Road to Mastery Review: Thirty Hours in DotF's Shadow

What I was hoping for

Road to Mastery came recommended, has a real fanbase, and follows a system-apocalypse setup with a fists-first bruiser of a main character. I did book one and gave up, and I'll be as fair as I can about why, because I know people love this series and I wish I'd found what they found.

The short version: it reads like a worse Defiance of the Fall. Not inspired-by, the genre is built on shared DNA and I don't dock points for that, but beat-for-beat similar: the system apocalypse, the early solo stretch, then the return to clear the bad actors out of the hometown, the whole arc shape. When a book walks that closely in a giant's footprints, it invites the comparison at every step, and it loses the comparison at every step.

Where it fell down for me

The first third is the main character stuck in a dungeon getting his origin and his levels, and credit where due: it isn't dragged out. That's the good thing I can say. It's also entirely standard, nothing in that dungeon you haven't seen before.

The real problem is the people. The main character is flat, and I say that as someone who's called Zac from Defiance bland; this lead is somehow more two-dimensional than Zac, without Zac's core motivations or, crucially, Defiance's supporting cast to carry him. The secondary characters here exist to fill the positions the story needs filled. The number two is a guy lumped in with the villains who doesn't want to be, switches sides when offered, and then, once he steps into the protagonist's shadow, abruptly becomes more capable, a much worse, much less interesting human retread of Ogras. The writing quality overall sits a step below what most series covered on this site deliver, and coming off Mark of the Fool, a slower story that stays engaging on pure craft, the gap was hard to unhear.

If you want these beats done well

Two better options. For the full system-apocalypse experience this book is chasing, Defiance of the Fall is the original and an S tier. For the specific pleasure of a bruiser soloing his way through an early dungeon with nothing but blunt force, Death Genesis hits the same notes with Zeke and his club, doesn't take place on Earth, and is a solid B. Either one gives you this book's promise, kept.

Verdict

Not worth the credit. C-low. The fans are real and maybe the series grows into itself in later books; I can only review the one I finished, and I finished it having found nothing I enjoyed except the fact that when it ended, it was over. Not every book is for everyone, and this one wasn't for me by a wide margin.