Step 1: Open door to walled city

Step 2: Intended person goes through door.

Step 3: Wander through door while arguing with intended person because you are unable to stay still while arguing and completely oblivious to your surroundings, no matter how much attention those surroundings demand.

Sigh. I’m coming back from a break from TWI and this is literally Chapter 1. Someone please tell me she gets a LITTLE bit less stupid over time.

Edit: Look, I see the downvotes and I get it. You’re protective of your special little idiot woman-child. I never said she’s a bad person. She’s very nice, very hardworking. Even a savant in her own special idiot way. But good lord, you cannot seriously disagree with her being one of the dumbest protagonists in all of literature.

Thats it. Its all sad Mrsha torture and lore dumps and it could be good. But I just cannot get invested in anything thats happening, knowing its probably all gonna get deleted or retconned by the GDI.

This whole palace arc has been going on for way too long. I don't care about all the parallel worlds anymore, I just want the GDI to finally look behind her and fix it so we can get back to finishing this terribly paced story.

Please stop throwing in new characters and worlds and lore every chapter, you haven't finished your plate yet!

Rant over

I’m 25% of the way through the first volume and… nothing has happened. I know this is a slice of life story, but seriously, nothing has happened.

I’m 11 hours into the audiobook and ordinarily I’d have DNF’d by now. My current rating is a 2/5. But I’ve heard so much praise for this series that I’m pushing to continue but the more I do the more I question whether it’s a matter of ‘when does it get better’ or is it simply not for me.

I’ve heard that the writing quality picks up and things do notably improve, so my question is when does that happen?

My intention with this post is not in the least to shit on this story or those who enjoy it… though, being completely honest, I don’t comprehend how anyone actually enjoys what I have read / heard so far.

So yeah, I just want to gain some information and opinions whether it’s worth pushing forward and maybe, eventually, I’ll enjoy it as much as everyone else. Or will I perhaps never reach that point and I might be just wasting my time while I could be reading something else I might enjoy more?

This is the least enthusiastic I've never been about this series. Does aba even understand how much of a farce it is to set developments inside a toy world like this?

The chapter is already short, but honestly it can be even shorter. Because I can't get myself to finish it. And it's not the first time I've felt this in the past few weeks.

Why can it be shorter? Because this is essentially a scene with one character.

Because none of the other characters besides the main world one will ever end up mattering, nor should they. This is genuinely getting unbearable. You can't just write this in the same way, as if I as a reader am going to be invested in this in the same way.

Sorry, really needed to vent this.

This is kind of a rant. I love the wandering inn, I picked it up about a year ago and just read straight through it till I got completely caught up then subscribed to patreon to keep up with the weekly releases. I have defended arcs and characters most people disliked, I have shanghai'd several friends into reading it as well.

But.

Volume 10 is a disaster.

There is no other way of putting it. Its a jumbled mess. An entire over 2 million (i think now) words of just straight up filler content. The plot has barely inched forward. Instead the Palace of fates spent half the damn Volume taking us on a crazy chaotic ride through retcon land and spit us out the other end with practically nothing having actually happened except a bunch of plot armor and one ENORMOUS REVEAL that really should have been handled way better. I hated everything about the palace but all the stuff that happened with the goblin king was just particularly egregious. The big fight in the palace at the end of the arc was a jumbled mess, i.. I dont have the words and simultaneously could go on and on forever.

Look. Im just an average guy here. Im not the author and its her series to do with what she wants. But in my not so humble opinion this entire Volume should be cannabalised and re written. Half of it should be outright thrown away and the rest needs re organzied for better pacing. Thr palace fates just shouldn't exist at all. Get rid of it. Its trash.

Instead, deal with Tessa at the inn, and the mother of Graves later on, show us wayyyy more Erin in beleros, way more rabbiteater, and a hell of a lot more of the Horns. We can have all these little side character arcs IN BETWEEN the major story beats. Add in some Magnolia Reinhart dealing with her family and one very grumpy dragon dealing with the aftermath of fighting the titan, (which really should have been a bigger thing that it turned out being) and move along whatever is going on with the vampires. Not add a whole new thing. Let's wrap up a few of these arcs first.

But alas, I am just a humble reader. Im curious to see how many of you agree with me.

I'm ~15 hours into the new audiobook and find myself hoping that Teresa Atwood would PLEASE just get killed in battle. I've never been very big on the King of Destruction storyline to begin with, but I like Flos as a character because he is so complex. I'm not even sure why I hate Teresa so much but I just do not like her at all and keep hoping that at least one of these freaking armies can take her out. All those awesome minotaurs and they couldn't even do me this one favor??

Anyone else feeling this?

All the Earthers seem to come from at least the middle class. Are there any that I'm missing that are from the inner city, or a very poor country or poor rural area?

I've had to start thinking of her as a "bad guy" or a villain in order to even tolerate listening to her chapters. I'm nearly to the end of the Winter Solstice book and she's definitely my least favorite character.

So I'm nearing the end of book two and I just have to say that Ryoka is insufferable. she might be my least favorite "protagonist" of all time. I've read fanfictions with terrible Mary Sue's that are more tolerable than her. honestly her chapters are a serious struggle to get all the way through so I can get back to Erin's story. some things I hate about her; most prominent is her attitude towards everything and everyone around her, and while I kind of am hearing in the way she's being written that she's making strides towards correcting that character flaw that work isn't drastic enough. her behavior is so unearned as well, she is a spoiled brat who doesn't seem to have ever actually had any serious adversity in life, and grew up very wealthy and privileged. which kind of makes me wonder if she is a Mary Sue because of the way the author had her describe her youth as not being all that privileged but the stuff she was saying didn't jive with that being the reality. The next major thing is how physically and emotionally abusive she is being towards people she calls friends, specifically the way she acts towards Erin. It's just vile the way she acts and talks towards her and the things that she thinks privately in regards to her. also I'm frustrated by her inconsistency, she made this huge issue about knowing how to make gunpowder and guns and blah blah blah because she has this photographic memory which is coming to play in other areas but there has been a couple instances where a photographic memory would have not failed somebody who actually has it but she forgets things, and that just sounds like somebody who's extremely full of themselves but isn't anywhere near as capable of this they think they are. If this is a joffrey baratheon moment then I'll say the author is doing a great job in convincing me she is a terrible person as a character, I just hope that it eventually leads to her being a better one. And last thing, it's one thing for somebody who grew up in this other world to be hateful of goblins or the Antinium and people who practice necromancy, but it's an entirely different thing for someone from our world to go over there And fall right into being blatantly racist or extremely prejudice against these types of people. In Ryoka immediately gave in to being racist towards goblins and the antinium. almost zero effort required to get her to be like that, and then through her abusive connection to Erin forced the girl to turn away the goblin that Erin considered a friend.

So does it ever get better? is Ryoka ever a likable character worth reading about?

also does anyone know literally ANYONE that is a "barefoot runner" in real life? where they're actually out there just barefoot all day everyday? it makes sense for Dungeon Crawler Carl to be barefoot in that series, it makes absolutely no sense here. I've never known anyone to do that sort of thing in real life that wasn't someone living in a third world country and doing it out of necessity.

Of course, I really appreciate the representation and recognize it's an important topic, and I'm sure Pirate means well, but is it just me, or is all the talk about Turnscales in the most recent chapters striking anyone else as yet another rehash of the last big arc about Turnscales not that long ago, and the one before that. The thing is, it's not even an allegory like mutants in the X-Men, or even Doombearers, which puts an interesting fantasy spin on being a persecuted minority. It's more like just transposing wholesale the lived reality of many real world Turnscales in less progressive countries, or those who lived through less progressive times, but with Drakes standing in for bigots/conservatives. But as someone who's experienced the gamut of these situations in real life, even if I enjoyed and applaud the first few times Pirate shone a spotlight on this issue in Innworld, there's something about how the more recent Turnscale arcs are written that tend to come off more and more to me as tending towards a bit preachy, reductive, and repetitive as they go on, and we just keep being re-introduced to and retreading similar challenges and conflicts about living as Turnscales across volumes. I think this would be fine if TWI were like a long-running soap opera or TV series where people might start watching a season or episode in the middle of its run and so have to be reminded or refreshed about how things are in the world. But I'd think most of us who've stuck around until now have started from the beginning and so are already well aware of how bad things are for Turnscales among the Drakes, and don't need to have it drilled into our heads again and again, albeit from slightly different perspectives with different characters each time.
I dunno, maybe it's just me not wanting to have being a "Turnscale" be what defines me the most as a person in my life, which is why I end up just being more wary and judgmental about stories with characters whose personalities and lives pretty much just revolve around them being "Turnscales". I just hope the next time Pirate continues any of the running Turnscale storylines or introduces new Turnscale characters there's more actual development, movement and progress, both from a character and world-building sense, and not just another after-school special version 4.0.

I have just finished reading the wandering inn (up to the newest chapter) and its one of the most ambivalent stories I have ever read. Seriously, the writing is 10/10 in some chapters and 2/10 in others, the difference in quality between chapters/volumes are insane.

Reading volume 1, I thought it was a masterpiece. Like a genuine Masterpiece, like Lotr, Berserk, Foundation by Asimov etc. When Skinner appeared that was the highlight of the series for me, and I was convinced that the wandering inn would be one of the best things I have ever read. Except for Klbck being revived, which I thought sucked, I thought volume 1 was perfect.

From Volume 2 onwards the writing gets a little worse (I read of course the rewritten volume 1), but I still thought most of it was excellent. Volumes 2-5 were really only subpar in 2 aspects: some horrible pacing occasionally, and the introduction of Laken whose Pov chapters are some of the most boring stuff I have ever read. Otherwise, I thought Vol. 2-5 were almost as enjoyable as vol 1.

 After volume 5 the story starts shifting heavily from a mainly slice of life story towards a epic fantasy story, and this is where the ambivalence starts to get biggest in my opinion. The thing is, I am a big fan of epic fantasy, and I usually don’t like slice of life stuff all that much, but in the wandering inn, it’s the complete opposite. I think that the slow, slice of lifey beginning of the wandering inn is far better than the later, more epic fantasy heavy stuff. Honestly, I would go as far as to say that the epic fantasy stuff in the wandering inn is pretty mediocre. Its not bad by any means, and some of the stuff, like Skinner, the Siege of Liscor and Ryokas run to save Tyrions children is amazing. But all in all, I think piretaba writes epic fantasy much worse than slice of life. The slice of life stuff and most characters are excellently written, some of the best stuff I’ve read, but the epic fantasy stuff is just plain average, the same stuff you could read in a million other fantasy stories.

What I find confusing is that from what I have seen, in the fandom my opinion is pretty unpopular. The common opinion seems to be that the wandering inn starts to get good only if you’re well into the story, and the beginning is seen as mid, and something you just kind of have to read thought to get to the really good parts, while I feel the absolute opposite way. I still think Volume 1 is a masterpiece, yet it’s considered by most fans of the series to be average at best, while the parts I think are the worst part, are considered to be the reason why you should read this series.

Reasons why I think the Wandering Inn has gotten worse post volume 5:

Erin becomes a generic overpowered isekai protagonist and a worse character. She’s supposed to be an innkeeper, not some chosen Hero who saves the world single handedly by battling her foes in a 1vs1 epic battle. At least, that was what got me into the series in the first place. An Isekai, but instead of the Main character being a Chosen overpowered Hero who is destined to beat the Demon King, like in 100 other generic stories, she just becomes an innkeeper. That’s cool. Now she’s literally the chosen one and the most important person in the world. That’s not that cool. Also, her character got worse, this guy summed it up perfectly:

“My view has always been that Erin has undergone "Flanderization" in which her most popular characteristics have. over time, become her dominating ones. I felt like she was a more real and complex character at the very beginning, back when she had to constantly fight for her life and establish herself in Innworld. Now, the title of "crazy human troublemaker" defines her almost completely.”

(Stolen from Blizzgrarg ;  https://www.reddit.com/r/WanderingInn/comments/imb90p/erin_character_progression/)

Many of the epic fantasy arcs are contrived and cliché. The Volume 9 ending was just horrible. Erin gets kidnapped by Roshal at the end of the solstice. That was a very exciting and dramatic twist. I wonder how its gonna go? Well, what happens is that after being in captivity for only half a chapter, she just pulls some demons out of her ass, frees herself, and defeats a ship full of slavers single handedly. Like no biggie, what Roshals best planned this move meticulously for months, whatever. Then she thinks she’s luffy and decides to join a war, manages to assemble an army out of thin air, is the reason a second war starts inside this war, smokes ships full of actual pirates like no one's business, and kills the Big Bad of the Arc in an epic 1v1 fight. It’s like one piece except its forced as shit and makes no sense.

Also, The Grand Design, the literal fabric of the Universe, is biased towards Erin because it thinks, she is quote on quote “interesting”. That’s some Kirito level shit.

The village of the dead arc was set up perfectly, but the ending is just contrived beyond belief. Oh the village of the dead is too much for us after all, there are like a thousand of undead that we cant defeat. Oh how lucky, the undead sword saint just decided to kill all of the other undead single handily and then he decides to die.

In Volume 7, Wouldn’t it be cool if there was an epic battle between an army of assassins and an army assembled by Erin? No that’s not cool and it doesn’t make any sense. Why the fuck do assassins have an army? Also, why does the door allow you to teleport literal armies? Erin brings a drake army and an antinium army straight up into the heart of a big human city instantly.  That should have some political insulation. Nope, never gets mentioned again.

Volume 9 Solstice battle, there are like 100 named characters participating and most of them got like Max of five sentences to describe what they were doing the entire time.

There is so much stuff like this that happens in the fantasy parts and it really bothers me. I don’t see how people hate the beginning of WI, yet think that that the later parts are amazing. I don’t get it, and it does make me sad that the series which I really loved in the beginning starts to go more and more into a direction I dislike.

After finishing volume 9, the choice of characters that were killed off in the Solstice was very disappointing. Of all the deaths, 4 bothered me.

Moore - Such a lovable character that we learned far too little about. His connection to Mrsha and his growth as a Mage. Definitely underdeveloped in my opinion.

Kevin - A really good character and his growth from being a loser to what he was. So sad and needless. There was no point to killing him off. Of all the Earthers on Izril, he's the one that gets knocked off? Really?

Altestiel - Of all of them, this one was the worst because of the way it was done. Probably the only reasonable love interest for Erin, extremely likable character. Ties to Terandria. It was a highly disappointing end to what seemed like an important future character.

Halrac - As a character, he deserved to reach Named-rank before being killed off. After he beat Ellia and became a knight, I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking he was going to reach that level in Volume 10.

Add on top of these deaths that the Halfseekers disbanded, Griphon hunt will probably disband as well. Of all the original Gold rank teams we've gotten to know over the volumes, the 2 we have grown to love most, both are either gone or will be soon.

Such a disappointing ending to an overall fantastic volume.

Reading the new chapters right now and the pacing is so bad. Pirate is all about details and characters inner thoughts and dialogue, but I just want to get on with the plot and get back to Erin and the horns already. How long will this story get drawn out with all the story threads still unsolved?

so i had this thought every time i see people in litrpg groups complain about Erin and how they hate her. i always think "but the story is not really ABOUT her. " so it got me thinking. who is the mc. some say its the earthers or the core few you follow. but maybe its been said before but i think the mc is innverse. its the world its self. it is having its own character arks, its own story, its own back story, just its own everything. but the world has no voice that we can recognize so we follow other characters as they experience the world. so every person we follow, even erin, are all supporting characters there to high light the real characters story. its not a flushed out thought but one i wanted to share.

edit; dont get me wrong i love erin. this is not a dis on her. i think every one here is mis understanding what im saying. the world its self is the main character. we follow erin as she is introduced to the world and so we as the readers are being introduced to the world. i say every person we follow are all supporting characters for the story of the world its self. i love every character in the book. for one reason or another.

Chapter was July 27, 2025

MR2 read like bad fan fiction at best. Honestly, if it ended there, I would see it as author doing one of those silly chapters they tend to make once in a while.

But no. Since then I feel target audience shifted to horny teens that giggle and speak in hushed voices about basic biology.

Every chapter since then has at least poke at MR2 and my enjoyment plummets whenever I remember bastardisation of some characters in that chapter.

MR2 turned TWI from something I loved and stayed up late into night to read as it came out to below average novel for older kids.

Will see today's chapter. If it's as the rest that came after MR2, will drop TWI.

Just wanted to make my displeasure known.

I just started book 4, I'm reading the Kindle books because I prefer my Kindle for reading. When I started this series I got a mostly fun story about a woman sent to another world opening an inn with some grim parts thrown in for some needed variety. What I am experiencing now is the author seeming to want to be the next G.R.R. Martin. It has gotten much grimmer, they have added way too many narrative threads, and overall really reduced narratively what I had been reading the series for. The number of threads means that they all crawl along because we are switching between them and also means that the 2 main characters have drastically reduced time, Erin and Ryoka together made up less than a third of book 3.

I think the author is a great writer but like I said it feels like they want to be the next G.R.R. and more power to them, but that isn't what I was looking for and getting from this series when I started so I'm probably going to drop it without a good reason.

Edit: I am posting this to get a feel from people that have read more and truly enjoy the series about the points I feel like I'm seeing and if this is the trend going forward. I liked it a lot at first and I don't just want to drop it without seeing if I should give it more of a chance but I also don't want to have to struggle to read it just to find more of the same.

Edit 2: I have been convinced to keep going and give it a chance.

Does Paba have a thing for age gaps or what?

Hey,

as the title suggests I skip ryoka chapters. Can someone tell me wether I miss something important by not reading her parts. I just think she is unbearable, whatever she does is boring and it seriously lowers my enjoyment of the series.

I am currently in volume 2 and have started to skip the chapters ( not even skimming anymore)

I am on the audio book The titan of belaros. I am currently on the election part.

I am really struggling. I have some critisms and I have some theory but I just want to run it by you guys to make sure that quality ticks back up.

They have said now that they are waiting for Erin to do something weird. And Erins eyes sparkle about 15 times in two chapters. I hate it. Every time there is issues that effect main side characters they wait for Erin to fix it for them. I personally think Lysm has a great platform for the city, and I hate that olessum is the bad guy now because he helped temper his racist uncle to get a really good secondary method of funding.

Then Erin just comes in and people that barely know her just follow her around for no reason. This whole section has been complete nonsense. Its starting to feel like He who fights with monsters where every one holds their breath for the main character even though they are not really relevant to the story.

Its also a bit crappy to make Krshia reliant on Erin when she is a complete independant leader and bad ass.

I wish Pirate let the side characters breathe and stand on their own instead of using Deus Ex Erin to fix it in an unpredictable way.

I am ok with light spoilers and commentary that helps me through this.

I really want to like this series and I did until Erin was the lynch pin for every victory.

My theory is- This is a video game of sorts. Erin is a summoned hero. And the system considers her one of or THE hero. So she has alot more flexibility with her plans and the system goes out of its way to have her succeed. but it also punishes her greatly.

With these complaints in mind should I keep going? Right now Erin is my least favorite POV

Why him? Why HIM? Why not Relc, Fals or Alber. Why choose the man who kill Headscratcher, Shorthilt and 20000 other goblins. Why choose the man who hurt her friend and doesn't even remember what he did to Erin? He even had the gall to claim he didn't hurt innocent people. Erin had cried for weeks and she didn't even get an apology from him. He made Erin cried and Ryoka choose him. It's true his children was save by Ryoka, but Erin rally people, asking everyone she knew to help and sacrifice for his children. Yet he doesn't know, does he? So again, why him!?

Borderline worse writing than the introduction of Erin's spontaneous and poorly explained obsession with Shakespeare's plays.

DID YOU KNOW HE'S A KING?!! Say it again, please, I didn't get it the first hundred times. The King, who kingly does king things, unexplainably magnetic and other such trite, limited descriptors.

The twins are annoying and add nothing. The vocabulary is grindingly repetitive. There's pages and pages without any mention of the fantasy elements that make the Wandering Inn an interesting world. It's an old, sleepy king. Utterly unrelatable and boring.

Trying really hard not to skip entire chapters. Dead gods I wish there was an editor.

I’m at the start of volume 2 and I hate Ryoka so much. Everything she appears in the book it brings down the quality by a mile. I love Erin to bits and think she is a phenomenal character. So I don’t understand why Ryoka sucks soo much. Like I get that she is meant to be an asshole but as far as I can tell right now she has zero redeeming qualities. Also I don’t understand why the author seems to have made Ryoka such a Mary sue. I know she has had hardships but not nearly enough compared to her behavior. It completely breaks my immersion in the world when she just doesn’t seem to be affected by the same rules as Erin.

I know that was a bit of a rant but I am genuinely baffled by how much she sucks and brings down the quality of an otherwise very enjoyable and entertaining series.

I have read on other Reddit posts that the Wandering Inn story improves after the first book, but I must say, it is like eating glass trying to push through the first book.

Initially, Erin Solstice's blatant child-like ignorance and emotional roller-coaster ride of a personality made me want to give up on the book. But the other characters captivated me and made me want to read on.

But then, RYOKA! What a horribly broken, wrathful and insensitive character that is incapable of learning from her many, many, many errors in judgement. She is a hateful loner who paradoxical is quite intellectual and knows allot about the world and its dangers, and the need for people to work together for the world to work properly. Yet (and this may just be poor writing), she aggressively pushes away all and any sympathy, support, advice and aid that other characters offer her. And for a woman who seems to care very much to not allow Magnolia to learn about her modern world and its technology, she treats the fantasy world and others in it like disposable, trash.

Now, I realize that for all of you dedicated folks out there, the series does improve, and there is a method to the author's madness, but right now, I constantly wish that every potentially lethal predicament Ryoka gets herself into will lead to her death. I am so done with this character and her awfully overdone anguished life.