As a big fan of the Wandering Inn, naturally I want to read every story written by Pirateaba that takes place in it. However the overall story now spans more than just the original web serial, encompassing a graphic novel and now this separate story published on the new Yonder platform. Many fans complained about the latter in particular and it seems that Pirateba does have some gripes about the global availability of the service. I don’t begrudge her trying to make some money off what is now an extremely popular web serial so I downloaded the app to read it. In the event, this method of monetizing web fiction is annoying but it doesn’t really cost much to read the whole thing on Yonder. What is a problem is that this is nowhere as good as the Wandering Inn itself and that makes it difficult to recommend to others.
Aspiring actress Cara O’Sullivan is crossing a street in Galway, Ireland, following an unsuccessful audition, when one step to the next, she finds herself in a dark tomb. She has in fact been teleported to Innworld, more specifically into the huge Tomb of Afiele in the kingdom of Noelictus, on the continent of Terandria. At first she thinks this is some sort of prank or she is somehow hallucinating, but guided by the light of her mobile phone, she becomes convinced that she is in another world when she sees the sheer size of the tomb, how every one of the stone caskets contains a corpse as well as the inscriptions on the tombstones. As she wanders for over a day, she suffers from lack of food and water. She sings to herself to keep her spirits up. When she collapses in exhaustion, she is shocked to receive the Innworld system announcement that she has gained the Singer class. She is saved when a ghost who haunts the tomb decides to help her. In life, he used to be a knight, Sir Dalius. He thinks of himself as the guardian of the tomb and at first intends to kill her for trespassing. Cara however manages to convince him that she is there by accident and in fact knows almost nothing about the world at large.
This was first announced in 2022 and was made available for a while to Patreon supporters before becoming a Yonder exclusive. Unfortunately in terms of style and writing quality, it’s more reminiscent of the earliest Wandering Inn book than the newest ones after Pirateaba had spent years refining her craft. It feels as if the writer, feeling overburdened by the monstrosity that the main series has become, wanted to go back to something simpler and much easier to write. Each chapter is very short, perhaps two to three thousand words at most. For what feels like an interminable number of chapters, it’s just Cara alone in the tomb as she tries to figure out what is going on. After Sir Dalius reveals himself to her, it goes on for many more chapters before Cara even manages to escape the tomb. I do like that it’s very in-depth in showing Cara’s thought as she wrestles with the ridiculous notion of being transported suddenly into what seems not only to be a fantasy world, but one that operates according to a game-like logic. The problem is that it goes on and on and worse yet, the psychological complexity of Cara’s character is no more than that of the young adult genre. It’s annoying how simple and telegraphed her every thought is, even as she is railing about her pet peeves against royalty and the aristocracy, or even the very concept of heroes that stand above everyone else. I don’t mind the idea behind the character of Cara but it’s executed so childishly.
The book does get better once she leaves the tomb and meets more characters because then the plot starts moving forward and there’s worldbuilding as this is the first time we see Noelictus. Even here the complexity of the world is far less than that of the main series and the power level is reduced as well. Everything is just less in this series: simpler, more straightforward prose, shallow characterizations, one dimensional plans and so on. It feels as if it were written for younger readers. It’s by no means a bad read but it’s barely above most fanfiction in its current state and very far from the heights that the Wandering Inn can reach. Frankly if this were my introduction to Pirateaba’s writing, I would not have been interested in reading more of her other work as it’s just not that impressive. This series also has a specific problem of its own. Cara often sings songs from the real world and the lyrics are meant to convey meaning and emotion. Yet due to rights issues, Pirateaba isn’t allowed to include even a single line of the lyrics of any song. So the text will describe her singing a song and provide its name but without any lyrics at all, it just doesn’t work. Needing to go to YouTube to look up the songs yourself is so awkward.
When she appears in the main series, Cara O’Sullivan is already fairly powerful, well established and has a clear plan of what she wants to accomplish. The Cara who is depicted here is far different and the chapters that are available so far stop short a long way from catching up with the main series. It’s good to see how she got her start in Innworld but I find that I don’t like the character much. She’s so sanctimonious about how the aristocracy must be inherently wrong when she knows nothing at all about the world she finds herself in and the whole bit about her being an actress only pretending to know what she’s doing gets tiresome fast. The other characters such as Seraphel du Marquin or Sir Dalius, aren’t much better. The necromancer who is the antagonist has boring and stupid motivations. The only interesting thing is that this was all part of a larger plot on the part of Ailendamus, and sheds new light on the terrible costs imposed as part of the continental superpower’s aggressive expansion. Of course all that is in the main series and no such complexity is present in Gravesong itself.
It was interesting to figure out Yonder works and it’s nice that you don’t need to spend much to read all of Gravesong. Apparently there will be more chapters to come and I still have plenty of tokens left over to spend if I want to read those. But to fans of the Wandering Inn who are wondering if it’s necessary to read this to know the whole story, I’d say no. The quality of the writing is subpar and it doesn’t add enough that is new to be worth your while. Most readers will be better off reading a summary of the events here and contenting themselves with the version of Cara who is shown in the main story. I don’t begrudge Pirateaba trying different ways to make money but this was a poor effort.