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The Life and Times of a Wise Slime: Book One
Just like a roller coaster, a great story has a slow start then it brings out the excitement. Join the adventurous life of a very lucky slime monster. What makes them so lucky you say? Well, this little slime managed to evolve into the smartest slime on the faraway planet of Voice. Derp has to adventure all over the world gaining new information to add to their collections of stories. Learn more about other creatures, magic, and the origins of the planet Voice through the life and times of a wise slime.
400 pages, Hardcover
Published September 16, 2024
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December 23, 2024This book intrigued me as the blurb hinted at a story that might contain both touching and humorous moments as well as an adventure. Before long, I could tell it was a little rough, writing-wise. Nonetheless, I did find enjoyment and was curious enough to finish the story.
I would recommend this to anyone that loves videogames and wants to read something that feels like a playing a videogame!
Ratings:
Writing: 2/5
Reading (I listened to the audio book): 3/5
Story (plot/world building) 4/5
Let's dig into why!
Writing:
I needed to separate this rating from the story itself, because what the text irritated me at multiple points, the story and worldbuilding was actually quite well done! I once had a discussion about how bad writing does or does not equal a bad story. However, the execution of a story idea does affect the quality of the novel.
1) The first thing that irritated me about the writing here was how things were just being handed to our MC, Derp the Wise Slime. The first note I have on my audio book is about the hand-holding of the planet Voice, who tells the slime what to do the second it gain conscious thought. Later I learned that this is just how the planet operates and that every native creature is actually told what to do throughout its life. Still, it was jarring to encounter the way I did.
2) Moving on, Convenience. Perhaps this is actually tied to my previous gripe. This story *is* for the faint of heart, for nothing is too challenging. The second there is an issue, the perfect answer just appears out of nowhere. Need water in hell? Oh, um, those magic clouds just happen to be made of hydrogen and your friends can be made of oxygen! Perhaps this could still be true, but the presentation and discovery of the information felt random and far too perfect in its timing. And this happened a lot with future problems too; every problem had a quick and easy solution for our naive slime. Very little suspense and perhaps due to all this ease, I failed to make much of an emotional connection to the slime. :/
3) Every Character Knows Too Much. Especially about one-of-a-kind, something unheard of Wise Slimes. I had a note quoting one of the characters: "You seem to know a lot about our goo ball for just meeting it for the first time." Yes, and so did the person that said this quote. As well as everyone else that met it later on. Everyone is rightly frightened at first, but then quickly guess correctly or know certain information about the slime. One of the last people we meet, it makes sense, since their interests actually include learning about slimes, but all the others had no reason to know random facts, even about slimes in general. In every day life, slimes don't show up or have much impact on these characters. In fact, I can't remember if we ever even see another slime besides Derp in the whole story! This, of course, added to the convenience problem I mentioned above.
4) Verb Tenses: For a while, this was not a problem, but probably around half way through, the text would randomly switch from past tense to present tense and back. :/ Weird enough that I noticed.
5) Repetition: This was partially the reader, but also there were points in the actual writing that were repetitive or redundant, making me throw back my said and say "We get it! Move on!" I do have a little embarrassment when saying this, though. The redundancy I noticed is something I did for at least five drafts of the book I'm working on until I finally understood what my betas were saying. It's the whole explaining dialogue in the dialogue tag thing. (Tiny example: "Oh, that's confusing," he said, confused.) This bogged down the storytelling and slows down the pacing immensely.
6) Speech flavor! This was actually really well done, I think. We met several different characters from different cultures. Each had their own way of talking, which lined up with the culture their myth came from. Will-o-wisps speaking with Irish colloquialisms, Min-mins (sp?) speaking with Australian inflections, Jackalope hares speaking with a Southern North American drawl. I can't really say how well this was incorporated for each culture, as I am vanilla white Caucasian, but I enjoyed how it helped define and differentiate each character as well as make the world feel more vast and diverse! However, with the wisps, it was hard to tell them apart, but that may have been a voice actor issue.
7) Adverbs: These were perhaps used a little more than needed. There are better ways to convey things and sometimes the adverbs used contributed to the repetitive dialogue tags. >.<
Audiobook:
You'll find this definitely not a professional. The sound quality shifts commonly and the reader's mistakes are not all removed from the final cut. Still, for what it is, this was an impressive feat!
1) I disliked the narration voice chosen. It felt too...formal and stiff for the story, like the Queen of England was reading a story to children (no offense to the actual, er, former Queen. She may have actually been quite engaging in her story-telling! Idk, I'm from the US!)
2) However, the range of the voice acting was impressive! At first. I really enjoyed the Irish accent, though with three different characters speaking with this accent, I needed something more distinct between them to tell them apart. This voice actor cannot do an Australian accent to save her life. I hope this wasn't her trying, but even so, it was so jarring to hear the Australian colloquialisms read in a...I'm not sure if there was an accent being tried there. It sounded like flimsy/breathy/soft American English? (I do however, understand accents are hard and it is brave to even read and record any attempt at a new one!) However, we got back on track with the Jackalopes where we not only got a strong Southern American drawl, but we got an adult and child voice separately!
3) Repetition: Idk what was happening with the post editing, but... There were so many times that the speaker would repeat the line she just read, sometimes with a new inflection, sometimes exactly the same as before. Sometimes it was clear this was done because she stumbled or made a mistake, but these mistakes shouldn't be appearing in the final edit. This isn't live. Editing is the magic eraser that makes it look like there were no mistakes at all! Why didn't we use the magic eraser on the obvious mistakes? Were we just tired and wanting to get the project over with? I get it; I've never done an audiobook recording, and this is a legit project and undertaking. Still, the result is a sloppy end product. :/
4) Dialogue: This was hit or miss. Sometimes the inflections were right on. Other times we had Dumbledore asking calmly problems. It was a little funny actually. The slime's voice is really cute. That of a child. But sometimes the narration would say they said something with a monotone voice, and the reader didn't do a monotone voice. Other times it was just incredibly lackluster for how the adverb attached to the dialogue described the dialogue. Part of me wondered if the reader was actually reading the book, or perhaps they zoned out? Performance was a mixture of good and bad.
Worldbuilding/plot:
This intrigued me!
1) Videogame set up: I wanted at first to mark this against the book, but the closer I got to the end, the more I realized the appeal and intention! The slime has stats that it can check by tapping it's head (this was figured out too easily). The slime has Intelligence levels. The slime basically gains an inventory. The slime is sent on quests and essentially starts gaining experience points to level up its intelligence levels and acquire new abilities *with predetermined names like "acid spray."*
I get it now! The planet Voice is our tutorial friend who tells us what to press to attack and where to go to follow the game's plot! She's the text that appears at the bottom of the screen! XD We get to the human village and we have a *quest board* that is on a screen and therefore functions even more like a video game where you have to click "accept" to take on a mission! When I finally figured out it was meant to emulate what a videogame feels like, I started having a lot more fun. XD
2) The actual worldbuilding was interesting too! I loved the idea of a planet who is so well connected to her native species that she talks to them and guides them through life, assigning them tasks and purposes. She knows the world and all its people and gets bored or stuck because of this and therefore...invites? Kidnaps? non-native species to interact with her planet because she can't read or influence their thoughts.
3) Of course, each creature was taken from real life folklore, so we get no points for originality there, but the renditions of these preexisting creatures is the author's own thing. I will say here that I didn't like how the wisps were very...humanized. Oh! I wanted to rant about that! The first wisp we meet wants to attack the slime, and transforms from it's floating fire form into something with two arms and also a spear. Why? Why not stay in wisp form and prepare a wisp-based attack? Then we get to their settlement and the table is described in narration as being able to "fit about four adult humans around it." Why are we using human measurements? Are humans that common to this world? Do the wisps have human-envy? Later it seemed like humanoid was actually just the wisps' natural form? Which is fine, I guess, but I disliked how it took away the mystic and magic for me.
4) Story/plot: Yeah, this was pretty much as the title and blurb suggested. We follow a wise slime from birth as it learns about the world and begins to take on various quests. A nice break from your typical "hero's story" plots. Each new quest was interesting and led us to interesting new characters and creatures as we learned more about the world. Kind of a cozy adventure read, in this way. :)
However, that ending was a bit abrupt and like a slap in the face. Perhaps a better transition to it was needed, or perhaps it was just the audiobook that made it feel sudden and confusing. After I listened to it again to figure out what was going on, I did find it cute and a cool reveal. That transition to it was just sudden and the actual content of it was perhaps a bit too short or quick.
Whoof, that was an essay! I think I hit everything I wanted to talk about! As mentioned, I recommend this to anyone looking for a cozy adventure that feels like playing a videogame and is willing to look past the more surface level problems of the writing itself.
Have happy holidays! I'm off to find me one of those gorgeous snakes we met in the end of this novel. Something like reflected the night sky and was born out of the aurora borealis? Preeeeeetttyyyy~
I would recommend this to anyone that loves videogames and wants to read something that feels like a playing a videogame!
Ratings:
Writing: 2/5
Reading (I listened to the audio book): 3/5
Story (plot/world building) 4/5
Let's dig into why!
Writing:
I needed to separate this rating from the story itself, because what the text irritated me at multiple points, the story and worldbuilding was actually quite well done! I once had a discussion about how bad writing does or does not equal a bad story. However, the execution of a story idea does affect the quality of the novel.
1) The first thing that irritated me about the writing here was how things were just being handed to our MC, Derp the Wise Slime. The first note I have on my audio book is about the hand-holding of the planet Voice, who tells the slime what to do the second it gain conscious thought. Later I learned that this is just how the planet operates and that every native creature is actually told what to do throughout its life. Still, it was jarring to encounter the way I did.
2) Moving on, Convenience. Perhaps this is actually tied to my previous gripe. This story *is* for the faint of heart, for nothing is too challenging. The second there is an issue, the perfect answer just appears out of nowhere. Need water in hell? Oh, um, those magic clouds just happen to be made of hydrogen and your friends can be made of oxygen! Perhaps this could still be true, but the presentation and discovery of the information felt random and far too perfect in its timing. And this happened a lot with future problems too; every problem had a quick and easy solution for our naive slime. Very little suspense and perhaps due to all this ease, I failed to make much of an emotional connection to the slime. :/
3) Every Character Knows Too Much. Especially about one-of-a-kind, something unheard of Wise Slimes. I had a note quoting one of the characters: "You seem to know a lot about our goo ball for just meeting it for the first time." Yes, and so did the person that said this quote. As well as everyone else that met it later on. Everyone is rightly frightened at first, but then quickly guess correctly or know certain information about the slime. One of the last people we meet, it makes sense, since their interests actually include learning about slimes, but all the others had no reason to know random facts, even about slimes in general. In every day life, slimes don't show up or have much impact on these characters. In fact, I can't remember if we ever even see another slime besides Derp in the whole story! This, of course, added to the convenience problem I mentioned above.
4) Verb Tenses: For a while, this was not a problem, but probably around half way through, the text would randomly switch from past tense to present tense and back. :/ Weird enough that I noticed.
5) Repetition: This was partially the reader, but also there were points in the actual writing that were repetitive or redundant, making me throw back my said and say "We get it! Move on!" I do have a little embarrassment when saying this, though. The redundancy I noticed is something I did for at least five drafts of the book I'm working on until I finally understood what my betas were saying. It's the whole explaining dialogue in the dialogue tag thing. (Tiny example: "Oh, that's confusing," he said, confused.) This bogged down the storytelling and slows down the pacing immensely.
6) Speech flavor! This was actually really well done, I think. We met several different characters from different cultures. Each had their own way of talking, which lined up with the culture their myth came from. Will-o-wisps speaking with Irish colloquialisms, Min-mins (sp?) speaking with Australian inflections, Jackalope hares speaking with a Southern North American drawl. I can't really say how well this was incorporated for each culture, as I am vanilla white Caucasian, but I enjoyed how it helped define and differentiate each character as well as make the world feel more vast and diverse! However, with the wisps, it was hard to tell them apart, but that may have been a voice actor issue.
7) Adverbs: These were perhaps used a little more than needed. There are better ways to convey things and sometimes the adverbs used contributed to the repetitive dialogue tags. >.<
Audiobook:
You'll find this definitely not a professional. The sound quality shifts commonly and the reader's mistakes are not all removed from the final cut. Still, for what it is, this was an impressive feat!
1) I disliked the narration voice chosen. It felt too...formal and stiff for the story, like the Queen of England was reading a story to children (no offense to the actual, er, former Queen. She may have actually been quite engaging in her story-telling! Idk, I'm from the US!)
2) However, the range of the voice acting was impressive! At first. I really enjoyed the Irish accent, though with three different characters speaking with this accent, I needed something more distinct between them to tell them apart. This voice actor cannot do an Australian accent to save her life. I hope this wasn't her trying, but even so, it was so jarring to hear the Australian colloquialisms read in a...I'm not sure if there was an accent being tried there. It sounded like flimsy/breathy/soft American English? (I do however, understand accents are hard and it is brave to even read and record any attempt at a new one!) However, we got back on track with the Jackalopes where we not only got a strong Southern American drawl, but we got an adult and child voice separately!
3) Repetition: Idk what was happening with the post editing, but... There were so many times that the speaker would repeat the line she just read, sometimes with a new inflection, sometimes exactly the same as before. Sometimes it was clear this was done because she stumbled or made a mistake, but these mistakes shouldn't be appearing in the final edit. This isn't live. Editing is the magic eraser that makes it look like there were no mistakes at all! Why didn't we use the magic eraser on the obvious mistakes? Were we just tired and wanting to get the project over with? I get it; I've never done an audiobook recording, and this is a legit project and undertaking. Still, the result is a sloppy end product. :/
4) Dialogue: This was hit or miss. Sometimes the inflections were right on. Other times we had Dumbledore asking calmly problems. It was a little funny actually. The slime's voice is really cute. That of a child. But sometimes the narration would say they said something with a monotone voice, and the reader didn't do a monotone voice. Other times it was just incredibly lackluster for how the adverb attached to the dialogue described the dialogue. Part of me wondered if the reader was actually reading the book, or perhaps they zoned out? Performance was a mixture of good and bad.
Worldbuilding/plot:
This intrigued me!
1) Videogame set up: I wanted at first to mark this against the book, but the closer I got to the end, the more I realized the appeal and intention! The slime has stats that it can check by tapping it's head (this was figured out too easily). The slime has Intelligence levels. The slime basically gains an inventory. The slime is sent on quests and essentially starts gaining experience points to level up its intelligence levels and acquire new abilities *with predetermined names like "acid spray."*
I get it now! The planet Voice is our tutorial friend who tells us what to press to attack and where to go to follow the game's plot! She's the text that appears at the bottom of the screen! XD We get to the human village and we have a *quest board* that is on a screen and therefore functions even more like a video game where you have to click "accept" to take on a mission! When I finally figured out it was meant to emulate what a videogame feels like, I started having a lot more fun. XD
2) The actual worldbuilding was interesting too! I loved the idea of a planet who is so well connected to her native species that she talks to them and guides them through life, assigning them tasks and purposes. She knows the world and all its people and gets bored or stuck because of this and therefore...invites? Kidnaps? non-native species to interact with her planet because she can't read or influence their thoughts.
3) Of course, each creature was taken from real life folklore, so we get no points for originality there, but the renditions of these preexisting creatures is the author's own thing. I will say here that I didn't like how the wisps were very...humanized. Oh! I wanted to rant about that! The first wisp we meet wants to attack the slime, and transforms from it's floating fire form into something with two arms and also a spear. Why? Why not stay in wisp form and prepare a wisp-based attack? Then we get to their settlement and the table is described in narration as being able to "fit about four adult humans around it." Why are we using human measurements? Are humans that common to this world? Do the wisps have human-envy? Later it seemed like humanoid was actually just the wisps' natural form? Which is fine, I guess, but I disliked how it took away the mystic and magic for me.
4) Story/plot: Yeah, this was pretty much as the title and blurb suggested. We follow a wise slime from birth as it learns about the world and begins to take on various quests. A nice break from your typical "hero's story" plots. Each new quest was interesting and led us to interesting new characters and creatures as we learned more about the world. Kind of a cozy adventure read, in this way. :)
However, that ending was a bit abrupt and like a slap in the face. Perhaps a better transition to it was needed, or perhaps it was just the audiobook that made it feel sudden and confusing. After I listened to it again to figure out what was going on, I did find it cute and a cool reveal. That transition to it was just sudden and the actual content of it was perhaps a bit too short or quick.
Whoof, that was an essay! I think I hit everything I wanted to talk about! As mentioned, I recommend this to anyone looking for a cozy adventure that feels like playing a videogame and is willing to look past the more surface level problems of the writing itself.
Have happy holidays! I'm off to find me one of those gorgeous snakes we met in the end of this novel. Something like reflected the night sky and was born out of the aurora borealis? Preeeeeetttyyyy~
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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