Revenge on the River Lord

I’ll begin with a disclaimer: to the author, take everything in this review with a grain of salt. I’m not a professional writer nor a seasoned reviewer (yet). To future readers of this story, I will mention spoilers so do yourselves a favor and read it before this review.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Right away, the description establishes an interesting premise. It introduces the conflict, briefly describes the protagonist and sets the scene well. (Minor grammatical error: you ‘were’, not was).

The story starts by immediately placing the protagonist in peril. Given the reader already understands what’s happening from the description, this quicker pace in the first page works well. Using thoughts that flashed in the character’s mind was a really good way of incorporating worldbuilding and providing context without making it an infodump. It also served to develop both plot and character in the same sentences. It is well-paced—starting with action, slowing slightly to explain the situation, then plunging back into the face of danger.

I noticed another comment mentioning that the ancient China setting wasn’t too prevalent. Yet, I enjoyed the subtle way it was interwoven into the story, such as the references to boy child favoritism and the way women were expected to marry young. Red is also a color that symbolizes luck in the culture and later in the narrative; there was a path where the village fled because they viewed the place as ‘unlucky’—this ties in with the ancient Chinese’s fascination with luck and fortune.

The backstory conveyed why the protagonist was forced into this situation, with no one on her side, where she was stuck between two bad choices. It showed the problem with their society too, which was really the root cause behind the main life-or-death problem she was in. Maybe to take it one step further, it might be good to tie this into character development: how does this affect the protagonist’s thoughts and future actions? At times, it often felt like an impassive recollection of events. You could show how she feels about it—any resentment for the village? Or pity, if she could sympathize with their desperation to prevent the flood? Perhaps just contempt at their stupidity and how people just believed whatever they were told. This could flesh the character out a bit more while adding layers to the theme/ a potential subtheme.

WRITING STYLE

The writing style was easy to read, revealing information to the reader without being overly convoluted or wordy (unlike my reviews). Details of the darker aspects of the world were sometimes mentioned quite casually: “you hadn't had any food this morning since it would be a waste to feed someone who was going to die before lunch”, though it makes sense, as if the protagonist has normalized this sort of treatment.

Let’s get the slight proofreading errors out of the way. There were instances of tense shifts, like “you’re running out of time” on the first page, and on the page to flee to a different town, starting from the part “the first town is Dandelion Village” and all the ensuing paragraphs, the tense shifts from past to present. For conversations, use commas instead of full stops before dialogue tags (I won’t go into too much detail but you could find more about this in one of the helpful articles on dialogue).

I understand it’s probably a matter of personal style preference, but I felt there wasn’t as much grounding in each scene as there could have been. This could be due to the large scope of the story—an impressive number of plot events occurred—yet, in some paragraphs, it seemed like the narrative was merely listing out what happened. Still, I recognise my biases as a reader and know lots of other readers don’t really like excessive descriptions or too much focus on immersion through the senses.

I found the parentheses quite funny. My favorite was the reference to gay and depressed.

PLOT & CHOICES

I was honestly impressed by the branching in this story. It consists of so many different stories and directions, really stretching the limit of what the cave-of-time format can do, and readers will get wildly different experiences depending on the path they play.

For example, I found it refreshing how there was a whole path about escaping and having nothing to do with the River Lord or previous village. Most choices led to unique branches and paths, with very few looping back.

One of the best parts was how the various branches linked to one another. (Spoilers below). At first, I believed it was kind of humorous—albeit unrealistic—how the part about pretending to be a wedding fairy worked out so well. Then in another path, I found out the man was rather insane so it all made sense. Another part which surprised me: the baker said a line where his brother and children were murdered for helping a girl sold to thieves and robbers as a wife—this was the wife of the delusional man on another path! I loved the attention to detail and the connectedness of the often really different paths.

New information is revealed in each path too, hence reading another branch could enhance your experience of the previous one. There was a part where a man explained the history of the River Lord tradition, and even though it only ended with death, this information did provide more lore about the vicious ritual. Some themes were consistent throughout—like misogyny and double standards for men and women—keeping an element of cohesiveness.

A bit of feedback for the author would be to work on ensuring continuity. For example, take this sentence: “You tried to walk calmly towards the outhouse, acting like any villager who needed to use the bathroom in the middle of the street, which was difficult because you were wearing a full red wedding dress.” It makes sense, except for the fact that before this, there was no mention of a red wedding dress. I suppose if it were more of a traditional wedding, one could assume this to some extent. But this wasn’t the case (they didn’t feed those who would soon die, so why would they make them a wedding dress?). There was also another scene which referenced a red blindfold and red shoes. This felt somewhat out-of-the-blue, since although the reader knew about the ceremony, it wasn’t described in much detail; maybe mentioning this earlier would prevent disrupting immersion. It’s just like how in some stories, a character isn’t described so we form our own mental image of them, and suddenly the hair color is mentioned and our mental image is disrupted. While of course the author cannot make us envision the exact same thing as them, describing something first and later referencing that descriptor helps maintain immersion.

Regarding endings, there are lots and lots of them. I like how one of the peaceful endings kept with the consistent theme, showing how the protagonist’s past abusive situation meant she was satisfied with the less-than-ideal life in the village, yet it also shows a sense of dissatisfaction which hints that there is a more fulfilling path. Good technique to get the reader to check out the other paths.

Overall, there are some vastly different narratives, from living a luxurious life but keeping a terrible secret, to being the ruler of monkeys. The theme and tone varies accordingly to these too. It is quite a versatile story, and for readers of this review, I recommend reading a few different branches. There’s so much range and lots of unexpected events.

CHARACTER

The protagonist is rather resilient. Despite everything she had to endure, she fights for her life. This was portrayed early on, as she struggles for survival. In part, this is due to her harsh upbringing, like how she remembers keeping her hiding spot as a secret even after being beaten nearly to death. This ties in with the constant theme of the parents being abusive to their daughter, through controlling and exploiting her. Throughout the narrative, we see how this is brought up in memories and influences her thought process.

Now, we come to something I’m not very sure how I feel about. On one hand, the characterization wasn’t as consistent or distinct as it could have been to create a stronger emotional impact. Yet on the other hand, having her personality or internal conflict being too set-in-stone would have prevented the story’s plot from branching as much as it did—which is one of the features which makes it shine.

First, let’s talk about the positives. Readers can sympathize with the protagonist, especially after the page where her whole backstory is revealed if one chooses to kick the bag. It shows more about the protagonist and the toxic culture in her village. Moreover, the protagonist’s goals and motivations are characterized well and blend in nicely with the plot. Throughout most of the narrative, her conflict is external: she fights for her survival. As such, not too much introspection is needed, and she focuses on the situations she’s in, drawing on past experiences and her observations of the world around her. This is done well.

Furthermore, I really like how this shifts when she’s no longer in survival mode. For these paths, she has more of an emotional conflict: this could be driven by her loyalty to her cousin despite the potential fallout an action could bring, or whether to carry out revenge when it means giving up the comforts of her new life. One of the parts which made me smile was the except where she was finally living for herself after all the dire situations. Yay for character development! This story presented a realistic depiction of how a character’s ambitions change depending on what aspect of their life is threatened.

Now, some potential improvements. A big part of the wanderer path was about wanting revenge. As much as this is understandable given her situation, since this was one of the first few paths I read and didn’t rely on knowledge in the other branches, I felt this wasn’t built up as well as it could have been. Maybe it was because she had been preoccupied with surviving, but a few brief lines about how she wanted to survive so she could exact revenge in the future might have foreshadowed this a bit more, especially since it seemed like she wanted survival above anything. Hence, I was surprised by the sudden switch to wanting revenge instead. Then again, having too many character traits/ strong personality or internal conflict would probably prevent the story from having all the different paths due to contradicting characterisation. After all, if the protagonist had a burning desire for revenge, a lot of the other situations would not have occurred as revenge would have been her sole mission, her focus. Whereas having that take more of a backseat role meant being able to explore all the other paths this setting presented.

Similarly, the part about getting justice through the merchants building walls around the river was a creative solution, though I felt the protagonist didn’t have much of an emotional reaction. This was something the protagonist had strong thoughts about. A tradition which nearly killed her, which started off this whole story. And yet, the actual scene felt somewhat…anticlimactic. Maybe it could be improved by having her watch from afar with a sense of pride at this hostile tradition being eradicated, but then, as she sees her reflection in the river, she is struck by a faint memory of what could have been. And she realizes she never truly got the revenge she desired, for all the pain and suffering they made her endure, though as her reflection fades away, she realizes she did put an end to the tradition. No one else will be sacrificed ever again. That’s more or less the same thing in terms of plot, but with a bit more of an emotional impact.

In the same vein, the barbarians ending involved so many people getting killed, though there wasn’t really much strong emotion attached as one would expect. Was there any sort of sadness, considering these were people the protagonist grew up with? Or how about anger, and resentment, and hatred, all fueling her actions and reminding her of how they were so willing to kill her in the first place.

One of the most emotional ones was the guilt ending, probably because of the close relationship with the baker established. The character dynamics was presented well, with him even asking her to be his niece, and it made that path have more of an emotional stake.

TL;DR

Read this storygame. And if you do, I suggest checking out a few different paths: it’s satisfying to see how they connect to one another and there are some very different ways your story may play out.

What’s this? A storygame past 25,000 words that *isn’t* written badly? Congratulations, GeniusPancake, with just your first storygame you’ve already made it into the top 75% of members on the site! Yahoo!

I love the variety of endings you can get in this storygame. There’s many different ways you can either die or get some sort of resolution, and each have a lot of thought given to them. I liked the protagonist struggle and was invested in getting justice for all the victims of the River Lord ritual.

There isn’t a lot of historical flavor to this story. Although there is information in the description, and a few details in a couple of pages, that indicates that the story takes place in ancient China, there isn’t much to make the reader feel like that is the case. The way the story is told, I could have imagined the story taking place in any country or time in antiquity.

I had a good time with this storygame. Good job!

Got the peaceful life ending. I enjoyed this storygame.