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Retribution Engine
"The War of Fog is over. Every major city is under occupation. Now we prepare to take back our home."
- Unknown Soldier
The world's great heroes have slaughtered one another for the ideals of their countries, but the world keeps moving.
The industrious nation of Ikesia lays still smoldering from the nigh-apocalyptic War of Fog, yet it stubbornly forges onward, shielded from further invasion by the impenetrable Blackwall. Its leader - the Sage of Fog - has disappeared, yet his influence is still felt everywhere, his plans and contingencies still in motion - even the Blackwall is said to be his last, desperate creation.
New heroes have begun rising from the war of fog, and there is more need for them than ever. A towering foreigner has emerged from the desolate Exclusion Zone.
She strides into the war-torn country without the intent to pick sides, but is soon forced to do so when the machinations of malevolent others collide with her own ego.
- Unknown Soldier
The world's great heroes have slaughtered one another for the ideals of their countries, but the world keeps moving.
The industrious nation of Ikesia lays still smoldering from the nigh-apocalyptic War of Fog, yet it stubbornly forges onward, shielded from further invasion by the impenetrable Blackwall. Its leader - the Sage of Fog - has disappeared, yet his influence is still felt everywhere, his plans and contingencies still in motion - even the Blackwall is said to be his last, desperate creation.
New heroes have begun rising from the war of fog, and there is more need for them than ever. A towering foreigner has emerged from the desolate Exclusion Zone.
She strides into the war-torn country without the intent to pick sides, but is soon forced to do so when the machinations of malevolent others collide with her own ego.
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August 13, 2022
NOTE - This is a review of the First Part of Retribution Engine and DOES NOT INCLUDE Book 1, Book 2 or Book 3.
[System]
Changing the formula for this one as each character represents an aspect of the system and how it’s applied in this world. There are 3 systems at play: fog breathing, alchemy, and homunculi augmentation. With fog breathing you’re intaking a specific version of life essence (known as essential), usually what’s most potent in the immediate vicinity. The most common are Albedo (essence of the soul), Nigredo (essence of decay), Rubedo (essence of battle, survival, intense violence), and Viriditas (essence of life). By focusing your breathing you can enhance your body’s natural abilities or manifest techniques and advance personal traits/affinities.
Fog breathing is the rarest of these abilities while most common soldiers practice alchemy to augment their unit and provide them potions and supplies, improving overall efficiency. Examples include ‘vigor potions’ which restores one’s stamina and pushes off the feeling of fatigue or bodily enhancement via intaking essential. This often puts the person consuming the potion on par with a Fog Breather except there’s a heavy toll on mind and physical body though most are lucky not to survive. The final system is personal augmentation by growing a homunculus with a specific feature and harvesting the creation at the end of its life. Vocal cord enhancements, eye enhancements, maybe a pickled pygmy in a jar if that’s up your alley?
All these systems can manifest techniques and physical enhancements, which I’ll detail through the characters.
[Our MCs and the Plot]
Zelsys is a perfect sexual specimen who wakes up in a tank full of green Viriditas – pure life essence. As she comes to completely, she learns that she’s in an underground bunker and some of the Viriditas has consumed nearby corpses, congealing into blobs capable of thrusting bones from their biomass. These creatures along with a voice in the back of her head telling her to flee quickly drive her out of the facility as it sinks. Before she escapes, she manages to recover a few artifacts – specifically an Attribute Reader. She emerges in the Exclusion Zone – a massive cordoned off region of Nigredo that has rotted the region and turned most creatures into heinous monsters.
Coming across a small party of ex-soldiers stuck in the Zone, she’s welcome into their party on the grounds that she let them use that device she recovered. This device allows them to not only discern their own TRAITS and ABILITIES but establish a new identity completely. With a way out of the EZ, they start to head back home only to be confronted by a necrotic bear wheN it’s revealed that Zelsys is a Fog Breather. Despite lacking memories before her tube she has strange affinities with weapons produced in the region: cold-iron blades capable of changing their shape to fit their chosen user. Without the proper TRAITS you can still wield these devices, but it’s dead weight and seems to shift its center of mass to mock its wielder.
Quick on her feet, she does her best to have others provide her details of the world and magic system as she has amnesia. Her intuition is often dictated by a voice in her head that seems to possess some authority of thought. This isn’t always conveyed the best as characters stumble into exposition dumps while she grins wickedly to herself and introspects about how clever she must be to survive. Luckily this drops after the first few chapters as the group solidifies. I also mentioned sexual specimen above because nearly every situation she walks into she is met with ‘lecherous gazes’ since every female in this story is a bisexual dime piece.
Our small party of ex-soldiers consist of Makhus, Zefaris and Sigmund. The only survivors of their outfit after a Rubedo-fueled final stand, they find themselves stuck in the zone with little-to-no chance of escaping until Zelsys appears. Makhus is the groups de fact leader at the start and an alchemical savant, capable of creating jury rigged alchemy stills and distilling pure essential into potions that he consumes to fight. These power-up tattoos across his body that enhance his strength but require him to purge any excess after a fight, usually through violent retching. They also fuel his Sword Saint (SSSS) Arts which enhance strength, hearing, etc.
Sigmund is our resident schizo and introduces himself to Zelsys by leveling a gun on her and frantically muttering. He becomes more lucid as the story continues but starts out as a Rubedo-burnout – the one who had saved the original unit from complete annihilation. He ingested a near terminal level of Rubedo that has reduced him to a shell of a man, sanity barely managed by Zefaris and Makhus. He turned out to be one of my favorites despite a rocky start.
Zefaris is the cycloptic sniper missing an eye. Luckily her other one has two pupils, referred to as a ‘Homonculus Eye’. I touched upon this above, but Homunculi can be created and harvested to provide their creator whatever organ used as its ‘base’. Zefaris can enhance her accuracy at the start of the story, diversifying into trick shots and more complicated techniques as the story continues. She can also make her vision telescopic, using it to stare at Zelsys’ ass.
The party continues to expand as the story progresses, with some characters taking on different roles depending on their affinities in the field or as support, which is well executed.
[Final Thoughts]
This may be my longest review yet and its because of the sheer amount of attention to detail that is put into every aspect of this story. It is extremely DENSE and tends to drag as Akaso makes sure you know absolutely everything about anything happening in the immediate vicinity. This pays off in the battle sequences, which I think are well executed if not padded out with filler enemies that bury the lead more than serve the story. There is an ASSLOAD of potential here, but I think it needs a concise re-write at some point. By the last quarter of the boom, I was so tired of hearing about bug viscera and dungeon layouts that my eyes began to gloss over.
This is also the 3rd book I’ve read where serendipity and good luck has been used to explain characters acquiring every plot-related note, element, item, person, weapon, etc, etc, etc. they could ever need to progress in the story. I understand that it’s a cultivation trope at this point, but it really chaps my ass. Aside from those gripes, the book Is fine if not a little over-indulgent. There’s a passionate lesbian sex magic scene in the first 10 chapters, for instance.
It’s literary Devil May Cry with such an eye for detail that you could turn it over to a design team and get a perfect 1:1 game world with it.
6/10
Will I read the rest of the series?: Yes.
[System]
Changing the formula for this one as each character represents an aspect of the system and how it’s applied in this world. There are 3 systems at play: fog breathing, alchemy, and homunculi augmentation. With fog breathing you’re intaking a specific version of life essence (known as essential), usually what’s most potent in the immediate vicinity. The most common are Albedo (essence of the soul), Nigredo (essence of decay), Rubedo (essence of battle, survival, intense violence), and Viriditas (essence of life). By focusing your breathing you can enhance your body’s natural abilities or manifest techniques and advance personal traits/affinities.
Fog breathing is the rarest of these abilities while most common soldiers practice alchemy to augment their unit and provide them potions and supplies, improving overall efficiency. Examples include ‘vigor potions’ which restores one’s stamina and pushes off the feeling of fatigue or bodily enhancement via intaking essential. This often puts the person consuming the potion on par with a Fog Breather except there’s a heavy toll on mind and physical body though most are lucky not to survive. The final system is personal augmentation by growing a homunculus with a specific feature and harvesting the creation at the end of its life. Vocal cord enhancements, eye enhancements, maybe a pickled pygmy in a jar if that’s up your alley?
All these systems can manifest techniques and physical enhancements, which I’ll detail through the characters.
[Our MCs and the Plot]
Zelsys is a perfect sexual specimen who wakes up in a tank full of green Viriditas – pure life essence. As she comes to completely, she learns that she’s in an underground bunker and some of the Viriditas has consumed nearby corpses, congealing into blobs capable of thrusting bones from their biomass. These creatures along with a voice in the back of her head telling her to flee quickly drive her out of the facility as it sinks. Before she escapes, she manages to recover a few artifacts – specifically an Attribute Reader. She emerges in the Exclusion Zone – a massive cordoned off region of Nigredo that has rotted the region and turned most creatures into heinous monsters.
Coming across a small party of ex-soldiers stuck in the Zone, she’s welcome into their party on the grounds that she let them use that device she recovered. This device allows them to not only discern their own TRAITS and ABILITIES but establish a new identity completely. With a way out of the EZ, they start to head back home only to be confronted by a necrotic bear wheN it’s revealed that Zelsys is a Fog Breather. Despite lacking memories before her tube she has strange affinities with weapons produced in the region: cold-iron blades capable of changing their shape to fit their chosen user. Without the proper TRAITS you can still wield these devices, but it’s dead weight and seems to shift its center of mass to mock its wielder.
Quick on her feet, she does her best to have others provide her details of the world and magic system as she has amnesia. Her intuition is often dictated by a voice in her head that seems to possess some authority of thought. This isn’t always conveyed the best as characters stumble into exposition dumps while she grins wickedly to herself and introspects about how clever she must be to survive. Luckily this drops after the first few chapters as the group solidifies. I also mentioned sexual specimen above because nearly every situation she walks into she is met with ‘lecherous gazes’ since every female in this story is a bisexual dime piece.
Our small party of ex-soldiers consist of Makhus, Zefaris and Sigmund. The only survivors of their outfit after a Rubedo-fueled final stand, they find themselves stuck in the zone with little-to-no chance of escaping until Zelsys appears. Makhus is the groups de fact leader at the start and an alchemical savant, capable of creating jury rigged alchemy stills and distilling pure essential into potions that he consumes to fight. These power-up tattoos across his body that enhance his strength but require him to purge any excess after a fight, usually through violent retching. They also fuel his Sword Saint (SSSS) Arts which enhance strength, hearing, etc.
Sigmund is our resident schizo and introduces himself to Zelsys by leveling a gun on her and frantically muttering. He becomes more lucid as the story continues but starts out as a Rubedo-burnout – the one who had saved the original unit from complete annihilation. He ingested a near terminal level of Rubedo that has reduced him to a shell of a man, sanity barely managed by Zefaris and Makhus. He turned out to be one of my favorites despite a rocky start.
Zefaris is the cycloptic sniper missing an eye. Luckily her other one has two pupils, referred to as a ‘Homonculus Eye’. I touched upon this above, but Homunculi can be created and harvested to provide their creator whatever organ used as its ‘base’. Zefaris can enhance her accuracy at the start of the story, diversifying into trick shots and more complicated techniques as the story continues. She can also make her vision telescopic, using it to stare at Zelsys’ ass.
The party continues to expand as the story progresses, with some characters taking on different roles depending on their affinities in the field or as support, which is well executed.
[Final Thoughts]
This may be my longest review yet and its because of the sheer amount of attention to detail that is put into every aspect of this story. It is extremely DENSE and tends to drag as Akaso makes sure you know absolutely everything about anything happening in the immediate vicinity. This pays off in the battle sequences, which I think are well executed if not padded out with filler enemies that bury the lead more than serve the story. There is an ASSLOAD of potential here, but I think it needs a concise re-write at some point. By the last quarter of the boom, I was so tired of hearing about bug viscera and dungeon layouts that my eyes began to gloss over.
This is also the 3rd book I’ve read where serendipity and good luck has been used to explain characters acquiring every plot-related note, element, item, person, weapon, etc, etc, etc. they could ever need to progress in the story. I understand that it’s a cultivation trope at this point, but it really chaps my ass. Aside from those gripes, the book Is fine if not a little over-indulgent. There’s a passionate lesbian sex magic scene in the first 10 chapters, for instance.
It’s literary Devil May Cry with such an eye for detail that you could turn it over to a design team and get a perfect 1:1 game world with it.
6/10
Will I read the rest of the series?: Yes.
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