Tree of Aeons by Spaizzer

TL;DR 4.25/5 Good book with an interesting take an a fairly classic setting. But, some may find grammar at times to be lacking, not a huge issue though.

I came into this book with the perspective of another story about a demonic tree, which I enjoyed in passing, but was not hooked on. But this story really hooked me.

I think the pacing is one of the strongest parts of the story. The main character is an immortal tree, and as time goes on in the story, the pacing reflects his changing perspective of time. For characterization purposes, this is amazing, but it also allows for more background exposition to occur without having to granularilly push the story along. Cities and worlds develop before your very eyes and many times you catch yourself like, "wow it's already been 70 years since that event".

I also think how the classic tropes are subverted in this story is so great. The hero vs demon king trope has been done many, many ways, but the way it is portrayed here is simply amazing (no spoilers). I also like the initial and continual exploration of the morality of what they are doing and how they are doing it. It gives a greater sense of personhood to the characters since they aren't portrayed as almost fanatical in their beliefs, or single minded.

I only have a couple issues with the story. Firstly is the grammar. I don't know if this is a difference between British English and American English, but the use of "isn't it?" and "is it?" when the sentence is talking about something in the past and/or the subject is plural. When I read this type of questioning statement I always get mentally taken out of the story because I was expecting something like "correct?" as the questioning statement. Nevertheless, I still understand it, so it really isn't that big a deal. But there is a good deal of other grammatical errors towards the first 100 chapters, like misspelling of words, or malapropisms where the word written sounds close enough to the grammatically correct word that should've been used. But, again, if you can read English, which I believe most people reading this story can, then it shouldn't really be a problem, just being nitpicky because this story is so good. The second issue I have is the roster of characters. I think this story actually, for the most part, does a good job of having a large number of characters and handling when and where they get time in the plot. But there are other times when I question why there were characters that were introduced and effectively used for a bit, and are still in the story's background, but never mentioned again, or only briefly. The main one I am thinking of is Meela and her gang. I get that the main theme of the story has expanded such that her story is in essence irrelevant, but I feel like there was potential for something more, but she's really only mention when Lausanne is mentioned in some of the later chapters, or the heros. There were also the two elves (forgot their names) that became a teaching and a nursery tree respectively that just are never mentioned again, even when there is plenty of talk about repopulation programs, or breeding programs, as well as teaching institutions. Just feels like wasted opportunity to include these characters.

If I were to rate this story, it would be a 4.25/5. The story itself is really good. There aren't any heavy clichés that aren't there for satirical effect, the cohesiveness of the story especially once the scale grows is impressive, and the main characters are all fantastic.