of the story of this Webnovel.

There are two main pillars of this story. The question of who Kai is and why he has his powers, and the quest issued by the goddess appearing in Kai’s dreams to help her restore the damage done to the fabric of the multi-verse when Kai crossed over from one world to the other.

The quest acts to provide forward momentum to the story. After all, moving from place to place, potentially world to world for a purpose is much more satisfying to this reader than if Kai’s adventures were the product of happenstance. Because Kai is working towards something, his adventures don’t feel forced or random. For that, I do have to praise the author’s foresight. It also gives a story reason for why a goddess would be interested in the main protagonist, she needs his help to help fix what he inadvertently broke.

The mystery of Kai’s origins is also effective in giving the reader something to hold on to. We discover that Kai is something called a leviathan, that he has dominion over all snakes in the universe, and that there are people who would like to see him smothered in the crib before he gets the opportunity to really discover what exactly that means. The mystery of Kai’s origins doesn’t simply lend itself to story progression, but also, to conflict, an element no good story can be without. He might not be looking for trouble (though deciding to kill a mob boss from the go might seem to contradict that claim) but trouble is certainly looking for him.

I really can’t fault the story. I can and will, however, fault the story’s execution over the course of this review.

Pacing

To me, pacing is the most difficult aspect of a story to review. I rarely even notice the pacing when I’m reading a Webnovel, I tend to take that as a good sign. All I can say regarding this webnovel is that I noticed the pacing. Everything just seemed to happen too quickly.

From entering his new world, Kai quickly moves in with Skyler. Their time together is quickly covered by a time-skip. Kai, quickly finds himself kidnapped by a carnivorous fairy and he quickly finds himself out of that issue. Quickly, he decides to straight-up murderfy another human being and quickly he gets out of the dungeon he was placed in for his attempt. I can go on, but I think you get the point.

The 10 chapters I’ve read so far seem to speed through Kai’s experiences, I didn’t feel like I got much time to really get to know Kai. Things were just moving too quickly.

That being said, it’s understandable that the author would want to establish the story as soon as he could so that he can move on to the more interesting parts. It just seems to me that something was lost. I hope in the later chapters, the author gives the story and the characters the space it needs to develop more naturally.

Characters

I’m going to just get to the point, the main character, Kai, is poorly handled, I think. He isn’t quite stupid, he isn’t quite smart. He’s not exactly brave, but he’s not exactly a coward. I’m not saying that these conflicting character traits can’t all work together to paint the portrait of a deeply complex flawed hero of some sort. I am saying that they don’t work together in this Webnovel.

I’ll talk about some very specific issues I had with the way Kai is portrayed throughout the story. He lands in a new world and, shamelessly, he begs to be allowed to stay with Skyler. Okay, so he’s something of a well-meaning, harmless wimp, got ya. That can kinda be endearing. A few chapters down the line, he suggests to his new bezzy-mate that they use his newfound powers, murder a gang boss and take over the gang. That’s one hell of a 180. 

Alright, that’s not good enough for you? He stays with Skyler for quite some time, considers them to be rather close, has a bad dream and runs off. He thanks her for her hospitality, sure, but it was done all too briefly. The author could have developed that scene, brought to it some emotional depth, that way his running off at the end would have been impactful. Instead, it’s rushed through and just becomes a blight on Kai’s character.

I’ll give one more example, When Kai is first moving in with Skyler, he criticises her living situation. She punches him, according to the narration (believe you, me, we will get into the mess that is the narration) seriously harmed him. Yet, he had no internal reaction to her display of violence. I’ll tell you this, if someone beats me into an inch of my life, playfully or otherwise, I’mma have some thoughts on the matter.

Almost nothing about Kai seems remotely real or consistent. As such, he lacks almost all real depth necessary to become invested in him as a character. Now, I said “almost” for a reason. There was one moment in one of the chapters I read that had some real emotional depth to it. It wasn’t executed perfectly but it was handled quite well. If Kai was developed with that moment in mind, I think I’d be saying something very different about the way his character is handled. Sadly, it doesn’t seem like the author has that intention. It was a good moment, perhaps the shining moment so far for this Webnovel, but it was far too quickly moved on from, and it just didn’t seem to have the lingering effect that I had hoped for.

I’m not going to go through every single main character introduced in this Webnovel. Honestly, with the exception of Kai, they’re done reasonably well. They have backstories, purpose, I don’t have many complaints regarding them. That being said, I do question the character work of the author regarding Skyler as well.

Don’t get me wrong, unlike Kai, I actually found myself liking her for what she is. She’s a strong-willed, shielded, but ultimately kind-hearted young woman. I can picture her really well. Her character is very consistent. I do think the author dropped the ball a bit with how he handled the scene when Kai left. I think that by developing that scene, showcasing the different elements to Skyler, perhaps having her show a little bit of vulnerability in an emotional moment while she’s trying to get Kai to stay, the author could have written something really impactful. However, all in all, my only real complaint regarding Skyler is the scene when she readily, without hesitation or questioning agrees with Kai’s plan to kill her boss.

It just didn’t come off as real for me. I think the author would have done well to have her be a little bit more, if not reluctant, than cautious. I think that would have worked well to flesh her out a bit more as a character as opposed to a collection of tropes.

World

I’m not going to spend too long discussing the world. If you are at all familiar with Isekai in a fantasy setting, you should largely already know what to expect. Magic, fairies, elves, no doubt, Knights, swords, gods and goddesses. It’s the same old, same old. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not a bad thing. I love that same old, it’s just that there’s not much to be gained through me talking about it.

Two things that are worth a special mention, the world Kai is in during the first 10 chapters that I’ve read, has the internet. It’s a medieval setting but they have the internet. That is kinda cool… though it’s kinda weird that in a world that has the internet, one of the native characters would be unfamiliar with digital streaming… I’m not even going to address that.

The second thing worth noting is that the world seems to be more expansive than simply one world. In fact, it seems that travelling to different worlds in different universes is to be something integral to the story of The Dream Saga.

I can’t fault the world the author has created; It’s full of the potential for endless adventure. You can’t ask for more from the world of a Webnovel.

Writing

Okay, here we go. Credit where credit’s due, I don’t believe the author is a native English speaker, and unless his native language is Klingon, I can guarantee he writes English far better than I can write in his language. Or any other language other than my own. 

That being said, while the writing for this Webnovel isn’t the worst I’ve seen, it’s pretty down there in the lowerachy. I won’t mince my words, it’s bad. It’s really, really bad. The first thing I have to say is, while I give a certain dispensation to Webnovel authors in regards to grammar, the grammar in this Webnovel is truly appalling. Grammarly isn’t perfect, but I can say this for free, it seems like it’s pretty f***king needed for this Webnovel. I don’t claim to have the best grammar, especially in regards to writing quickly without the time for proper edits and consideration. Webnovel favours quantity over quality, a few mistakes are going to happen, but the scale of grammatical mistakes in The Dream Saga is beyond the pale.

If the grammar alone was the only issue, the rating I’ll give this Webnovel at the end of this review would be a few points higher than it’s going to get, but grammar isn’t the only issue. As has become the norm, I’ll give some examples and commentaries on the biggest issues I have found while reading this story. Take a look below:

Just an example of some bad grammar, honestly, not even the worst example I could find. I thought I’d ease into this a little bit. That being said, if you read the paragraph, you’ll no doubt pick up on some other issues I’ll be addressing below.

Alright, a bit of context. It’s fine for an author to use either single or double inverted commas to denote speech. However, which ever one you choose, stick to it. The author has been using double inverted commas throughout the Webnovel. To find examples of single inverted commas being used for the same purpose was somewhat jarring. There’s another big issue displayed in this paragraph, but I’ll get to it in another example.

The author wrote this paragraph twice. Honestly, I’m not actually sure if this was a longass typo, or lazy writing. In case it was the latter, I’ll say this again. Every word in a writen piece of fiction should serve the purpose of telling the reader something about the story, world or characters. To repeat information already divulged for no reason is just lazy writing.

This dialogue just doesn’t seem quite right to me. It doesn’t feel natural. Eh, I won’t go on about it. It’s just something I picked up on.

Alright, here’s the first of the real biggies. The author will constantly, and I mean constantly, open dialogue with inverted commas and forget to close it. It makes it very difficult to destinguish between internal monologue and verbal dialogue in this Webnovel. It needs to be fixed urgently.

Brackets! Need I say more? Lose them, they serve no purpose. It just seems sloppy.

And here we are at our second big issue. The author will constantly shift between the past and the present tense. Pick a tense, it doesn’t matter what tense, but stick to it!

Where’s the punctuation?

Alright, this is the third, and potentially the biggest issue I have with the author’s writting. He’s writing in the First person, and yet he frequently slips into the third. Out of nowhere, he’ll move from the first person to the third. Who’s telling this story exactly? Is is a narrator or the characters? I can’t tell. This desperately needs to be fixed.

“What’s wrong with using pronouns?” Clone asked as Clone was getting increasingly frustrated with Clone refering to Clone as Clone.

I… I don’t even know what this is. It was issolated, so it’s not that big of a deal, but I felt like it deserved a special mention.

I must have missed the part where the story actually tells the reader what his name was… I didn’t, it didn’t.

We go from not enough punctuation to way too much!!!!!! ALSO, I’M NOT A FAN OF THE USE OF UPPERCASE LETTERS FOR EFFECT, THE EFFECT IS HAS IS MAKING ME THINK THE AUTHOR CAN’T BE BOTHERED TO UTILISE CREATIVE WRITING TO CREATE THE DESIRED EFFECT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Alright, alright, what possible reason could there be to put perfectly standard narration into brackets? I mean, don’t use brackets at all, but certainly don’t put (regular narration into them) This is also another example of the perspective issue. It went from third person to first with no warning. Not that I think warning should matter, I generally think a work should stick to one narrative style. There is some debate in that, so I won’t fight on that hill. The hill I will live or die on, however, is that however shifting perspectives should be done, this isn’t it.

Just narrate. I get that a lot of webnovels utilise effects like this, but I personally think their only right place is in the pages of a batman comic.

I get it, putting exposition into dialogue, It’s not a bad idea. That is, of course, as long as it makes sense. It would have made more sense for Kai to internally monologue his purchance than describe it to characters who, by all rights, should be able to see what he’s purchased.

There are, of course other issues, but these are the main ones that I picked up on. I really think it would behoothe the author to take a closer look at his writing, potentially, he should employ the services of an editor or proofreader. I think these steps would greatly improve his work.

Overall

The Dream Saga has potential. With a truly interesting story and a world of limitless possibilities, there’s so much this Webnovel does right. Sadly, the diamond this Webnovel could be is buried beneath layers of rough. As it stands, I cannot in good conscience recommend this Webnovel. The good news is this, currently, there aren’t too many chapters released, if the author were to edit certain sections, and rewrite others, I could really see myself getting excited over reading every single chapter. It’s a difficult thing I’m suggesting, and I don’t feel good suggesting it, but I do believe the investment in hard work could make this story great. If that day comes, I’d be happy to write a new review for the revised Dream Saga at the request of the author.

Score: 3.5/10(A truly interesting story buried beneath a litany of problems.)

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Hey guys, did you know I’m writing my own webnovel? Check out Ember’s Crown for a dark fantasy adventure you won’t stop thinking about.

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