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Notes -
It's been long enough that I'm not 100% sure if my memories of the prose being purple are entirely reliable. But I do remember feeling like it was overwrought, that Warby was trying too hard. I think a common thread in media I don't particularly like is being too "tropey". If I can predict pretty much exactly what's going to happen in a story arc without even having to read it, yeah, why really bother?
There's only instance in the section of the book I read where I was went "oh, that's cool". It waswhen he got sent off to whack a demonic cultivator, and decided to risk his life to save civilian prisoners. So far so basic, but then I think it turned out that his senior brothers were monitoring him all along, and if he'd done things in an utterly ruthless way, they'd have killed him for being a potential future demonic cultivator himself. Good idea.
There's the loveable senior brothers thing, where you just know what's going to happen. The tsundere female foil of privilege, where you can sleepwalk into knowing they're going to end up friends/lovers. I could go on for a while, or I could, if I remembered more of the story. C'mon. All I ask for is more originality than that. It's not an awful book, God knows there's some serious horseshit on RR, but I'd give it a 6/10 at best, below my threshold for sticking with it in the hopes of it getting better.
On a semi-related note, I think only the Chinese write good Xianxia. The Western knock-offs just don't capture the vibes, it's even worse than when the Japanese try to depict a Western school in their media. That Greco-Roman "Cultivation" story on RR, whose name escapes me? Holy fucking shit was it bad. Great concept, execution so mediocre I could cry.
They ground him, eventually adopt him. He is nearly broken when he has to watch some of them get killed in what feels like a pointless war with a heretical sect.
Turns out she is not actually privileged, or that she is basically at the bottom tier of "privilege". They do become friends. Turns out later that her mentors use his ass whooping of her as a teaching lesson for her to be less of a loud mouth. The mentors point out that you never know when someone might be a hidden dragon or have a powerful backing so you should always be polite and courteous. Which is something so blindingly stupid and obvious in a cultivation world, but it seems rare that any story actually mentions it and notices it.
The main part I think you would have liked is the depiction of war. The MC is a thirteen year old in a war zone. Once he manages to distinguish himself a little they try to get him a slot as a hospital orderly which is relatively safer. Its safe from violence but not from Trauma. He is watching his senior brothers and sisters get murdered and mutilated in horrific ways. The heretics they are fighting like to use poison, necromancy, and gu (insects/parasites). The war also seems to be very pointless from the MC's perspective. Certain practices by the sect he is in are very callous towards the lives of the lower sect members.
Its very much a "shit is getting real" moment for a xianxia. Which is very much not the typical vibe for any xianxia. Which is part of why I thought you might like it more. Xianxia vibes can get very wishy washy about human tragedy. Exterminating families, including the children. Blowing up whole cities. Horrific wars with massive casualties. etc. And these things typically don't feel like they have much weight to them.
I also hated the greco roman cultivation story. Because it seemed like it would be a lot of navel gazing and gay wrestling without much power progression.
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