Over the course of the last month, I've read about 8 chapters in 'The Clearing' and the prologue. Usually I try to aim for a complete read, especially as this isn't the longest story I've sunk my teeth into. But there are a number of factors leading me to stop short and give my initial review.

1) My life has been hectic, crazy, and draining. I've had life and death situations along with a new job, new home, new friends, and etc. I am also autistic. Normally being autistic isn't a problem as I've learned to handle it in my 30 years, but one unfortunate trait of it is that autistics have an abnormal time handling change and I am redoing my life from scratch right now. Doesn't get more changing than that. ADHD doesnt help either. I don't think I would be able to go further in the story if I tried.

2) I think I have enough thoughts on it to give a review anyway. While I generally like the story there were still things about it I found tedious and made it difficult to pick up. Combine with everything in #1 and I doubt I would be getting much further without a huge break, and then I'd lose my thoughts and forget the story.

TLDR; I honestly don't even know what I just read, it tries to be so many things at once. (I'll explain.)

Overall I'd rate it 3 smashing out of five. Its strengths equaled its weaknesses.

Main Characters - Gary Stu - The main character is, as far as I can tell, a Gary Stu. Everyone loves him or desires him on sight. There was a brief exception with the mother figure for a while but she came around quite quickly. His enemies think he is awesome. Everyone in school adores him or wants him or wants to be him. The random people he meets vomit up their life story on day 1 to him and think he is the most specialist thing ever. He is a master at everything he touches whether it be basic charisma and influence of others, to dancing, to being a teacher, to sports, to school work, to being the father figure of the family, to even using powers he didn't even know he had. I haven't seen a case of instant-mastery in so many non-sensically diverse skills this strong in a character since Rey Palpatine. He is almost unbearably polite in that snobby way only the British can be where you can't tell if he is just nice or actively flirting where all the girls swoon for him. I swear if he went into a school room and said 'let me be the father to your babies' then they would all kiss his feet and weep in joy. His is a perfect moralistic ethical goody-two shoes balancing mindboggling number of responsibilities and roles with the ease of a god. He is humble and just... my god I wanted to punch his teeth just to see if he could stop shining, both literally and figuratively, for half a second. It is like a cheesy comedy where the villain sticks the hero in stupid situations thinking "surely there is no way he can handle this" not knowing the hero was already world champion in boxing, snorkeling, climbing mount Everest, skydiving, and four-dimensional chess all the same time while bottle feeding a baby using his toes. The only thing I actually like about him is that despite all of this he is quite humble about it and is trying to avoid being drooled over by everyone. Most Mary Sue types tick me off because it all goes to their head, and he wants to stay normal while knowing he isn't. Yet, while this tries to make his power and holiness and infinite charisma aura a detriment, only makes it ironic in making him some kind of Buddha figure that coincidentally had everything in the universe at his finger tips. Decent person, but also boring as hell. No flaws. No character growth potential. There isn't a single thing relatable about him because he has no flaws.

Then you get some second main character in a girl that was interesting for the first ten seconds. Then she vomited up her entire life story in a single chapter and... yeah now she is reduced to side character. Even less actually. No mystery and therefore no interest. Kill her or keep her, i couldn't care less. I can only feel apathy.

Side Characters - Average - The side characters vary. The professor was a cool dude and the mother was the only relatable character in the entire story because she was the only one with a single flaw to work through. But then she resolved it in a few paragraphs... so there was that while that lasted. The little sister is cute. The three magical newcomers were interesting, until British Buddha got into the room and then they were boring as their world building shot itself in the foot and only made him look more like Jesus than ever. The rest did nothing for me. Its not that they didn't have personality of their own, but it only succeeded in being a reflection of the glory shining out of the main characters butt hole.

Grammar - Smashing! - The author put in a lot of effort into polishing the story and this shows. It was very easy to read in this regard and understand what was going on, when, and where. I even put it into a speechify application while driving and I was able to follow easily.

World building - shot itself in the foot - The story tries to have world building and systems and promptly shoots it in the foot. The two primary ways of this is through the three special magical beings that visit and the MC's power as British Buddha. Apparently he comes from three magical forces at the same time, which is a 1/1000000 fluke. Three magical beings, one from each of the said forces, show up to investigate something considered impossible. However here also lies the problem: Why send the three leaders of three respective races to investigate a random magical disturbance? That's like sending Trump, Putin, and Xi to personally investigate the sighting of Big Foot in Zimbabwe. Don't they have people for this? Inquisitors or servants or soldiers or princes or anybody they can delegate? But then Kristi is the same thing as him apparently with all three in her so... Which is it? can we make up our mind on how special this is? While I dont mind the idea of powerful figures investigating either, it also tells me a lot that its the leaders. It doesn't tell me that British Buddha is more special than he already is, as if that is possible, but that they can't be respected as leaders. They aren't leaders. Simple as that. Then I lose respect for them and the world building they are supposed to create by their existence. The world building is inconsistent and doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. Either something is special or it isnt. Either a person is a leader or they arent. They need to act and be treated as such, but in all cases the world building has only succeeded in contradicting itself. Some things can be more grey-area and be about the finer details, but not the very foundation of everything in this universe.

Plot - tries to be many things and nothing at the same time - The story right off the bat tries to be a mystery. It was a decent mystery. Then it tries to be a slice-of-life. Not bad. Not bad. Then it tries to give a big epic call to a journey of self-discovery and it was in this moment the entire story got shot in the foot. Because all three story-types need different things and the story fails to give what the arch-types need. It isn't impossible to be multiple things at once, as there are many arch-types that are similar enough or can be done at the same time. But this story... let me explain.

A mystery is a mystery. You have a question and no answer given, though hints sprinkled along the way to keep your mouth watering. In this the story was good at first. Who is the kid? What kind of power does he have? This is a mystery even to himself. Then the story answers the questions and boom, mystery gone.

Okay, so not a mystery. The story also tried being a slice of life, and I loved it. I loved the little things like him spending time with the professor, or the family, or his friends playing baseball. A requirement of slice-of-life is that there is no big journey or adventure to pull you out of a the simple day-by-day events. It is about appreciating the little things in life, the moments that are the least grand but the most human. Whether it is cuddling on the couch or laughing when the ketchup bottle exploded or about vacuuming your house and dancing to some music in your underwear. The story had this for a while and it made me smile.

Then the story hit us with a call to adventure and a big journey with massive powers and everything went out the window. A hero journey story or adventure or journey based story requires a few things. 1) a compelling villain. 2) A strong and early trigger. 3) a flawed hero to overcome his flaws and and find balance over the journey where the villain represents the very opposite side of the same values. As another version of the hero. Two sides of the same coin.

The story had none of these three things. You have no trigger to launch us into the journey for 4 LONG chapters, so time was wasted. It is not the most imperative thing, it is still possible to make do without an early trigger if the villain/hero dynamic is good, but it is still visibly felt if the trigger is not struck all the way in chapter 1. Then the antagonists were whisked away to another continent and had their powers stripped just from him saying "bye" while he was still at 0.0000001% power level. So the opposing forces are a joke. A literal joke. not even the funny kind. I about put the story down right then and there, but kept going a little longer to see if it could fix this and offer even the slightest tension to the story. (it didnt, only made them more of a joke in chapter 8.) And for a hero we have British Buddha. No flaws. No journey to take beyond learning how to use his power more efficiently and why he has it.

To be fair, this is the point the story tries to rely back on its initial mystery phase. A hero with mystery is good, but MYSTERY CANNOT REPLACE FLAW AND NEED, and it tries to! This is NOT possible.

So the mystery was ruined by answering the questions. The slice-of-life was ruined by giving you the exact opposite in a grand journey, and the grand journey was screwed to begin with because it tried to replace flaw with mystery and a replaced a compelling villain/hero dynamic with a three bad jokes and Buddha. Buddha is decent if you stick to slice of life, but slice of life and grand journey types are the exact opposite of one another by their very necessary ingredients. While it is not impossible to combine them, it requires a very careful story that knows exactly what both genre require to exist. And this just... doesnt.

I'm out with a smashing!

If you are interested in learning to write, mastering the craft, want some really good reads, or just to chat and hang out with a mature group of adults, feel free to hit me up for a smashing discord book club that has lasted years.