It's very good. Starts a little slow, improves quickly, if the premise and warnings don't bother you there is a really good chance you will enjoy this.
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tldr; read worm! It is an epic serial, 1.76 million words long (about 4.5x length of lord of the rings). It is beautiful, wonderful, a work of art. It isn't perfect, but the flaws are far outweighed by excellence; it gets excellent pretty quickly, stays great over the course of the story, and it ends so well. It takes consequences, personalities, movitations and the like seriously while providing an extremely consistent world, depth in characters, and unique take on the genre of superpowers. It is extremely well written. I can't possibly do it justice in an email. If you do not dislike the genre, and enjoy a good read, give it a shot. Much super-hero prose is strictly heroic fantasy, this goes beyond that while not missing what makes the genre fun. I've convinced about a dozen friends to read it now, one refused to read after chapter 1 because he didn't think it was amazing, one didn't like the premis but enjoyed it overall, the rest loved it (and many also convinced friends/family who might enjoy it, to give it a shot with similar results.)
It is broken into about 32 arcs, eventually each arc (sometimes arcs) is like a season of a netflix show. The first arc is the first thing the author published, for the first 4 arcs or so some parts feel a bit clunky, they are all very short - arc1-arc4 is maybe ~3% of the length of the story. Once you get past that intro (which isnt bad, but doesnt live up to "work of art"), Between Arc 4-7 it steadily improves (continues to improve), and the author also made some technical/tactical decisions about his writing that work. He tries different things (different points of view, not force-restricting himself to word counts in chapters, trying out different ways to manage parts of the story) and it all starts to come together in those arcs. Arc 8 the introduction to the world ends, Arc 9 and 10 he hits his stride and the story/writing just get better from there. The misses decrease, the excellence increases, it gets so excellent. If you do give it a shot, if you hate the point of view (first person, unreliable/biased narrator) and writing style by end of arc 4 its worth stopping. If not, give it until end of arc8 before judging the story, it unfolds significantly from arc7-arc9, if at arc8 end you have a negative impression of the story its worth stopping. Arc1-Arc8 is about 1 long novel in total content. Arc9-ArcEnd(32?) is about 4 very long novels in content. In almost every case (from reading reviews) people who stop either stop early (dont give it a real shot: quit before arc8) or just genuinely dont like epic/POV/story. that is about 1/20 times from reviewers - 19/20 love it. I loved it. For me, it's up there with books like the stand, wizard and glass, lord of the rings, amber, moon is a harsh mistress as favorite books I have read.
The readership (unique visitors clicking on consecutive chapters) has slowly and steadily increased for six years, it is one of the highest rated books on goodreads, a group of fans spent two years making an unabridged audiobook out of love for the work (be forewarned- the audiobook is not great - it is about 75% good enough, 5% bad, 10% not very good, 10% excellent). When the serial started in 2011 there were a few hundred readers. It's now in the hundreds of thousands, with an RPG based on it, global fan groups, author in negotiations for a tv/movie adaptation and formal publication.
A little about the author: Penname "wildbow", JC McCrae decided to pursue writing as a career after college. He landed on web-serial for the same reason other authors at the time did, it was a viable method to self-publish and learn the trade quickly while growing a reader base if you were good. Wool, The Martian, Super Powereds are three examples of successful serials, all similar in process. He is funded by his readerbase through patreon (he makes 2500/month from fan donations there) and paypal donations (he hasnt said what that total is, but it is higher than patreon monthly). He writes about a small novel a month in content, Worm finished in 2013, Pact (different premis) finished in 2015, Twig (another different storyline) finishes this year.
audiobook: (can be downloaded and listened to in podcast app. some of the readers, especially in the first few arcs, are not great - suggest reading instead when the audio is very subpar) http://audioworm.rein-online.org/
podcast: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/w... link to their site (ep1) https://www.dalyplanetfilms.com/2017/... One host read worm years ago and loved it, the other is reading it for the first time. They are both authors/critics, and do an excellent job analyzing the writing and content. If you read Worm and enjoy it, when you finish arcs give this a shot - it's a good companion to the story.
Worm
It's very good. Starts a little slow, improves quickly, if the premise and warnings don't bother you there is a really good chance you will enjoy this.
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tldr; read worm!
It is an epic serial, 1.76 million words long (about 4.5x length of lord of the rings). It is beautiful, wonderful, a work of art. It isn't perfect, but the flaws are far outweighed by excellence; it gets excellent pretty quickly, stays great over the course of the story, and it ends so well. It takes consequences, personalities, movitations and the like seriously while providing an extremely consistent world, depth in characters, and unique take on the genre of superpowers. It is extremely well written. I can't possibly do it justice in an email. If you do not dislike the genre, and enjoy a good read, give it a shot. Much super-hero prose is strictly heroic fantasy, this goes beyond that while not missing what makes the genre fun. I've convinced about a dozen friends to read it now, one refused to read after chapter 1 because he didn't think it was amazing, one didn't like the premis but enjoyed it overall, the rest loved it (and many also convinced friends/family who might enjoy it, to give it a shot with similar results.)
https://parahumans.wordpress.com/
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It is broken into about 32 arcs, eventually each arc (sometimes arcs) is like a season of a netflix show. The first arc is the first thing the author published, for the first 4 arcs or so some parts feel a bit clunky, they are all very short - arc1-arc4 is maybe ~3% of the length of the story. Once you get past that intro (which isnt bad, but doesnt live up to "work of art"), Between Arc 4-7 it steadily improves (continues to improve), and the author also made some technical/tactical decisions about his writing that work. He tries different things (different points of view, not force-restricting himself to word counts in chapters, trying out different ways to manage parts of the story) and it all starts to come together in those arcs. Arc 8 the introduction to the world ends, Arc 9 and 10 he hits his stride and the story/writing just get better from there. The misses decrease, the excellence increases, it gets so excellent. If you do give it a shot, if you hate the point of view (first person, unreliable/biased narrator) and writing style by end of arc 4 its worth stopping. If not, give it until end of arc8 before judging the story, it unfolds significantly from arc7-arc9, if at arc8 end you have a negative impression of the story its worth stopping. Arc1-Arc8 is about 1 long novel in total content. Arc9-ArcEnd(32?) is about 4 very long novels in content. In almost every case (from reading reviews) people who stop either stop early (dont give it a real shot: quit before arc8) or just genuinely dont like epic/POV/story. that is about 1/20 times from reviewers - 19/20 love it. I loved it. For me, it's up there with books like the stand, wizard and glass, lord of the rings, amber, moon is a harsh mistress as favorite books I have read.
The readership (unique visitors clicking on consecutive chapters) has slowly and steadily increased for six years, it is one of the highest rated books on goodreads, a group of fans spent two years making an unabridged audiobook out of love for the work (be forewarned- the audiobook is not great - it is about 75% good enough, 5% bad, 10% not very good, 10% excellent). When the serial started in 2011 there were a few hundred readers. It's now in the hundreds of thousands, with an RPG based on it, global fan groups, author in negotiations for a tv/movie adaptation and formal publication.
A little about the author:
Penname "wildbow", JC McCrae decided to pursue writing as a career after college. He landed on web-serial for the same reason other authors at the time did, it was a viable method to self-publish and learn the trade quickly while growing a reader base if you were good. Wool, The Martian, Super Powereds are three examples of successful serials, all similar in process. He is funded by his readerbase through patreon (he makes 2500/month from fan donations there) and paypal donations (he hasnt said what that total is, but it is higher than patreon monthly). He writes about a small novel a month in content, Worm finished in 2013, Pact (different premis) finished in 2015, Twig (another different storyline) finishes this year.
audiobook:
(can be downloaded and listened to in podcast app. some of the readers, especially in the first few arcs, are not great - suggest reading instead when the audio is very subpar)
http://audioworm.rein-online.org/
podcast:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/w...
link to their site (ep1)
https://www.dalyplanetfilms.com/2017/...
One host read worm years ago and loved it, the other is reading it for the first time. They are both authors/critics, and do an excellent job analyzing the writing and content. If you read Worm and enjoy it, when you finish arcs give this a shot - it's a good companion to the story.