Changeling
by Mecanimus
- Graphic Violence
- Profanity
- Sensitive Content
Magic came to our world. Portals opened all across the planet, releasing mana and dangerous monsters on the unsuspecting population. Wonder turned to horror. Society was on the verge of collapse, until heroes rose to face the catastrophe. Those fearless men and women wielded the power of mana to enter the portal worlds, plundering their treasures and slaying beasts bullets barely harmed. Through their efforts and sacrifices, mankind stepped into the future. They were called users, or raiders, and they became the champions of mankind.
That was more than sixty years ago. Now mana users represent almost a fifth of mankind's surviving population.
Nestra isn't one of them.
She was born without a core. In the new city of Threshold, baseline humans like her are being forced out of law enforcement. MaxSec is one of their last holdouts and Nestra, one of its last members, but it cannot last. With Nestra addicted to mana and her job one of the only chances at getting close to portals, she is heading for disaster. Threshold is a mighty city dominated by corpos and powerful users. It takes very little to become collateral damage, unless Nestra can finally figure out what's wrong with her, of course.
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hooked from first chapter
Reviewed at: 2.5
to preface this review:
I have read all the other stories of this author here on flickertale.com and rly liked them.
and again, Mecanimus delivers!
we had a vampire tale in the past, isekai in a fantasy setting - and now, dystopian future with superhumans and a non-powered MC who just wants to find her place in this world.
I like how the world is set up - without lengthy expositions, but it feels organic, well developed and consistent. and I just want to know more, want to explore it at the side of the MC.
and again, strong female MC, non of this men writing women bs. she has ambition, a moral code and believable motif as well as badassery that is not OP.
thank you again for a rly good read!
now, gotta get back to the story!
Mecanimus heads to the future.
Reviewed at: 1.6
For their past works, they have Bob in a fantasy medieval era, Journey for a more contemporary era, and Changeling heads to the future with a blend of the Korean portal genre and a cyberpunk dystopia. Despite the change in setting, Mecanimus is still able to weave a wonderful tale.
In just six chapters, I am already invested in Nestera's story. I understand her struggles and her background, and I am looking forward to how she moves forward. All without pages of exposition. Mecanimus is great at showing instead of telling, and creating complex, multifaceted characters with their own motivations.
If you have enjoyed Mecanimus' prior works and enjoy Portal or Cypberpunk stories, you will likely enjoy this work as well.
Tempering Expectations
Reviewed at: 2.6
In theory, this should be my perfect story. Mecanimus is an author who excels with settings, charater and diologue. Pair that with my guilty pleasure of portals on earth to other dimensions and this should be a slam dunk.
The first few chapters were on point. Then the story just deteriorates and its hard to point out exactly what the problem is. There's the classic show don't tell you see in Bob and the story of black and red. For some reason here, we also decide to explicitly state what happened as some form of recap as if we didn't just read what happened. Its jarring and it keeps happening.
The characters don't feel human. Its fine for the main character to be that way, but everything seems off. People don't have reasons for most of their decisions other than "politics" which are loosly explained at best. Not in any coherent way of course, but our main character wouldn't understand even though she used to be apart of those politics.
Randomly calling out the world while not waking up some sleeping guy who was guarding a portal still confuses me. Why did she do that there if she's trying to stay hidden and why didn't the guy wake up? Its weird monolouging that does not fit at all in the context of the scene. This was the 3rd instance of bizzare monologuing and its just weird for someone who's described as a "frigid bitch" to do this. I would normally attribute this kind of thing to translation problems being that japanese words are used to describe things here, but its got to be natively written in English. For example, ACAB just isn't a japanese or eastern thing to my knowledge. The world descends from the japanese and korean regions of the world without any of the culture from that region, other than random words. Everything feels so arbitrary and its a shame. There's minimal to no social cues besides that person is rich so be polite and we don't even know what polite is half the time. It sometimes involves clothes, titles, salutes and eye contact. The main character doesn't care about being polite, so it makes no sense to have a preamble about not being polite before the meeting, followed by actively not being polite during the meeting. Context clues during the meeting about superiors / her betters would make for a more compelling story. I don't need to be told about our frigid bitch's lack of manners if I get to see it instead. That's come up at least 5 times and its weird that an author of this caliber keeps doing it, especially since it wasn't pervasive in the first few chapters.
I only got halfway through the second book and I can confidently say that half of the first book and the second book need rewrites.
This isn't bad exactly, but its nowhere near the caliber of the other two books Mecanimus has on RR. There is a good story here, its just so incredibly rough in its current state. I'm personally not sure this is the same author, but it could be that this story isn't getting the editing and love to make conversations, plot points and and general writing smooth.
An increasingly apparant issue for me.
Reviewed at: Part 20
To start this off, I want to make it clear that I find this story to be fairly enjoyable. I'll get into specifics- with some things that are definitely spoilers, be warned ye prospective readers -but right now I want to outline what I see cropping up, as well as what and why I think that's the case. As the story is right now, I cannot shake the feeling that the author can't stop writing a version of Ariane. I haven't read Calamitous Bob so I can't make any judgements there to see if this is a pattern with Mecanimus, but for this story, several of the aspects of Nestra's character and the story beats feel like late stage Journey of Black and Red.
That is not necessarily to say it's a direct ripoff though. The worldbuilding feels very strong to me, the characters make sense- to a degree, and I'll get to a few conniptions on that in a sec -and Nestra is most certainly a different character than Ariane was. However, there are similarities; Nestra and Ariane are both part of a secretive race of, I'll say magically superior beings with strong capabilities in blending in with humans and intelligent races as a whole, strong personal strength and speed and etc, and Nestra also shares Ariane's Devourer traits of absorbing powers, as well as strong hunter instincts. Hubris is also specifically mentioned as being the primary reason Nestra's race gets killed, in a way that I'm fairly sure I could find a near copy of earlier in Journey. There's also the distant and cruel surrogate "sire" character for them both. Nestra also somewhat shares a couple of personality traits with Ariane, mainly a sense of detachment from most other people and her general aloofness, but frankly these traits feel to be at pretty different scales between the two, so I'm not too bothered by it.
The way that Nestra tackles the world is also very similar, though for I think different reasons. Ariane needed to overcome 1800's sexism and vampire power plays, Nestra needs to survive mega corporations and magic humans that seem to hate 'dregs' (normal humans) on principle- I'm still gonna get to that, but still, Nestra and Ariane share a very defiant, take no shit attitude to just about everyone. Even, say in Nestra's case, the physically, magically, and socially superior Gleams (those magic humans). Now, normally I wouldn't much care about this, but Nestra somewhat intentionally pisses off most of them, and suffers little to no consequences. Sure, the three stooges (who you'll meet) were late to pretty much everything, but for all the effect of a wet fart as Nestra murderhobos the people she 'needed' backup on anyways. Even later on, when they try to do something directly, it does fuckall. This part is, eh, less well written than the rest, but I again care about this more because of the similarities I find with this story and Journey.
Now, do I honestly care if Mecanimus took what he learned from one book and applied it to the next? No, not at all. To his credit, if the story was a bit different, a bit slower, I wouldn't be writing this at all. However, at the point I've read, it seems more and more like Mecanimus is trying to get back to Journey. The way that Nestra faces little to no opposition from, let's call them, 'mortal mages', blasts around as a super powerful creature of the night, absorbing the powers of her hunted prey;
getting a request to help a 'mortal' with his kidnapped son, and scaring a mob boss into letting the creature of the night walk off after tossing his guards around like children.
The way that some characters just appear in one chapter and die ten later, like Mecanimus is tieing loose ends before they're in the damn tapestry.
For example,
Shinoda, who could be framed as a maybe a 'vassal' for the comparison, maybe not, had a very interesting character to me. He was also fragile, and we were made aware of this, and when he died it did make sense for the situation and the character. It was also a noble death that fitted the connection the reader and Nestra might've had with him, if we'd had any damn time with him. Any plot threads he might've helped along are gone, and relationships he had- specifically with Kim -are now only told from one side, and the way it just gets brushed over is fucking rude, man. I understand that Nestra has issues feelin grief, I don't understand what seems to me like pissing away a good character for almost nothing. It's just a waste.
Now, I've gone a on with more than a bit of a tangent, but my point with this is so: I think that Mecanimus, who hopefully is reading this, is still stuck in the mindspace of writing late stage Journey and late stage Ariane. He is writing a powerful hunter that few can truly oppose, he is writing 'powerful' scenes that I think are meant to give a gut punch without actual, proper time to marinate and set up, and he is writing the ending to a story that just started, something I find that to be very disappointing given the great potential that the story had, and still very much has.
Despite my doom and gloom, as one can tell from the ratings I gave, I still like the story. I think that from my perspective, while it has a big flaw, the story has so much potential to be better. It can introduce new characters and give them the time they need, it can provide actual challenges to Nestra that don't seem to be 'kill this in under a minute', and it can grow out from this shadow that Journey casts on it. It has a lot to like, and I just hope you can make it work out. Now, for my justification for having advanced ratingn and some slightly more indepth bits.
Style
Absolutely fantastic to me. I have no qualms reading the work of a seasoned and professional writer, especially one with the flairs of Mecanimus. The battle scenes are very on point to me, with snappy and short, to the point actions that aren't so technical that my eyes glaze over, while also portraying an animalistic, or maybe harried feel that fits fairly well.
Story
Now, I covered this kinda in the main section, but to restate I guess, the story has flaws in pacing, at least to me. The worldbuilding feels pretty good though, and in particular I like the way the large Asian population is set up (as well as calling potentially British or American people Anglos, very nice touch), along with the advanced tech. I know it's supposed to be futuristic corporate distopia, but still, it seems well made for the world they live in.
Slight amendment after posting, but I do need to mention the speed at which Nestra is growing. I'm not sure what to think about it, because as it stands Nestra seems to outpace most physical challenges with relative ease, and slaughter every single one of her opponents after getting new race. There's technically big actors that would give her immense challenges, but Nestra hasn't tried fighting them at all, leaving only her smashing little guys to paste. She also got this relatively immense power very quickly, about a week into the story. This isn't the worst thing in the world, but the execution makes it feel like less of a starting boost and more of a permanent thing- though I certainly neither expect nor hope foor it to last.
Grammer
Damn near perfect. 'Nuff said.
Characters
Aaaand here we are! In this review, I finally fucking get to the gleams, as well as kinda the corporations, sorry for making you read a wall first. To be clear, I understand the setting and genre of the story, corporate distopia. I understand the world is supposed to kinda suck. So, that said:
I fucking hate the gleams in this book. Is that intentional? Probably, because there are exactly five fucking people that; A, have magic, and B, aren't dickweeds. Most of Nestra's family fucking sucks. All corporate gleams seem to suck. The three stooges suck major ass. The gleams outside the walls were given a very lovely description by Nestra in their ability to be jackasses, and in nearly every single case of a gleam being mentioned, it usually goes along the lines of them being an entitled asswipe too busy huffing mana to so much as check their goddamn food supply for infestation. The only people that don't suck as much seem to be Nestra's aunt, Nestra's sister, the guy who's interested in Nestra, Nestra's doctor, maybe Shinran- who is basically a walking miracle cure for everybody everywhere, and whom the reader never met- but don't worry, Nestra sure did a while ago!
The only, only, only possibly decent gleam to exist beyond this list is one random fucking dude that walks into Seth's shop with his very unimpressed girlfriend. Every other one of the magic humans, that genetically pass down their magic to their children, is a piece of shit as far as the story has gone to say. Not a single one of the new generation has any interest in anything beyond grandstanding, or has any empathy for the 80% of the fucking world that Runs Your Goddamn Civilization. I'm 70% sure I'm blowing this out of proportion and like, that is kinda the point of a corporate distopia, but still, WOW did you do a good job of making want to fucking punch all gleams.
Second amendment, because apparently writing a review in the middle of the night with no prep leads to you forgeting things, several of the characters in the story have a weird reaction to Nestra's bullshit to me. Whenever Nestra does something weird, annoying, or rude, people just seem to brush it off immediately. Maaybe I'm expecting more for no reason, maybe I'm seeing things where there's nothing, because to tell the truth it all makes a weird amount of sense? Like, after Shinoda's unfortunate death, Nestra goes demon mode and starts pulping monsters. However much time later Vallarian finds her is just, okay with her being not human? Like, Nestra mentions not-humans weren't very tolerated by gleams, and while I'm able to accept that Vallarian promises to keep the-person-he's-interested-in's secret- and even reveals it to Mazingwe, and all of this makes sense, but it's one example among quite a few I could probably find in the book where things just get brushed under the rug. It's a bit weird to explain, because I agree with the setup and the result of the individual events, combined they make a concerning trend.
Superb
Reviewed at: Part 39
Another wonderful story by the reliable Mecanimus. The setting is an interesting amalgamation/twist on some popular LitRPG settings, minus the LitRPG, which makes it automatically better, in my opinion.
The characters are fleshed out and interesting, the dialogue is engaging, funny, and flows very nicely. Action scenes are well choreographed, and while some battles are more interesting than others, you can tell that they were crafted with care.
If you have read the stories of Bob or Ariane, you may notice some similarities in the behavior of this main character. Personally, I don't mind this at all, since I am a big fan of both of those stories, but it is something to keep in mind. I'm also a big fan of non-human MC's so this story is right up my alley.
My only real criticism of the story is, and it truly is a travesty:
There aren't enough chapters to read! I burned through the available chapters in less than a week! My addiction must be fueled. CURSES!
I always look forward to a new Mecanimus release to sink my fangs into. I absolutely recommend this story, and I can't wait to see where the story goes in the future.
Promising Start From an Excellent Author
Reviewed at: Part 25
Thus far the story and world building have been very cool, a dark cyberpunk world with magic overlaying the whole thing provides for a very cool vibe and some neat world building. I’m looking forwards to seeing more of the world of demons and the broader magical world as the story goes on. The prose is excellent, as expected from Mecanimus. The main character is enjoyable and entertaining without being shallow. Mecanimus is a great author, and A Journey of Black and Red is a favorite of mine, so I’m looking forwards to seeing how this shapes up.
It’s okay.
Reviewed at: Part 13
Fairly unique and fun power progression. Setting and world building fairly overdone and not very well fleshed out. Every character besides from the main character feels 2D. Like emotionless cardboard existing only for the purpose to either make the MC shine brighter or give her a reason to be upset.
If the world building and character growth can be improved I would LOVE this story. Until then it’s just one to keep an eye on.
Wish I could read it fresh again
Reviewed at: Part 65: Ambitions
I read the latest bob which led me to changeling. a day and a half later and I was up to date. I loved the premise and nestra grabbed my heart with her no shits given attitude.
there are a few grammatical mistakes such as a “it” that should be a “at” but the true meaning is always easily understood and those things have never bothered me
all in all a great series and well worth a read
Always look forward to a new chapter
Reviewed at: Part 47
Great writing, narrative is unpredictable without feeling like the character has plot armor, etc.
Enjoyable blend of fantasy elements, alternative future timeline/post apocalypse, and characters feel genuine. o heavily reliance on tropes, author does a good job world-building so that when something new is encountered it feels like it fits and it's not just a plot device.
5/5 100% worth it, if you're looking for a new series to start 100% recommend this one.
Great take of the Korean Portal genre
Reviewed at: 2.10
I came here from the patreon to say that while the story is 5* worthy from the first dozen chapters, it only gets better as it progresses. The plot thickens, new and very appealing character are introduced and explored, it gets emotional, funny and intriguing. Nestra experiences growth in her character, agency and impact and to summarize, all I can really say is:
Please read this masterpiece in the making, you won't regret it!
Edit: (addendum and clarification) This is Mecanimus' take of the Korean Portal genre, that when taken at face value brings nothing new to the genre. This changes as the story progresses, although it doesn’t need to. The author takes the genre as a setting and expands on it. The story's main hooks are the plot, world building and characters, instead of the genre itself. And oh boy does the story deliver on those hooks.