Mark of the Fool by J.M. Clarke

As much as I love royalroad but I find reading here and following my favorite novel's here is much easier and better than their website.
And I'm realy happy that you got this novel here

It isnt as bad as xianxia where every side character exists to praise the hero, but it isnt that far off it
At least it doesnt have harem

This novel is not bad, but later it keeps getting bogged down by slice-of-life elements so much that get boring most of the time. There are some good moments sometimes and the plot is interesting. however, the plot often gets overshadowed by normal student stuff. So, you gotta have to be patient if you want to read this.

The path to knowledge is forth with consequence.

The reviews are pretty horrifying for this one
I would rather save my time

Klein does not approve.

From: JasonFantastico 10/22/21 RoyalRoad

Almost Unreadable Now
The best chapters of this story, writing-wise, are the ones where the main character doesn't appear at all.

The author is in love with his protagonist and is determined that you WILL love him as well. The guy is a genius at everything, everyone likes him, literally. He's funny, kind, smart, hard-working, etc etc. He has no negative personality traits whatsoever and never makes a mistake. Every idea he suggests everyone instantly agrees with. Any chance he takes always pays off. Any time he needs money, some falls in his lap. Any stranger he meets always takes the time to teach him some rare skill or give him some useful tip. No one ever doesn't like him, and if they do, they are evil and are soon dealt with. No matter what rule he breaks, the teachers just tousle his hair and tell him not to do it again.

All of his friends and teachers essentially exist just to praise him and have side conversations where they talk to each other about how amazing he is. Professors fight over who will mentor him. Thousand year old magicians think he is rare and amazing and are astonished at how cool he is. No consequence for any of his choices ever negatively impacts him. The story is just him going from the best day of his life to the next best day of his life, over and over. It's frankly just ridiculous.

He is given a Mark that stops him from being an offensive combatant in any way at all, we're told, and then every chapter of the book he finds a way around that limitation. It's pointless because it doesn't stop him from killing everything he wants to kill. The main character's girlfriend is basically exactly the same thing. They both do something for an hour and are amazing at it, better than the experts. They each put on 20lbs of muscle a month or something silly like that. The whole thing is a fantasy really.

To me the absolutely worst thing the author does is he constantly makes references to other movies, books, etc and seems to think that makes the book better somehow. Every chapter he will have the characters talk about Harry Potter, Star Wars, Jaws, Frankenstein or whatever and it's so immersion breaking that I can't believe the author thinks it's a good idea but apparently they do and will even add a comment to the start of each chapter telling everyone to check out their cool new reference. I just think that is such a huge mistake I don't know what to even tell you about it. You want the reader to be able to lose themself in the story and the constant references to other works makes that impossible.

Lately the author has picked up the habit of narrating fight scenes the way the 1960's Batman tv show did, with constant "BAM!" or "POW!" exclamations to punctuate strikes and that is beyond silly to me as well.

This story is the opposite of "show, don't tell". You are explicitly told everything you are supposed to think about each character. If two people are in love, multiple characters will remark that they are in love. If a guy has a corny sense of humor, multiple characters will tell you that he has a corny sense of humor. If someone is a badass, multiple characters will tell you he's a badass. It would be so much smoother and more organic to just show the reader these things but apparently the author is scared that someone won't "get it" so everything has to be spelled out over and over.

When the protagonist is not present, as in the chapters featuring the "bad guys," none of these problems are present at all. The narrative is fluid and engaging. As soon as the protagonist pops up, it goes back to being Gary Stu fan service. I know some people will be fine with that but I just can't deal with it anymore. I thought at first it was just a new author getting the hang of things but it's become obvious that it's a series of deliberate choices they're making and it is just impossible to lose yourself in a fantasy story where everyone loves the hero all the time and the hero aces every test he takes and can outmaneuver gods and demons with no problem and basically just has everything go his way 100% of the time.

So basically it's 2 stars for the constant repetitive praising of the hero and 5 stars for the great writing of every chapter the hero isn't in. The problem is that the hero isn't in about 1% of the chapters so there's just too much of the bad stuff to wade through.

I guess this story like fairytail friendship bullshit, when I read description, he flee with his friend I was like no, not today
, just trash Mc with with trashy settings so I drop it

Anyone who is kind to give me a review of this WN?