Selphid
a year ago
·
EditedNot recommended
Original review first, update further below.
It's quite lacking for the first 21 chapters but hope is not lost - yet.
This review is very liberal in spoilers of things that are revealed within like the first 3 chapters.
Author starts off with a rather general information dump about what happened to earth. And that's about everything we get for the world building at the start. Nothing about the general effects on society, living situation, agriculture, health care, public safety. Not that it's the biggest thing you'd want to talk about but author immediately presents MC in a situation where more information about health care (his father is hospitalized from ch1), living situation (he starts out living in a poor neighborhood) or public safety in regards to monster attacks would be absolutely fantastic to understand the environment MC acts in. Author leaves a lot to imagine and in my opinion way too much. Personally I'm struggling to properly piece everything together and see some incongruencies but we'll see.
For starters MC seems a bit naive and dumb which I actually kind of like because it makes it more realistic. What I don't like quite as much is the way he is portrayed as talking himself down for no real apparent reason or even in contexts where it seems to go against his character. Like he's basically spending all his money on his father while being indebted and then laments about how unfilial he is at the same time. Doesn't really make sense.
Overall there is not really any identifiable plot so far. MC gained his growth system, cool. MC does all sorts of things to build his initial skills, also cool. But there is no real direction so far. Sure, there's his dad but the novel is still lacking that magnet-like thing that pulls one in and raises the tension. There is no real depth to his enemies, nor to his mechanism of acquiring skills and as of now, MC tends to succeed very fast in whatever he does so it's kind of boring.
Author uses a lot of clichés about people being assholes and hunters obviously being the biggest and dumbest assholes and it's all not very novel or exciting or anything like that. So far there has not been a single character I would have considered interesting.
Finally I don't really like author's presentation of women in the novel. In the short 21 chapters, there have been at least 3 mentions of women being thirsty for MC and I'm like...bruh. He's not even fame or hasn't achieved anything yet, are later chapters just going to consist of women doing catfights for him when he actually becomes a big fish?!
So all in all, this is a weak start but certainly still salvageable. I'll give a thumbs down for now because the novel truly isn't doing anything great to convince me so far.
If you think this is unfair judgement for a slow start, consider novels like City of Sin or The Prodigies War or even Yama Rising. That's how you start a novel with decent world building and something to hook the reader. When just taking the first 21 chapters of either of these, this novel cannot compare favorably at all and the issue isn't even necessarily the way things developed so far, it's the overly hasty development and the lack of patience in writing that makes the novel fail to make me immerse myself into author's world.
I will update this review when a legit plot has been introduced or I dropped the novel.
PS: Translation and TL comments look great so far.
--------------------------------------------------------
Update at chapter 73:
I'm throwing the towel. This is just not getting better.
None of the negative points mentioned above get better - worse, even.
MC is grooming a 16yo girl (according to western age system).
MC is very selectively stupid for various things making him feel very inconsistent.
There is still no semblance of a plot.
The writing style is just bad - author adds so much useless filler conversation, so much tell, not show, parrotting in description what happens in dialog, etc. It's just not good by any means. It would need extremely heavy editing to become good and I think that's not something you can expect from a single translator.
Author shows next to no willingness to invest into any convincing world building whatsoever.
And author just dropped a full load of populism on our heads that even WW felt obliged to add a disclaimer to chapter titles that stuff is purely fictional and does not represent the views of WW/translator/licensed partners.
Really, save yourself this novel. If you want to read a good novel with a dumb MC, there's always Overgeared and if you want to read a novel translated by Tokki, Record of a Thousand Lives is right up the corner and better in every way than this train wreck. And for the cliché gates and stuff setting, there's Solo Leveling and probably countless others out there in the wild, I think we even have some on WW so no need to look at this one.
It's quite lacking for the first 21 chapters but hope is not lost - yet.
This review is very liberal in spoilers of things that are revealed within like the first 3 chapters.
Author starts off with a rather general information dump about what happened to earth. And that's about everything we get for the world building at the start. Nothing about the general effects on society, living situation, agriculture, health care, public safety. Not that it's the biggest thing you'd want to talk about but author immediately presents MC in a situation where more information about health care (his father is hospitalized from ch1), living situation (he starts out living in a poor neighborhood) or public safety in regards to monster attacks would be absolutely fantastic to understand the environment MC acts in. Author leaves a lot to imagine and in my opinion way too much. Personally I'm struggling to properly piece everything together and see some incongruencies but we'll see.
For starters MC seems a bit naive and dumb which I actually kind of like because it makes it more realistic. What I don't like quite as much is the way he is portrayed as talking himself down for no real apparent reason or even in contexts where it seems to go against his character. Like he's basically spending all his money on his father while being indebted and then laments about how unfilial he is at the same time. Doesn't really make sense.
Overall there is not really any identifiable plot so far. MC gained his growth system, cool. MC does all sorts of things to build his initial skills, also cool. But there is no real direction so far. Sure, there's his dad but the novel is still lacking that magnet-like thing that pulls one in and raises the tension. There is no real depth to his enemies, nor to his mechanism of acquiring skills and as of now, MC tends to succeed very fast in whatever he does so it's kind of boring.
Author uses a lot of clichés about people being assholes and hunters obviously being the biggest and dumbest assholes and it's all not very novel or exciting or anything like that. So far there has not been a single character I would have considered interesting.
Finally I don't really like author's presentation of women in the novel. In the short 21 chapters, there have been at least 3 mentions of women being thirsty for MC and I'm like...bruh. He's not even fame or hasn't achieved anything yet, are later chapters just going to consist of women doing catfights for him when he actually becomes a big fish?!
So all in all, this is a weak start but certainly still salvageable. I'll give a thumbs down for now because the novel truly isn't doing anything great to convince me so far.
If you think this is unfair judgement for a slow start, consider novels like City of Sin or The Prodigies War or even Yama Rising. That's how you start a novel with decent world building and something to hook the reader. When just taking the first 21 chapters of either of these, this novel cannot compare favorably at all and the issue isn't even necessarily the way things developed so far, it's the overly hasty development and the lack of patience in writing that makes the novel fail to make me immerse myself into author's world.
I will update this review when a legit plot has been introduced or I dropped the novel.
PS: Translation and TL comments look great so far.
--------------------------------------------------------
Update at chapter 73:
I'm throwing the towel. This is just not getting better.
None of the negative points mentioned above get better - worse, even.
MC is grooming a 16yo girl (according to western age system).
MC is very selectively stupid for various things making him feel very inconsistent.
There is still no semblance of a plot.
The writing style is just bad - author adds so much useless filler conversation, so much tell, not show, parrotting in description what happens in dialog, etc. It's just not good by any means. It would need extremely heavy editing to become good and I think that's not something you can expect from a single translator.
Author shows next to no willingness to invest into any convincing world building whatsoever.
And author just dropped a full load of populism on our heads that even WW felt obliged to add a disclaimer to chapter titles that stuff is purely fictional and does not represent the views of WW/translator/licensed partners.
Really, save yourself this novel. If you want to read a good novel with a dumb MC, there's always Overgeared and if you want to read a novel translated by Tokki, Record of a Thousand Lives is right up the corner and better in every way than this train wreck. And for the cliché gates and stuff setting, there's Solo Leveling and probably countless others out there in the wild, I think we even have some on WW so no need to look at this one.