The Wandering Inn by pirateaba

TL;DR
that Inn is actually a place of death, #tragedies, hardships, hurt, #grief, #heartache, #pains, and #trauma. it's illogically funny how someone could bear that much pain and still function. and oh yeah, the novel lack several tags: #broken people
#zero to hero to below zero
#unhappy
#losses
#reverse face-slapping

a story by a sadistic author, specifically made for extreme masochist readers. if it fits, then this story is for you



now don't get me wrong, i'm not saying this is a mediocre story, let alone bad, it's actually the opposite. this one has every aspects good story needs: depth, vast world background, amazing characters, mysteries, and enough emotions (tearjerker arc&plot for dozens of stories).. but it's nothing to the amount of pain, stress, and anger you feel while reading.

plot. so many great plots, complete with its accompanying background, settings, side characters, conflicts, all kinds of different angle imaginable, and even its own main characters. but while they all are amazing in and on itself, it's challenging to cram together so many without having problems, especially when the only way for them to fit together was to employ cheap tricks, it spoils the value like adding cheap production chocolate to belgian's artisans concoction.

for example, when some progress come to be, or not be, solely because author needed it to be so. now, if anyone tells you that this story doesn't HAVE, or have little Deus Ex Machina, then i assure you they're lying –or doesn't understand– cause plot armor doesn't have to be in that one form where MC shoulda been dead but not, or the enemy shoulda been dead but an Ancestor comes to save his ass. plot armor have many different kinds: it could be too many coincidences, or a plot convenience, or some evil character suddenly "doesn't feel like killing", makes MC (or other characters) keep on living, it could also be a weak character suddenly found itself at the perfect place at the perfect time so a plot could happen, or a character coming back to life, or a thing materialize outta nowhere or come to the one person that could become the plot bearer. good author could dress them up prettily, and sometimes it smells good, but they all still plot device, and this story has a lot of them stinky boys. and by a lot, i mean a LOT

pov. it's honestly amazing –also stupid– how author made so many different povs, then keep shuffling them up while making new ones at all time. the switcheroo doesn't stop only on perspective change, but also out-of-body experience, and even back in time. they all sounds good in theory, but when you really want to see the continuation of the current one, but then the pov changes to a different one, it just kills the immersion completely. and someone with a short-term memory like me hates it with passion, cause when the pov changes back, i don't even f#cking remember anything anymore

writing. i don't think i need to comment about this. it's just that good. if you immerse yourself and trust in author completely, i bet all my foot fingers, you'd cry at least once.

characters. author brilliantly shows so many different species, each with their own characteristics, antics, and horrors (or beauty), and the realness of them all. it's a luxury to see so many original and fresh characters in one story, really.

for example, a whole species that's always been branded as animal, which of course can't think, can't speak, no culture to speak of, a mere killing machine; then author took us to see them closer, a little kid from the very species, he gave it a background, name, characteristic, he showed us how it feels, think, and see the world, not stopping there, he showed us how they are as a species, how they actually feel deeper emotions than most, have richer ways to communicate among themselves, and even a way of preserving informations for the future generations. but then author killed this same species by the hundreds of thousands, killed the named kid's trusted friend, companions, and most of its tribe, and that too not just once. someone says the author is George R. R. Martin and i have to concur, you can't be having favorite, you can't be thinking too far to the future, you can't be too sure of who's who, cause the author will, and absolutely will f#ck it all up. that seemingly kind one? backstabber. that seemingly naive and pure one? got agendas. that one who got literally saved by the MC, got fed, and cared for? is sly and only thinking about himself

MC. i don't even have the reference for this. she's the sweetest and caring human being, but also cunning, and driven, and sometimes authoritative and badass, but the rest of the times.. she's just the dumbest thing you'd ever seen. it is to the point that you're thinking to yourself 'there's no way she will..', and she will, oh she's absolutely f#cking will do the dumbest thing, and in so many different ways, on so many different occasions. months after she lives on the area, she's still oblivious to the value of money even compared to a several y.o. baby, and she still doesn't have a clue how the world works. and that too after she went through so many things like losing friends, got betrayed, tragedies, oh-so many killings, unlucky circumstances, and whatnot

at first, reading this feels like drinking a cold drink while swimming on a 300 feet yacht on a temperate sunny day. it is fresh, exciting, and all you ever wished for. but then you felt prickle on your skins, you looked down, turns out the swimming pool is filled with reddening seawater, your skins carved deep, showing the bones, and the 'cold drink' is actually a glass full of lit gasoline burning your esophagus. the reason why you didn't realize it at first cause your nerves are mostly dead, and you only able to move cause a parasite lives within you. but then you found out that the parasite is the good kind (although it still eats your organs when you're not looking), and from the extreme experience you got, your immune system mutates, makes you a half-mutant, now you're able to control your body up to the atoms with the help of the parasite. you're faster, smarter, stronger, you don't tire, and you heal quick

one day, you woke up, heaving, on the verge of death, you looked down at a mangled body, YOUR mangled body. your roommate (parasite) gone, leaving a literal bag of skin. there's a letter on the table which basically blamed you for not caring for the parasite's suffering of keeping your body together, cause you used to only care about how fast you sobered up after a night out, or healed up after whatever shit you put your body (it) through. but then you found out you're back from the deep, turns out the immune system was also mutated from the long time of living with the parasite, and it is able to sew the damage owing to the absence of any organs in the body, now you don't have any more weakness, just can't taste for shit and sex is outta the window

it's just endless cycle of sufferings, and small bursts of happiness in between. i've read more than half (387/709)(there are 44 ch. still not uploaded here) and let me tell you, everything is coming to get the MC. from ordinary animals, magical, to legendary ones, and even plants, to other species, other humans, from near and far, weak ones to strong, the curious ones to the greedy, everyone wants some of the MC. either her secrets, her friends, or her things, and everyone who cares/loves/ slightly on MC's corner got wiped out –or close to it– by the author. at no point in the story you'd be able to stop and think 'yeah that makes everything worth'–.

2.5/5. if this is a revised version of the story, i don't know how bad the old one was