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Jul. 17th, 2020 01:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pengwernImpressions of MXTX's three novels which I read a while ago, from...... an incredibly spoilt child who can read raws, sorry XD I'm meaner simply because there are more options available /o\ I will however read them again at some point! Eventually! At least HOB. Once all the (many) warnings are noted, Heavenly Official's Blessing is the one I could recommend.
Possible spoilers?
Scum Villain: Generic. I don't doubt that it caused the continued popularity of teacher/pupil where the pupil is the initiator. Some days I couldn't skim the list of new releases without seeing infinite revamps on the same setup. There was however a nice chapter in the epilogue where the writer of the fic comes to the conclusion that "he did love this world of his," freely, with joy, even if it's been trying to murder him for nearly all the time since his transmigration into that world - a rather meta reflection that I would expect more to see in fic than in the canon. And of course the fanworks have been A+++ given the millennial nature of the MC, meaning infinite memes.
Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: solid, with the intricacies of all those plot threads coming together, but it does a bunch of things I don't care for -- she loves flashback sections in a way that I do not enjoy, I wasn't hugely invested in the theme of reputation/infamy and all the grief that brings down upon you, even if it was well done, and I'm really not into pushy/overbearing gongs -- lan wangji slides towards that end of the scale. But the set pieces (Yi City, the statue) were fun, as it's not particularly common to see suspense/horror done effectively in cultivation novels.
Heavenly Official's Blessing: HUALIAN INVENTED LOVE I put off reading this for quite a while given the summary (a demon king stalker) and how the other two MLs were, but Hua Cheng, after centuries of obsession, ends up managing the feat of paying attention to the needs and desires of his beloved. Placing them above his own intents actually that's not super great for him but this is tragically rare in the romance section, let alone anywhere else. Not sure about how the parts about belief and everything hangs together - it seems to...help facilitate the incredibly iddy bits where ML swears all the romantic oaths, like dying in battle \o/ (when one partner is a ghost, does willingness to die for someone circle back to being their reason for existence? Hua Hua will find out for his highness!)
The supporting cast is full of charming people, and I was very fond of the side plots (with comedy gems like calling the person you intend to arrest because she was (until a minute ago) the coordinator of all away missions). She kept me invested in most of the threads in the present day - you have the typical revenge cycles, and forgiveness bestowed with an open hand, tangles of debt which can't be resolved by any of the parties involved, and precious tiny revenants cooking inedible scorpion snake casseroles -- Each early case of the week led back into the showering of dog food in the adorable romance of someone who was believably eight hundred years old, battered, and optimistic, and the mysterious hot ghost who loves to troll the rest of Heaven.
You can actually see mxtx's skill grow over the course of three novels! There was only maybe one part towards the end where I felt it dragged a little. ... In addition to, as always, the interminable flashbacks. It's not simply that I can't deal with switching back and forth between two plot threads, but having seen examples that worked for me (priest, in Silent Reading*), the fatal flaw here was a) we had enough clues/summaries to get the gist within the first few pages, and b) the protracted and agonizing fall from the height of glory into an abyss constantly being dug deeper is not...enjoyable....for me to read........especially when I'm much more invested in seeing how they solve it. There were of course some enjoyable bits - one full page literally repeating IT HURTS IT HURTS had me curled up in sympathy without sinking into narm, so they aren't entirely redundant, but .....fleshed out flashback sections at the fifty percent mark which only added characterization and details to what we could summarize in a few sentence.............. author pls. Leave it for the prequel.
*I guess what Silent Reading did was - priest set up the mystery so that each tiny sip of flashback did actually serve to move the plot forward?
Possible spoilers?
Scum Villain: Generic. I don't doubt that it caused the continued popularity of teacher/pupil where the pupil is the initiator. Some days I couldn't skim the list of new releases without seeing infinite revamps on the same setup. There was however a nice chapter in the epilogue where the writer of the fic comes to the conclusion that "he did love this world of his," freely, with joy, even if it's been trying to murder him for nearly all the time since his transmigration into that world - a rather meta reflection that I would expect more to see in fic than in the canon. And of course the fanworks have been A+++ given the millennial nature of the MC, meaning infinite memes.
Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: solid, with the intricacies of all those plot threads coming together, but it does a bunch of things I don't care for -- she loves flashback sections in a way that I do not enjoy, I wasn't hugely invested in the theme of reputation/infamy and all the grief that brings down upon you, even if it was well done, and I'm really not into pushy/overbearing gongs -- lan wangji slides towards that end of the scale. But the set pieces (Yi City, the statue) were fun, as it's not particularly common to see suspense/horror done effectively in cultivation novels.
Heavenly Official's Blessing: HUALIAN INVENTED LOVE I put off reading this for quite a while given the summary (a demon king stalker) and how the other two MLs were, but Hua Cheng, after centuries of obsession, ends up managing the feat of paying attention to the needs and desires of his beloved. Placing them above his own intents actually that's not super great for him but this is tragically rare in the romance section, let alone anywhere else. Not sure about how the parts about belief and everything hangs together - it seems to...help facilitate the incredibly iddy bits where ML swears all the romantic oaths, like dying in battle \o/ (when one partner is a ghost, does willingness to die for someone circle back to being their reason for existence? Hua Hua will find out for his highness!)
The supporting cast is full of charming people, and I was very fond of the side plots (with comedy gems like calling the person you intend to arrest because she was (until a minute ago) the coordinator of all away missions). She kept me invested in most of the threads in the present day - you have the typical revenge cycles, and forgiveness bestowed with an open hand, tangles of debt which can't be resolved by any of the parties involved, and precious tiny revenants cooking inedible scorpion snake casseroles -- Each early case of the week led back into the showering of dog food in the adorable romance of someone who was believably eight hundred years old, battered, and optimistic, and the mysterious hot ghost who loves to troll the rest of Heaven.
You can actually see mxtx's skill grow over the course of three novels! There was only maybe one part towards the end where I felt it dragged a little. ... In addition to, as always, the interminable flashbacks. It's not simply that I can't deal with switching back and forth between two plot threads, but having seen examples that worked for me (priest, in Silent Reading*), the fatal flaw here was a) we had enough clues/summaries to get the gist within the first few pages, and b) the protracted and agonizing fall from the height of glory into an abyss constantly being dug deeper is not...enjoyable....for me to read........especially when I'm much more invested in seeing how they solve it. There were of course some enjoyable bits - one full page literally repeating IT HURTS IT HURTS had me curled up in sympathy without sinking into narm, so they aren't entirely redundant, but .....fleshed out flashback sections at the fifty percent mark which only added characterization and details to what we could summarize in a few sentence.............. author pls. Leave it for the prequel.
*I guess what Silent Reading did was - priest set up the mystery so that each tiny sip of flashback did actually serve to move the plot forward?
no subject
Date: 2020-07-17 01:46 pm (UTC)Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation is on my to-read list, but sadly at the moment I'm reading basically nothing new except a very small number of fanfic authors. Every few weeks I'll force down a new book, but it won't go down easily. I blame stress. :(
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Date: 2020-07-17 02:50 pm (UTC):<< there's a lot to stress about, which may be why the overall trend has been for plots with decreasing levels of conflict. I get you about reading things within a certain....frame where you know pretty much what to expect. I've got a backlog of recently published english novels I've been ignoring in favor of...all the webnovel type fic too.
...also this particular novel may not be entirely great for stress levels, not to mention getting used to the translation prose :? Would you like to read a short fic about a fox fae trying to usurp the throne:
https://peonynoveltl.blogspot.com/2019/01/fox-demon-usurping-throne-daily-part-1.html