Royal Road - Read Stories

A great way to read up and coming authors, especially in the nascent LitRPG genre, as well as isekai (from another world) and more conventional fiction genres like fantasy and sci-fi. But because it's an open platform, there's a huge range of skill (and editorial prowess), so be sure to pay attention to the reviews for each story. Added bonuses: filter out gen AI slop, "to read" list, curated suggestions based on your reading history… It's a great app for any reader!

There are good stories here. The site isn't quite trash, though there are several overwhelming ways it leans close. Of lower importance, they keep fiddling with the way ads are presented, frequently becoming not just irritating to try & get through. Royal Road may choose an approach that crashes out of the program while leaving the app store open instead. The biggest offender is that the website seems to not protect authors at all from AI harvesting, repackaging, & selling an authors work.

I'm using the free version, there is a premium one as well. There are lots of options in the settings (kinda blew my mind that it was all free!); background, text, text to speech, even how your ads are displayed! (surprisingly less obtrusive than you'd think) So why 3 stars? When using the audio feature it randomly crashes. Not sure why or if it's accidentally my fault. It's not happening enough to stop me using the app but occurs enough that I felt the need to warn those of short patience.