ussri.substack.com
Well, this is just about exactly what it says on the tin. I've finally mustered up the energy to write a full-length review of what's a plausible contender for my Favourite Novel Ever, Reverend Insanity. I'd reproduce it here too, but it's a better reading experience on Substack (let's ignore the shameless self-promotion, and the fact that I can't be arsed to re-do the markdown tags)
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Notes -
Good writeup. While I enjoyed reading 600-ish chapters of RI, it suffers the webnovel problem of just being too long. The thematic juice has been mostly squeezed by the end of the first arc. With the revelation that the "righteous" "family" Gu Yue clan was actuallya harvesting operation by the founder , the author's point has been made. After that, it's just Fang Yuan being Fang Yuan and betraying people over and over again.
I put RI in the same category as Worm or Wheel of Time: I admire it, I'm glad to have read it, and while 'low status', it's a rare modern novel that speak to the reader, eternal themes, and the times at different levels. But it desperately needs to be about 30% its wordcount.
This is what happens with serialised novels, though; before the web, there were newspaper and magazine serials. Writers getting paid by the word so they spun it out as long as they could and padded like they were quiltmakers. Or a popular serial was what made people purchase your paper or magazine, so you pressured the author not to end it too soon.
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