Horizon - Profile

Read up to ch 78 and this will be a blunt review. This story is obviously inspired by the “Scholar’s Advanced Technological System.” However the difference in quality and understanding of why that story succeeds is not the same. A major issue in this tech type stories is that the author can easily be bogged down writing jargon or a lot of inessential details that do not move the story forward and just make you scroll through the chapter because as a reader you know it’s not important. This is a failure in any book in my opinion. Readers should not feel that they are reading filler and that their time is wasted reading. However, I felt that way so many times reading this story. There were chapters where more than half of it was wasted on a list of inconsequential information that would not even matter one chapter over. The reason SATS succeeded is because the author understood how to temper the info dumps, in that story they are reserved only for techno jargon where there is some competition or tension in the story, making you be invested in the jargon, even if all of it did not make sense to a normal person. Here is just wasted on the specs of a truck, properties, or employee listings. Now onto the story aspects. The system and its inception is super cookie cutter, some generic Goddess™️ finds pity on this generic dude is “struggling oh so much” with the most generic issues. Honestly, the background of the main character would not be that important if it wasn’t so bland. Now the story progress is suffering from the same issue of the info dumps, bogged down by inconsequential content. Oh he has to file for business permits, oh he has to spend four chapters buying a truck to stroke his bruised ego because some guy looked at him funny, oh he has to spend multiple chapters getting a drivers license. It’s all just so banal and honestly not interesting to read. Which is the worst thing a book can do, bore you. Which is funny considering the most interesting part of this novel are the two female side characters who are investors in his business. They are interesting. I feel like the story would be so much better if a lot of the “filler” is cut down and the author focuses on moving the story forward instead of meandering on the most mundane aspects of the story.

Well you are in luck, because that’s all the book is about after chapter 180. It’s just constantly talking about his harem members, and there’s no support cast that isn’t, “possible harem member #” this story has the same cliched issue of “all friends are female, all villains and lackeys are male” there is not one single male character that is like a friend or respectable person. Everyone is a lackey or cheerleader for the MC.

At this point, the novel is just about his relationships and the $ex with his harem, with other stuff as side dressing. Like the author has spent more words describing how beautiful or how great the harem members smells/feel, than he does on the actual plot and events in recent arcs. I feel that there hasn’t been one arc where the author goes for more than 5 chapters without mentioning the MC and the harem doing something in bed. it’s tiresome and lazy. the good plot progression that was originally happening has slowed down to a crawl for this boring relationship diary on women who fell for the MC seemingly overnight and have the flimsiest relationship/chemistry. Another thing I dislike about this book is how the author fell into the same cliched habit of turning his character into this mute automaton. A lot of authors destroy their characters by making them be this silent person who rarely speak if it’s not face slapping. Like they think it’s cool to not speak and just have all the MC dialogue be his thoughts. If anyone acted like some of the MCs I’ve seen, including this book, people would think that they have some autistic traits. it’s just a boring lazy trait that makes MCs feel like cardboard robots that simply react to what’s happening around them without any drive or motivations outside of the most basic “get strong, protect harem”

Overall, I dislike almost all the characters in this story besides the MC. Each one is just constantly talking down the MC and his class. Even the supposed best friend is just constantly questioning him and acting as if he is some weakling despite already seeing how strong and smart he can be in a fight. This is the main issue with this story, the constant peanut gallery that for some reason needs to be given multiple chapters of worthless filler time. And this is further worsened by the fact that the author has this horrible writing style where after a situation occurs he goes back to the start of it but from the peanut gallery’s perspective. Its the most jarring thing and ruins the whole flow of the story because it feels disconnected and you are forced to try and figure out at what point in time this is happening. Another issue is how this story tries so hard to be some VR/game story despite already saying that it revolves around an apocalypse and human gaining powers. Like it feels like the author does not know where to take the story and is just mashing different things together. This results in super out of place or illogical world building aspects. Like for example, at the part I am writing this (ch 80) the MC is in a supposed competition for their school’s rank, but somehow, some way people in this stadium are unable to actually see what the competitors are doing or if they are struggling or not, they just see whether they left the rift/mission area they were assigned to. Like what type of competition is this? It had already been shown that it is possible to see into these mission areas so there’s no reason they can’t do so for this competition. Now the reason I’m harping so much on this one aspect is because even I (a reader) am not told what happens in this mission area! Like imagine, you are simply told how they went into a rift, what mission they got, and then have to scroll through dozens of paragraphs about the peanut gallery and how they look down on the MC, and then are just told the MC and his team somehow succeeded in their mission. Like no explanations or details, just a quick one paragraph blurb and it’s back to peanut gallery. This story is honestly frustrating to read because I feel that the system and premise could have been interesting, if it was actually written by a competent writer. I can’t in good conscience recommend this story to anyone. Like at most wait until it’s completed and read it then but don’t waste your time and coins trying to read this low tier work.