Stuck in the Tower Chapter 300 Discussion

Slowly making my way through the MTL. This novel is kind of average amongst Awakener/Tower novels, but it's still good. Would be a great introductory novel if you've never read this kind of novel before, but it still mostly holds up for even someone like me who reads A LOT of Awakener novels.

It's true the plot is kind of... "convenient" for the MC, like with his incredible luck, being the first to discover a bunch of secrets despite the enormous number of people all over the world who have climbed the Tower previously, the conspiracy behind the scenes that should have easily been uncovered that he's the first to realize and try to expose... some of these things are explained or rationalized in chapters that come MUCH later. But readers might be turned off at first because of a lot of illogical things (I feel like more and more readers probably complained to the author as the novel got more popular so the author eventually had to fix it lol).

For instance, it's eventually implied that the Tower itself might be trying to help the MC, so a lot of his absurd luck could be explained that way. Also, the MC's unique achievements eventually shift from being the convenient "first to find the secret, get something OP as a reward" and towards more things that only he is capable of doing because of his infinite lives (or risky things he's confident in trying that no one else would because they don't have infinite lives). This leads to knowing information/having opportunities from NPCs that no one else could -> able to find more secrets or force solutions that aren't supposed to be there because of that info -> the consequences of this snowballing as he progresses. It makes his situation much more plausible.

As for the conspiracy:

Spoiler

It's eventually revealed that people outside ARE aware of the conspiracy, and the MC isn't actually the first person to go past the second floor or come out of the Tower with his memories intact. It's shown that more people are aware than the MC originally realizes; it's just not mainstream information. The conspiracy is so widespread and entrenched in the governments of most countries that it's hard to fight against it or try to get the world out, but it is happening. There's an entire guild from the US that's dedicated to fighting the conspiracy, and there are people who know about but can't betray the conspiracy because, once they start to talk, there's an item in their head that automatically kills them. They're eventually able to make the conspiracy known to everyone in the Tower, even outside of Korea.

[collapse]

This novel has the problem of "quirky characters" being just weird people who don't listen when you talk and make assumptions and do things no one in real life would. Luckily, since the Tower is mostly a solo climb, you don't have to withstand them for most of the novel. The writing of the characters is kind of weak in general, so that makes the action, the details around conquering the Tower, and the overarching plot the selling points of the novel. The plot is kind of predictable in a lot of ways, but there are some aspects that are hard to predict and some twists later on that aren't so predictable.

The major weakness of this novel is, of course, the weak writing in the first like 100 chapters; if you aren't interested, you never get far enough for it to get better. Which is fair enough, because if you just can't get interested in the story, the writing getting better isn't going to matter to you.

This novel is pretty mid, but it's entertaining me and keeping me reading it after all this time. For that achievement, it gets a 4/5 stars.