All Comments on 'The Preacher Man'

This was a grand, epic story of huge proportions, which reminded me of Issac Asimov's work.

I don't know what it's doing on this website for free - I would have paid for an ebook version.

Who is the author? SURELY s/he is a published author? Playing games with us?!!

I cannot believe this story hasn't been picked up by a film studio or at least published. The author has produced a real gem. The rating the readers have given it serve to demonstrate it's true value.

Thank you

I agree with the others, you should send this to a publisher!

I was sucked right in. Great detail, I loved the intricacies of the society you created. Great ending too ... Endings are always tricky.

You are obviously very skilled. As a reader I found some aspects kinda lame but overall you could say it's a masterpiece. Great detail, awesome imagination and creativity, plus a healthy dose of scholarly input. You should write more. You ability to create a futuristic world is amazing. You should try fantastic otherworlds too.

A pure exgeration of math data!!!

What can I say but wow. This story had me hooked, as I was led by the love the main charatures had for each other and the way they meet each adversity with a strength of conviction. The story was excellently costructed to leave you wanting each new chapter. I loved the melding of the science in the story as it helped the whole of the characture and plot development.

I am now looking forward to reading the sequal - the preacher man's daughter.

Great work.

i was very hooked on your story, so much that i was late for work ha ha thanks for writing it

Really loved this story. Read it with fascination and joy - in fact I skipped most of the sex because I enjoyed it purely for the story. Haha. The only thing I would change? I wish Ilias had a flaw. That would turn this into a story worthy of the title of literature.

I love bouncing around the scifi and non-erotic sections of literotica looking for interesting ideas and new stories. This was a fantastic novel that made my eyes water and heat hammer at times. All in all it took me almost two weeks of reading in my spare time and while on vacation with my wife's family. Wonderful story and I look forward to reading the preachers daughter next.

…when you come back to it again and again just to re-read it in its entirety. Few novels in my collection of over 3,000 hardcovers fit this bill. Even fewer short stories. In over a decade I have found only three on Literotica. And this story is one of them. Moreover, this author manages to snag this distinction twice, not only for this story but also a second time for another one of his/her short stories called “Backscatter”. I, for one, would strongly recommend to this author that they look into refining these stories into full-length novels. I would be one of the first to line up for a first-edition hardcover for my shelves.

At löss of words

After finishing this story I can't help feeling disappointed...

The whole story is just filled with build-ups to nothing... there's just no climax.

(that's for the action and the sex..)

The whole universe where the story takes place is worked out really well, the outline for the story is great and (most) characters are really well developed.

However there is just way to much pointless information and the exciting things that your expecting either never happen or are written in a single sentence....

I hope next time you'll spend as much time on the writing as on the background story.

This story should have been great, but it was just boring...

rating: 3/5

When I started reading this story I was perplexed as to why it was rated so highly. There was too much exposition and alot of sify talk. But I quickly became engrossedand invested in Alias and Hus wives. I also found myself skipping the sex scenes in order to get back to the plsiy. What us would count as the only downfall is that we never really got a thorough background on Alias to explain whis thoughts and actions.

Loved it!!! Should be published!

I'm at page 14 so far and am loving the story. I'm sure I'll work through the rest of it, but…

I really wish the author had learned how to use the comma necessary for direct address. That is, the comma when someone is being spoken to. About 95% of them are entirely missing. It's not optional, and its omission is like throwing mud on a really nice tapestry. Yes, you can see the beauty of the underlying weaving, but it's marred by unneeded and unsightly blemishes.

Reference: http://thewritingresource.net/2010/02/11/punctuation-points-the-direct-address-comma/

If you're reading the comments to figure out if you should invest time in reading this story, I say, do it. The Preacher Man is worth your time because of the rich descriptions, exciting plot, and the vivid addition of verbiage on science and tech behind a futuristic world. (Love the conflation of both art and science in fiction.) The sex scenes were a nice plus, and I really liked that they weren't the essence of the story. Like some commenters I kept wondering why this hasn't been picked up by a major movie studio yet!

One of the two slight flaws is that Ilias is too perfect, his life generally too smooth-sailing, and might seem a little unrealistic. Perhaps he should have stronger struggles with morality/truth and taking the easy way out/power--he would have no problem being absolutely ruthless--since discipline was so ingrained in him from young. I was happy when he became an eternal virgin towards the end for 60+ years as that gave him some disadvantage to work with. If he had encounters with some evil but seductive women along the way, it might add some interesting levels to the plot as well. Still, LOVE IT OVERALL!

This is a great SciFI story with an exceptional plot. I would love to see it published. For those of you who wonder if it is worth spending your time, there is definitely more erotic literature out there--but this is top notch story telling.

I have been reading stories on this site for years and I am blown away by the depth and intricacy in this story. This could be published as a short novel I look forward to reading more by this author and will be book marking this for future reading :)

I'm truly glad I've finally taken the time to read this story. It's absolutely amazing on so many levels! And to think it's on here for free. I would definitely pay for this story and moreover, i think it should be required reading. It easily rivals some of the best works of literature available. I always thought Brave New World was lacking and now I see how the topic should have been handled via the hands of a true master. What a treat! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Sympathetic Mormon in Sci-Fi version.

3 final words. Cult, Polygamy, Sluts.

I found everything from the crisis point onwards surprisingly emotionally moving. The events after the realization of what happened brought me to tears. I've never had that reaction to a narrative in all the stories I've read in my life! It shocked me to have such an emotional reaction. It's inspiring me to read more stories and books again, something I haven't really done in a decade.

I enjoyed immersing myself in this intricate universe. The final crisis surprised me in a good way. Somehow I'd missed the clues that might happen, and it was not the endgame I expected from the trajectory of the story, most of which leading to that point had been predictable. In retrospect I see the clues laid out earlier. I realize now that uniting in a singular goal was one of the few ways people could quickly come to terms with what they had gone through - the original plan would have taken far longer.

Anyone reading this can tell I'm avoiding giving out spoilers. I highly recommend giving yourself the patience to read it from start to finish. The early chapters feel a bit mechanical, without the emotional depth of the rest of the story, but I kept reading. It becomes much more interesting once the protagonist begins forming connections with important people in his life. It's fascinating to watch the interpersonal dynamics of the main character's inner circle.

This was an excellent novella and could easily be expanded into a full novel-length book. It would be fun to explore the personalities and characters of the supporting cast in more detail.

One challenge with creating complex characters is giving each a unique personality; doubly difficult since any character created for a book is often created by a single person's mind, the author. Some of the characters felt like they had too similar personalities. I felt like the supporting cast were a little too perfect, and needed more character flaws to deepen and diversify their personalities. This would especially be a way to distinguish the two sets of people with different minds. The people developing normally would likely develop more of the strengths and flaws common to adults.

For people who are interested in the sci-fi themes explored here, I highly recommend the TV show Dollhouse, or the movie Memento. Some things in this story reminded me of that show and movie, particularly the subject of how the human mind deals with memory.

I have read this twice. The second time was even better. I love reading l and espdcially sci-fi and fantasy novels, but this is one of the best ive read. Thank you for making these hamming.

- Phantom

the hundreds of hours it must have taken to construct this complex society. The religious code made me wonder what the predominate religions were in the pre-war world. Eternal virginity concept was shocking, like nothing I've ever read. I suspect some current religions would do that if the could- I'm looking at you, Islam.

Yes, Ilias was the perfect in every way type hero that others criticized, but there are many awesome books like Count of Monte Christo or the Odyssey have a similar hero and that's okay. I will say that it was hard to keep the wives straight in my mind. Maybe there were too many characters to develop into individuals so you never get attached to any one of them. All in all, it was an exceptional novel and hard to stop reading. One of the very best.

hammingbyrd7, I want to complement you on the depth and humanity of your story "The Preacher Man". You skillfully invented a fascinating )in the classical meaning of fascination) world and a complexity of characters and characterizations.

I look forward to reading your other posted stories. My only regret is that you have not posted anything new in several years. I hope you are doing well and if you are publishing elsewhere, could you please provide us a link?

This novel is long enough to be published as a book. It is set in the future with a complex social system based on an extreme fictional religion that feels a bit like an Islam 2.0. The novel places its focus on this social system as well as politics and such rather than character development and relationships.

However this is presented as an erotica and as an erotica it is very disappointing. After a lengthy introduction to the world, the main character starts to get some wives where it finally starts to get a bit sexually interesting. However, the sex scenes are few and far in between, and the sex is mostly traditional, non-daring and boring. It was not enough that the sex scenes were lacking but half way through it forgets it is an erotica altogether only to remember of this somewhere near the end where the main character wakes up to and fucks a granny! So that's what you have to look forward to after you're reading frantically and getting excited to finally get to read some action.

Having read the first part of this epic novel, I transferred all episodes to Word so that I could read it as a novel, picking it up as time permitted. I enjoy Sci-fi which this is but it also explores social structures and relationships thoroughly. The eroticism is not the main purpose of the story and it is all the better for that. I thank hammingbyrd7 for the time and effort he/she has put in to give us an absolutely brilliant novel.

It is a magazine, not a clip.

This was absolutely beautiful. It reminds me of some of Heinlein's books. I'm reading other people's comments, and I agree with their praise. This truly deserves to be published. I disagree with one who commented that though this was labelled erotica, it wasn't very erotic. I think it is, erotic. Not your typical erotica, but well, I'm thinking that in a few years, what people think of as erotica now, will be different from the erotica of the future. I am so glad you wrote this and hope to read more of you work. This is actually the third time I've read this. The first time I read it was in 2nd year college. I'm well beyond my college years already, but I still keep coming back to this. I hope you are well, and do share your stories with us in the future.

This story was phenomenal, despite some critiques that I have. The detail and immersion this book provided is on par with the best fantasy/sci-if/post-apocalyptic stories. I especially love the the amount of attention paid to the positions of the sun, it provided a sense of realism considering the protagonist was consistently traveling to different latitudes. Although the wives lacked complex personalities, they were skillfully used as plot devices to elaborate on the history, facilitate the plot profession, or in the case of the eternal virgin wives as recaps to events that were skipped.

On to the critiques. Whereas it is a monumental task to create a sci-fi universe, the fact that the religion in the story is obviously a thinly-veneered and exaggerated Islam points to a lack of originality on the author's part. The allusions to Islam are abundant: multiple wives, historical Muslim city names, the burqa, the "pillars" of the Code of Bel'dar, etc. Perhaps it is a critique of Islam, which is acceptable, but I believe the critique came from a place of anti-Islamist thinking prevalent in the (Christian) west today, considering the ways in which it was exaggerated. I also don't think the critique was coming from an agnostic or atheist perspective since at the end the protagonist becomes a compassionate messianic savior figure, who sacrifices himself for all, very Jesus-esque. The use of the messianic allegory makes it clear that the author is pro-Jesus and anti-Islam. Also, the author's attempt to envision a gender equal society is ironically contrasted with his use of women as sexual toys or plot devices based on their skills, devoid of developed individual characters.

All in all, a great piece of work if you can ignore the biases of the author.

This is the best thing I have read in quite some time! It kept me fully entries the whole time. I initially loved the sexual parts in it, but as I liked the story and plot more and more, I actually started to not like those parts, weird enough as that is since it was published on this website. Whoever wrote this, you have a bright future ahead of you like Ilias, I mean, Abdul Hadi. Good work and I might try and copy this down and take out the sexual parts go more people to read, with permission, of course.

I have read a lot of stories on literotica but I never comment. But I thought that this story was so brilliant that I had to praise the author.

I wish there were more stories of this quality on literotica.

This was absolutely amazing, I came looking for an ordinary erotic story but ended up reading for something like 7 hours straight. Thank you!

A truly wonderful amazing story, full of so many future ideas. It's been a real joy to read.

This deserves to be published, a fantastic story and a beautiful ending.

Congratulations.

I started reading and just couldn't stop. Thank you. This story is captivating in its originality. Well done :)

I really enjoyed this story. Its focus stayed very constant throughout the story, which is uncommon in unprofessional writing. I think the whole story does very well from beginning, to middle, to end.

You sir or madam are a brilliant writer. If you just take out the erotic parts, it could be a full length novel and I can guarantee it will be successful. Just amazing. I want to read through it again and again!

This was an extremely well written and engaging story. Thank you for sharing it. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys science fiction.

Seriously, it was one of the best structured story I've ever read. Such detailed concepts of science fiction and a completely believable future for earth...

ABSOLUTELY ENJOYED READING IT!!!

I can't get over how lucky I was to find this!

Well written, great characters and SUCH A GREAT STORY! The themes of slavery, sexism and control really make you reflect on the modern world in many ways.

10/10

This is by far the best story I have read on Literotica!

Lovely story had me enthralled totally

This has been one of the best things I have read in the last few months... You really should consider publishing this as a book.

The world building in this is amazing. At first the protagonist's preoccupation with geographic positioning, rising and setting of the sun and time was annoying. Eventually I was pulled into it and the realization of the importance of their prayer cycles. Brilliant. The rest of the story worked the same way, immersion.

The relationships and the sex in this story are beautiful and sweet. I truly loved this. I actually feel enriched for having read it. It would be a shame and a crime to not make this availble to a wider readership.

Wow, what an imagination you have! This was a very impressive story. Some of the technical details went over my head and thus were a bit annoying, but if you edit things to sound less technical or descriptive in some places, this could be quite a book! So much genuine emotion, so much creativity, I got totally absorbed in this story and read it in two days! I am officially a fan.

I also completely agree that you should consider publishing this story as a book. The plot was extremely well thought out and written. While the dystopian society idea has been done before, this is a fresh and interesting take on the idea. We'll done, and I hope to read more from you in the future!

I loved this story!

Absolutely lovely, totally captivating work. Amazing that something so great is free. I'd love to have this in a physical book.

...Chapter 10. The Forest Primeval brought to mind several issues that that may be if interest to some readers.

There are journals from early missionaries and explorers , that they saw packs of grizzly bears hunting bison and attacking Indigenous villages when the natives had been stricken with epidemics of European diseases.

As with our ecologically destructive house-cats, most predators lack full, three-color sight. That is why so many predators hunt at dusk and dawn when they have the advantage of better processing of black/grey.white images.

Think of the difference between the same scene being photographed in color and in black & white.The color photo has more complexity and description. The b&w photo has more nuance, clarity and perspective, an advantage for a sight hunter. The color image blurs, due to overlapping of the color pixels along the edges.

I never did hunt bear or other recognized predators, however...

Many decades ago, when I was a kid, I did some hunting along the Arizona-Sonora border/desert. Using old-fashioned bows and arrows scavenged from an abandoned Dude Ranch archery range. One thing I learned was; when I went hunting peccary, they came hunting me back! Pigs like the taste of human as much as we like the taste of pork.

I could not put my phone down. This story is well written, exquisitely detailed and I fell in love with the characters! Thank you for sharing it with us!

Excellent dystopian sci-fi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

..but if you produce a new edition, please give the credit for the incandescent light-bulb and electric light to Sir Joseph Swan, not Thomas Edison. Your point about invention preceding theory remains valid.

Having a (non English) Masters degree in contemporary European literature, I am always skeptical of "erotic" stories. This fictional world and its story really got me compelled from the beginning and I kept wondering where and if I could buy a physical copy of it. The depth for it was so amazing and refreshing. Best story I read on this website. Hope you publish a (less explicit) version of it for the broad audience to enjoy. Congrats.

Wonderful world building. I was riveted. Please keep up the good work and consider writing main stream. This story could be easily expanded into a full novel. Thank you for sharing your efforts!

it was worth the time to read it.

The new society was well constructed and clearly defined. It had the tone of a morality play without preaching.

The only annoying part was caused by renaming known geographic locations.

The story is intriguing, and the five stars I gave it is well deserved. It could easily be a published work.

It's not without flaws, though.

-- There are a fair number of grammar and punctuation errors and typos. Some jar a careful reader out of the narrative, but others are just annoying.

-- You have a fixation on local time and sun movements. Why? What does it contribute to the plot? And as another commentator wrote, do you expect your readers to keep track of old names and your new names so that we can make sense of where you're talking about when you talk about hours of sunlight? And why does that make any difference to the story line?

-- The sex is sort of just added on. Do any of the sex scenes advance the plot? Doesn't seem like it to me, and I think the first thing a commercial editor would do would be to cut all or most of them and try to use the remaining ones to advance the story.

That said, it's still an intriguing piece. I found myself scrolling past the sex scenes to get back to the narrative LOL!

Another wonderful fabulous heart touching story. Just love this.

This tale was an epic. Page after page of brilliance that almost has no equal. I enjoyed this story from the first word to the last. Quite simply this is amazing and spectacular and I doubt that mere words can tell how good this was.

I rated this story 5 stars some time ago, and if there were more than 5 stars available I would have given it more.

But there are a couple of elements that I think make the story a bit flawed, especially if you were to turn it into a published book. (Or have you already?)

First, this seems to be an excellent mainstream science fiction novel with some gratuitous sex appended. Yes, the sex scenes are as well written as the rest, but they do little or nothing to advance the story line. They're just sort of tossed in occasionally to justify calling this an erotic story.

Sure, that's true of a lot of the stories on this site, but you obviously wanted to write more than a stroke story (full-length stroke novel?) and you succeeded. But the downside is that the sex becomes unimportant because of the strength of the core story itself. I can't remember now what I did the first time I read it but re-reading your novel, I found myself scrolling through the sex scenes to get back to the story line.

Maybe there's no cure for this without extensive reworking, but the sex would be more relevant if those scenes had something to do with the way the story developed. Something should happen as a result of the sex to avoid having those scenes seem like "now for a word from our sponsor" interruptions. (Yes, I'm exaggerating for effect LOL!)

Second, you're obviously interested in earth sciences, but you spend too much time and effort on chronicling sunrise/sunset times and the like. Again, if these things have something to do with the story, I'm not sure what it is. (I thought at first it might have something to do with prayer times, but that wasn't the case.)

The novel format you chose of course gives you the luxury of weaving more elements into the story, but neither of these two elements seems to have added much that contributed to the overall arc of the story.

Nonetheless, great job!

I Found this like six years ago, just used it for my Summer Reading... well... most of it, I Even got my English Prof. To read it,

I'm only on chapter 4 right now but this is amazing. This totally needs to become a book. It would sell like hot cakes. I don't even like erotica but the world building and plot are so wonderful. I say this as an aspiring author. PLEASE publish this.

Literotica needs a larger star scale. This story deserves all the stars.

I still cry everytime I read this.

I need this print.

I'm actually going to print this out and bind it for myself.

Sorry xoxoxoxo

As a condemnation of the more primitive beliefs of Islam. As a primer on closed-cycle societies. And as an intriguing argument for polygamy. The obsession with numbers (airspeed, sunrise/sunset, calendar) with things you do understand, and your dismissal of numbers regarding other aspects of this society is a little painful, as others have noted. That, and the constant flitting about in ramjets and translating of names and locations adds about 15 pages to the story. Overall, worth reading.

I haven't been this engrossed in a novel since my twenties! An editor from a major publisher can help you bring this to the world in print form. And the world really needs to hear this message right now.

I got to say, I liked the story pretty well. I think you should have let him use his little talent a bit more and made him moor human character wise. He is a pure good doer in all the ways we probably see it. Like, always. I think you can improve the believability of the story by making him more human and let him sometimes follow his lower bases. And regret it, of course.

This is an amazing story, thank you so much! Illias is an example of a man that I strive to be like. Truly inspirational and I thank you again!

I resisted reading this because , well I'm an agnostic that leans towards atheism.

I am glad I changed my mind , a very deeply thought out SciFi story that tells of a culture that seemed to be a patchwork of various cultures and religions. Very fine work.

of intrigue, romance, philosophy, and pseudoscience.

with a touch of preaching thrown in.

from your story i would take it that you are from the Islam faith good job on the story ot was magnificent as a christian couldnt stop my self from reading

so much imagination, so well written, totally captivating.

A bit of criticism to balance out all the blind praise for this story.

- The attention to detail is in the entirely wrong place, several paragraphs are spent discussing geographic locations and sunsets, when it is not relevant to the story in any way. This severely hampers the pace of the story. Similarly, important moments such as the civil war are almost completely glossed over and never impact the protagonists in any way.

- After 46 pages I could not describe any of the female characters in this story. They have little to no personality beyond what skill they can bring to his super-harem. They also all like the protagonist? They serve more as a deus ex machina production line than anything important.

- On the subject of deus ex machina, it is abused heavily throughout to get the protagonist out of tough situations. He rarely faces much hardship that the reader can experience.

- The world building is immensely detailed, but ultimately wasted as many of these elements are not worked into the narrative, or serve much of a purpose. This is a front laden story, where many of these details on the structure and purpose of the ruling order are never utilized.

- There are no central antagonists beyond a vague construction implied by the world building. The antagonistic force is simply a faceless, nameless system which is never examined in any depth beyond what kind of symbol the different ranks get.

- The pacing is terrible, as I said earlier the detail paid to certain areas is strange. I don't know why I need to know the exact geographic location of our next locale, especially considering the short time spent at each one. This story is 46 pages long and I can say that nothing much happened in it beyond killing some bears and I think a temple blew up?

- This world is a strange and alien place, but the reader never sees any of it. A core component of the sci-fi fantasy genre is completely missing here.

- The protagonist himself is a strange, featureless blob who also lacks any real defining personality beyond his selfless actions and his photographic memory. He has no real motivations beyond that he's a super nice guy who is different to the rest, meaning he feels directionless, just going from one thing to the other as he climbs the ranks.

All in all, contrary to what everybody else is saying; I don't think this would get published, unless there's a large market of people who find needless detail exciting. It's impressive, a level of dedication seldom seen on Literotica, but as an actual narrative it falls flat. The characters are dull, the writing is packed with unimportant detail, and nothing interesting ever seems to happen.

Thank you for sharing!

I cried

Amazing concept of male compassion overcoming cruelpatriarchy. The sweet tenderness and sensuality of lovemaking with the attitude of caring for an equal. And an incredible ending. Found numeric explananations a little boring after a while. Thanks so much.

Seriously, just a little editing, and some added details here in there where others have suggested, and this story would do very well on the Kindle!

I enjoyed the details of location and sun times, because it showed a thought out story and also the way of thinking that was important in that world and to Ilias.

I do agree the wives could be described more throughout the story, like Chanah's freckles!

This was one of the most beautiful stories I've ever read. Truly it was awesome.

Best story I've read. 10/10

Having read a lot of material from this site, this is without doubt amongst the best that I have seen. The pace and plot really caught and held me to the end. Great, great writing.

Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!

Thank you.

Ain't nobody got time for that

I read this here years ago and decided I wanted to reread it. It was a little hard to find but I managed, and I am glad I did.

It's not without flaws, but is also very reminiscent in style of James Tiptree Jr and Gene Wolfe, two powerhouses in world building and scope.

I am going to suggest some different from what others are saying. Don't publish this as it is; collaborate to get it turned into a graphic novel. I think that would work really well.

This is a really well-developed story and futuristic world. Have you thought about getting this story published?

Great story - very well developed plot, very different concept .

Thanks for sharing it .

One of the best.

Read this over a long period of time and enjoyed every moment of it such an amazing piece worthy of all praise I could possibly give it thanks for the journey

The world building here is extraordinary! Thank you so much for this.

This is absolutely amazing!

Just a simple question. Hiw can I give this 10 stsrs?

This is surely book material.

"How is it possible? Abigail once told me a man named Thomas Edison invented the incandescent light, years before James Maxwell developed the field equations for light."

I don't know if / how many other readers have noted this, but--

I believe Maxwell collaborated with Faraday in the 1860's to explain the link between electricity and magnetism. I believe the first equations were published in early 1860's - almost 20 years before the invention of the incandescent bulb.

Maxwell died about the time Edison patented the bulb.

Such an amazing piece of work. I congratulate the author on achieving this masterpiece.

What a wonderful story. Really beautifully written.

How glued I was to every world and event. Truly wonderful skills and thought must have gone into this.

Stories like this pop up, once in a while, and are a real pleasure.

What is this fucking drivel?

A pro Islam pro Sharia story? A story of Islam taking over the world and ruling for thousands of years? Seriously? Give me a fucking break. And it's a hall of fame story? Are you people out of your god damn minds?

Dear Sir/Madam

Have you even read the first couple pages of this story yet?

If not so, please just read the entire page 5.

This story is obviously agaibst it, in the entire story the main character climbs up the letter to fight the messed up system he was born into.

I really enjoyed this masterpiece, in my opinion you should at least understand what is going on in this story.

I just spent the majority of today's free time reading this, and what a pleasure it has been! I'm very fortunate to have stumbled upon your work. Thank you!

Thank you for this wonderfull storry. I loved every moment!

Without a doubt, one of the most phenomenal stories I have read anywhere... ever.

When I saw the description as being "a global theocracy " I thought this would be another midwife/evil Christian patriarchy story. You've clearly done a lot of research of the caliphate's and ottomon empires, the latter especially known for meritocracy (at least initially) and the religion of Islam itself. I was constantly and increasingly impressed with how you able to make a believable scenario, with a system that greatly benefits and helps many, but oppresses and harms at the same time (practically every government system has this, no system or institution of government is purely good or evil and constantly struggles with challenges and moral dilemas, but so so often in stories you just see either Nazi or Catholic like cookie cutter villians who are barely believable.) It was great you used a religion as the part of the part of the plot, not an evil straw man, or addressed that the world is still going through problems at the end of the story, and I yeah. Can't say it enough, I'm super impressed. I started reading this at like 5 am and finished at like 3, great work and this the kind of content I go on this website for. Amazing work .

Very sexist, religious (islam???) quite a gruesome tale, but having said that, very well written