One of my favourite reads on WN though I feel like the name of the novel needs to be abbreviated or something (although the name was also the only reason I picked this book up in the first place hahaha). The story is really interesting and I think that the author really shows that he has thought and planned out the plot and direction of the story far in advance.
For me, the first part of the story started off pretty slow and I only really got hooked later on as I continued reading. Although this was one of the first web novels that I read, after reading quite a few more, it still stands out as being one that has a strong plot and good world building where the authors forethought really shows.
Although I was originally quite concerned that because of Skullius’ circumstances, the story would be unable to allow for any development of side characters I am very glad about the introduction of YuYui and later occurrences in the story that change this otherwise I think this element would have very significantly hindered the quality of the story (at the same time, it takes quite a while before this actually occurs and although the apostles are interesting I didn’t feel like they would be enough to replace the benefit of fleshing out all other side characters).
I really enjoy the story and I am very intrigued in the direction it will head towards. I can tell that the author has been introducing pieces to the board all to start connecting them all together.
Now to discuss areas of improvement that I think would really help the novel.
I think there are 3 core areas of improvement for the story: the grammar, the consistency of the humour and the power creep. While two of them are quite minor, I am personally finding one of them becoming more and more of an issue.
Regarding the grammar, although the writing quality such as the vocabulary, sentence and paragraph structure or the writing is good, the proofreading is what I found to be lacking for a lot of the first few hundred chapters and still occasionally on the more recent ones. I would really recommend the author just run the finished chapters through some spell checker like Grammarly to correct any accidental mistakes. When I was reading through many of the earlier chapters I found grammatical issues or sentence structure issues that were very minor but served to blemish the quality of the writing. With how nicely written your chapters are, taking that extra step to add that final bit of polish to your writing would really step it to the next level with minimal effort. I can still recall a time where a typo really put me out of the moment when describing the destruction of a city (which shall not be named to avoid spoilers) and reading something along the lines of “three thirds” of it being destroyed. Although it was pretty apparent as to what you meant, small things like that or just typos or repeated sentences reduce the writing quality when the quality is already really good and only diminished by these small but easy to correct mistakes.
Next, although not too big of an issue, I personally felt like the degree of humour isn’t really consistently felt in the writing. While the comedic element of the story was never an integral part of the experience for me, I just wanted to point out that the funnier moments don’t feel that consistently spaced out. Although, I understand that this is partially due to their being a heavier focus on the plot. For example, the novel starts with quite a bit of focus on the comedic aspect but we see it drop off quite a bit maybe 100 chapters in, another example would be YuYui where things are more comedic whenever she is involved but suddenly quite lacking when she is gone. Once again, I don’t think this is too big of an issue but I just wanted point that out. I get that a lot of the times it would be pretty hard to make certain scenarios where the plot is developing comedic and honestly, after so many chapters have already been written, a shift towards that would no longer be in the spirit of the story I think. Personally, if you have the time, I would totally recommend giving “A Will Eternal” a read. This was the first webnovel I ever read and it’s a translated Chinese web novel with cultivation themes and although it has its own share of problems (especially during the obvious big changing moment in the story) it is honestly the funniest book I’ve read and is great example of a book that manages to maintain its humour throughout the entire story even in situations you wouldn’t think would be funny or despite being a scenario critical for plot development. I think it would be a really good reference if you were to ever write a new series that was more focused on the comedic element of the story.
Finally, on the most critical area of the story that I think could see the most improvement on, the power creep. Although I would say that for the first few hundred chapters this was not a big issue and I was able to easily follow along, I feel that ever since the recent chapters (after Skullius went through a ’perspective’ changing moment hahaha), I have begun having a lot more difficulty following exactly how strong Skullius and other characters are. While I know that a lot of WN series like to use UI systems that provide numerical values to stats and clearly illustrate abilities, it sort of becomes a big problem as characters actuslly start becoming powerful. More recently, I feel like both the attribute statistics as well as the number of abilities themselves have sort of skyrocketed and become pretty hard to follow. I almost feel as if I need to start screenshotting or taking down notes of the most up to date character stats because I literally cannot recall these numbers or find them again to be able to actually compare how one characters fares to another. At this point, it feels like the stats are actually making it harder for me to understand how strong characters actually are. Posting periodic chapters that are clearly named and easy to reference that just dump up to date stats is probably the only thing I can think of that would immediately help reduce this problem. Otherwise, implementing a core strength value would be pretty helpful such as a single stat that generalises someone’s power outside of their rank could also be really helpful. An example of this would be “Vile Evil Hides Under the Veil” totally different type of story that honestly has a really bad start but uses that stat summary method by implementing something called BP (battle power or something?) that generalises their strength based off their other values making it way easier to compare stats without having to deal with all those numbers. Furthermore, aside from this whole stat issue, I feel like the frequency in which Skullius is jumping in power seems to be rising. This also makes it quite a bit harder to follow because it feels like I have to re-remember everything he can do again. I think it would be a lot easier to follow if Skullius’ improvements were more gradually introduced and also at a slower frequency, introducing more and more new powers (while interesting and opening more avenues for combat) also makes things a lot harder to follow as even merging abilities together means I have to remember he has a new ability. I think introducing a smaller number but very flexible abilities might be the solution since you don’t have to keep updating them while still allowing characters to use them for many purposes and simplifying the whole thing. I.e something like “Shadow Slave” where Sunny also gets these sudden introductions of new abilities but at the same time it occurs rarely and doesn’t feel too overwhelming as he doesn’t have that many in total.
Overall, Bro I’m Not and Undead is a really good book with a well fleshed out world and plot as well as good writing that I’m glad I managed to stumble upon and I look forward to continue following as it develops. However, I think a critical issue that has begun to emerge and needs to be solved is the power creep that is beginning to really make the story harder to follow. I think the story is beginning to build up to something really big and complex plot wise so simplifying the whole subject regarding the abilities and powers of the characters would be seriously beneficial in preventing any overload of info.
Keep up the good work! 👍
