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Notes -
So, what are you reading?
Still on Coornhert's Synod on the Freedom of Conscience. So far "Gamaliel" has been winning the fictional debate with genuinely inspired words. Though it turns out that he's just Coornhert's stand-in. These words have reminded me of the value of reasonable expectations:
Reverend Insanity, a very popular and widely recommended Xianxia novel with a villain protagonist.
I was very vexed at how slow the first 30 chapters were, but even as a noob to Cultivation novels, I know that's considered a lightning fast start. But what annoyed me was the fact that everyone had hyped up the protagonist as being fucking evil, and the worst thing he did for those 30 chapters was beat up his classmates for their lunch money.
Of course, I stuck with it, and the part where he boiled a kid alive as a handy magical ingredient certainly dispelled my doubts!
Alright, so RI is pretty much Grimdark Pokémon. You've got "Gu Masters", going around with the equivalent of a pokeball inside their body that they keep trying to make bigger and stronger. They try and catch Pokémon and use them to kill their opponents, with the low level stuff being akin to the shitty grass and poison types you find in the early level tall grass, and then progressing till you've got God (Arceus) in a tiny chinesium ball.
I mean, they mind rape the Pokémon into compliance instead of training them the old fashioned way, but let's split the difference. Everything else revolves around leveling and evolving them, and fighting other trainers for resources, with an added side of just outright killing them when convenient.
The protagonist is a reincarnator, who had lived for 500 years and struggled to a relatively high position in society until his newfound OP pokémon prompted jealous rivals to gang up and whoop his ass (he may or may not have murdered millions of people).
However, the Pokémon they were after was Time Travel-mon, so he went !YOLO and traveled back to his childhood, and did everything over again with the benefit of foreknowledge. Further atrocities ensue.
Anyway, the book is well written and the translation isn't even all that janky, but the main draw is the tight and intelligent writing, you can really tell that the author thought through the ramifications of his worldbuilding, and knew how to write intelligent and relatable characters yet intentionally made his MC a flaming asshole.
He's a likeable asshole though, highly competent, and monomaniacally driven to achieve true immortality no matter the cost. Cooking children isn't the least of the shit he gets up to, but he doesn't have an easy time.
I'd recommend it, the Cultivation system is certainly a nonstandard one, but nobody reads these things for that do they?
Grit through the first 50 chapters, or ask me for a TLDR, and then it gets really good. If you're worried, his ability to time travel isn't used as a crutch, it's an unreliable ability, and the protagonist is competent enough to get by.
How do people find time and motivation to read novels hundreds of chapters long? A Dance with Dragons had 73 chapters and was already a doorstopper that felt more like a chore by the end.
Reading is one of many leisure activities that compete for your time. If, at any given moment, an activity other than reading offers to you a greater expectation of enjoyment, then obviously you should perform that activity rather than reading. But, in those moments where no option is better than reading, you should read.
If reading a particular book feels like a chore, then that book obviously isn't a good fit for you. You need to find a book where you look forward to seeing what will happen next.
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