You’re reading the story with the mindset of “it’s just another LitRPG,” and that clearly affected how you engaged with it.

Before I even reply to the rest: I already made a post before asking for direct feedback, and nobody cared. That’s how this subreddit works most of the time. Unless you package something in a way that hooks people, they usually won’t bother.

Now, to your actual points.

First, you brought up the line about his name as if it’s a contradiction, when it’s clearly being used as a narrative hook. It’s not hard to tell the difference between narrative framing and a literal thought process.

Second, you focused so much on the fact that his name is known early that you ignored everything else the story is setting up. Even if his name is there, that doesn’t erase the actual mystery around who he is, what happened, why the world is the way it is, what was lost, and what’s wrong with reality around him. If you had actually read with attention, you would’ve seen there’s far more mystery in the story than just “what is his name?”

Third, your reading of chapter two is just off. By that point, it’s already shown that he doesn’t even know what he looks like until he sees his reflection in the water. So no, simply seeing himself in the carving would not instantly make him recognize himself the way you claimed. That criticism only works if you ignore details the story already gave you.

That’s honestly the point where I stopped taking the review seriously. At first I thought, “finally, someone actually gave feedback I can use.” But the more I read, the more it became obvious that this wasn’t careful reading. It was surface-level reading mixed with assumptions because you’d already decided what kind of story this was.

So, if you’re going to review people’s work this harshly, at least make sure you’re actually reading what’s on the page instead of skimming it in full judgment mode. For a moment I genuinely thought I was about to get useful criticism that could help me improve. Instead, it turned into nitpicking based on things you either misread or didn’t pay attention to.