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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.
