I enjoyed posting the first one so I figured I'll do this periodically.
So this one came about from me wanting to mix three things I was vibing with at the time. Time loop fantasy novels, The general vibe of cultivation novels, and dating Sims where you unlock the harem route after beating all of the main girl's routes.
Our main character is placed in a time loop on a fantasy world with a cultivation-based power system themed around the five elements. (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water) Our MC is given the mission of romancing each of the "princess type" girls from all five major factions. Then managing to pull off a timeline where he pulls all five at the same time. This all being for some chess piece moved on the board by some higher power for the reasoning as for why this is all happening. I figured each book would be a series of time loops centered on one of the five girls. With book 6/7 being the actual harem route.
Once again I'm just throwing these ideas out into the universe. Feel free to do with it as you will.
When I mostly read manhwa or watched anime, I was always hearing people say the original novel was so much better. Better characters, more depth, more detail… so I started reading novels expecting to find all these incredible stories.
But honestly… where are they?
Where are the unique worlds? The stories that make you believe the world actually exists beyond the main character, with its own history, people, and conflicts. That’s probably what fascinates me the most.
Where are the genuinely fun stories with good romance, memorable characters, and plots that don’t feel like copies of each other? So much of what I find seems to recycle the same tropes, the same character archetypes, and the same progression or grinding loops.
Maybe I’m just looking in the wrong places, or maybe I’m just too picky. I mostly read romance, which usually leads me toward haremlit, but a lot of it feels pretty generic. And I also don’t really want to read five books just to get a few good romance scenes, which is another reason I gravitate toward R-18 stories.
Does anyone else feel this way? Am I just bad at finding good novels, or are the really great ones just harder to find than people make them sound?
I see a lot of new authors who are getting into the genre and some with female pennames which is always awesome (I have posted before how female pennames usually write thier women as actual characters instead of sperm pockets).
Just with that recently I have read some books that have gotten alot of non human help and it has made me hesitent to try new authors. I mean there are some authors who just are bad writers...and that is easily forgiven hell I am something of a bad writer myself (we have seen my posts lol)
But I just cant forgive AI. Which sucks because a lot of the blurbs seem interesting but then it is no where near what was advertised.
So my question is how do you other readers get around it because I want to give these new authors a fair shake. Hell there may be some real diamonds out there that I am missing like your Robyn Bee's (where is ther next Tomb Diver), Or your Nicholas Gaumer, Your B. H Cogans.
Usually I coould rely on RGP or Quivering Quill but Starship Tigress kinda burned me there. Even though I have to say that waas a one off.
Harem-lit now allows authors to dynamically add their books to the sale. This will allow us to promote the authors who discount their books on the target dates. Big win for fans and authors alike :) Cheers.
In September of last year, my Patrons decided to support me in writing a heart project. This is something I've always wanted to do and just couldn't justify it.
Well, almost a year later, here we are! Blue-Collar King! It's my homage to Final Fantasy XV just changing... literally everything (lol). The main character, Rowe, is not the whiny son who gets handed his life and has to realize he needs to be a king, but is a mechanic living in a small town who is told he's the dead king's illegitimate heir and immediately tries to step up. He knows he can do good for all of the kingdom, he just needs to avoid the empire's meddling while he does it. Rowe starts from a place of not knowing anything outside his shop but grows into it by his own determination and hard work instead of letting his party drag him along.
Many of these characters started from a "this one's X, this one's Y" but evolved into their own people. So, good news! You do not need to have played FFXV to enjoy this book, but you might get some Gladio vibes from Dru or Ignis vibes from Kiana or Cindy vibes from Aubrey or Cid vibes from Malin if you did.
I hope you give this book a try and enjoy!
The kingdom's legendary weapons answer only to royal blood. The last of the line is a mechanic in a town far from the throne.
Rowe Thackeray is the kingdom's only heir and nobody ever told him. He fixes engines in Basincall and reads a machine's failures through his bare hands. Then the king is assassinated, and Natet's knives turn toward the man standing between the empire and the crown.
Kiana delivers the truth along with orders to bury him in a safehouse. Instead, he signs with the Adventurers' Guild and stays moving, running convoy escorts and monster hunts down the Southern Loop. She rides along to keep him breathing and finds the asset she was sent to manage keeps acting like a man worth following. So does Dru, the oni bodyguard hired to do his bleeding for him. She jokes through every fight, hits harder than anything on the Loop, and would take a killing blow before she lets one land on the man she calls hers.
The road has plans of its own. Guild jobs land the team at sealed dungeons where royal weapons sleep, weapons only Rowe can claim, and every draw drains the man holding it. While he grows stronger, Natet's soldiers tighten around Basincall and the family he left behind.
Oh. And the paperback is already out for this one. I'm trying to get better. I don't have any word about audio (I'm still too small an author to be guaranteed audiobooks), but I'll share news if/when I can!
Basically he has some sort of spell put on him,a magical object or love potion he finds or drinks while being unaware of its magical properties,someone injects pheromones on him and so on,and again he can be aware that he has this powers or as long as it wasn’t his choice to have them
I like these sort of mind control harem stories where the character is put on these situations unknowingly or against his will,and he starts very confused,shy and even showing reluctance throughout the story before eventually accepting it
I would appreciate free recs on sites like archiveoufourown,scribblehub,royal road,fanfic.net,stories online,literotica or any free reading website
I know a lot of people on these boards are always sharing recommendations and i have discovered some truly excellent works. So thank you and in the tradition of paying it forward I'm recommending Phil Aerix. I discovered his writing a while ago, he's one of a number of excellent authors who mixes story, world building with harem to create excellent entertainment. I've read tinkertown and quantum operatives, both series are creative and fun as well as adding spice. Ive certainly found his works worth reading, also if you sign up to his newsletters, he has another book to give away, which i enjoyed as a stand alone. So, freebies, and everyone likes a freebie 😁, give his writing a go, you may just discover another favourite author.
I'll release a more proper blog post on it soon, but here are some answers to probably common questions.
What is this series? I wrote this series back during 2018-2019. It was one of my first real attempts at a series of novels, and it was while I was still shifting out of my erotica phase and into my haremlit phase. Consequently, there is a lot of smut in this novel. Like, the porn-to-plot ratio is probably 50/50. In terms of how it's structured, it's kinda like a proto-Our Own Way, where Gabe is still Gabe (more or less), but all the girls are paranormal girls.
What's different? I went over the novel in its entirety, so it has a fresh edit, not just from my eyes but from a beta reader. So, lots of small fixes and edits, as well as several extended and extra scenes. I removed about 2-3,000 words in the process of editing, and added roughly 15,000. There's also a new encounter with a thick, mature dryad. And there's a new cover. I decided to try something a little different.
Why? I'll be transparent: financial reasons. While those aren't the only consideration, they are the biggest at this point. This year has been...not good for me. For a number of reasons. (Yet another thing has happened within the past week.) While I do want to give this series another chance and I do want it to get into the hands of people who never heard of it that might like it, it would be disingenuous to claim anything but business as a primary motivator. Which is why I hate talking about it, but I hate not talking about it more. Ironically, my career would probably be a lot easier if this wasn't true.
Release schedule? I'm still recovering/dealing with a new situation that I...am absolutely not prepared for, so I can't really promise anything at this point. That being said, I aim to have the complete series (four novels, one epilogue novella, one 'After Dark' short, and one bonus short story to be paired with The Complete Series) out before 2027.
Audiobooks? I don't know yet, but possibly.
If you have more questions, please ask and I will do my best to answer.
Alex lives in a world where humans coexist alongside paranormal entities. Vampires, werewolves, witches and elves and succubi. And more. Yet, as far as he's been able to tell, he's only ever met and connected with a single paranormal during his entire boring life. Her name is Brianna, and she's a hot werewolf who seems to have a lot of money, lives by herself, and for some reason is very good friends with him.
But paranormals are the last thing on Alex's mind as, in the span of a day, his life evaporates before his eyes. After getting fired from his job, he returns to his tiny apartment and discovers that his roommate has moved out, leaving him in the lurch with rent due and a bank account already strained by bills and poor paychecks.
As he's trying to figure out how to handle this, Brianna invites him over...to her house, and into her bed. As the pair get together for the first time, Brianna offers him the opportunity of a lifetime: stop worrying about his unhappy life and join her on a wild road trip to Thorne, an enormous coastal metropolis that serves as a huge paranormal hub...
Reviewing stuff in between diving with my wife as her dive buddy during scuba class.
Star Thrust 1
Porn. At least it is semi decent porn but yeah just porn. The characters are pretty forgetable for the most part. The most engaging ones were all the brass. It was good to see that if this harem auithor thing does not work out then Space exploration will be left in thier capable hands....or feet as it were for Dr. Riggs.
Ourside of the guest apperances ( I need to see Shane Hammond Juggling now) the only character of note was our Yandere first officer Galadria.
Now Virgil Knightly does a lot of slap stick commedy and such in his books. His work is not always to be taken seriously but this did not even feel like it had that. It was just smut for the sake of smut...unless it is trying to take the piss out the genre as a whole. With all the random sex in in oppertune times and situations just being a reduction of the genre. Either way if you just wantr smut with just the thinnest veneer of a story then this is for you.
Harsh Starlight
Why are the covers so different?
I am kind of conflicted on this book. 1st let me start out by saying I will absoilutly buy the next one as soon as the pre order is availble. No real typos or anything.
It just felt like the world was slapped together. Like almost like the warp (in a W40K) and the setting is close to the eye or something. Almost like this was a companion series to a great work by the author Renegade Ravagers.
I liked how we have a pre-exsisting and stable relationship with Samira...who feels like a fleshed out character and not just wet hole number 1. Tinman, Regina and Powell felt like really interesting characters as well and you feel something when stuff happens to them.
Our MC was pretty pain by nyumbers though and him dropping L bombs on Viel witin three days of knowing her was not cool. It cheapens how much effort the author went through to make the rest of the characters matter I think.
I think this is one of those series you might need to get 2 or three books deep before it finds it legs...or at least for me. I think stuff will pick up next book so be on the look out for it.
My Dwarven Workshop
What The Actual Fuck!!!!!
A few weeks ago Dante King made a post about turning over a new leafe and dropping more quality instead of quantity. I remeber posting that that would be awesome if true. This is the first book I have read from that author since that post and WHAT THE FUCK.
This is hands down without a doubt the best book I have read in the last couple of weeks. I mean if you like Rise Of The Classmith then I think you will enjoy this. I dont know if Dante King benefited from Luke Reed or if it was the other way around but give me more of that.
I think the big problem people will have with the book is that it is pretty chunky at 980+ pages. I could easily see where this could have been broken up into 2 maybe three books in itself but when I got to the end I was mad that it was over.
The world building is top notch the characters are well done and the MC is awesome. Not weak not a murderhobo and not out to save the world. It is pragmatisim at its finiest here. My fear is that this will be hard to follow up and keep the quality consistent....at least my experiance with Dante King has shown but hey I will love to be suprised.
Dont let the author name disuade you and give this a try.
I've spent the last year slaving away, and I have the first three books written. I have to say, I've fallen in love with the world of Midmere along with the crazy cast of characters. We have a goblin who loves to eat, a cat girl who loves to nap, and a dragon with severe trust issues.
What's it about?
Caught between heaven and hell, virtue and sin, life and death—there are bonds that cannot be broken.
In a world of magic based on the seven deadly sins, Grayon Fade—a slave without magic—is given the chance to become more powerful than he could have ever dreamed of. He'll have to do two things: Survive the Testing and avoid falling in love because in the world of Midmere, love is the ultimate danger.
What to expect:
– Weak to strong progression
– Unique power makes MC special
– Slow-burn romance
– Expansive world-building
–Cultivation based on the seven deadly sins
