Tundra Fox uncovers the rottenness and corruption that lurked within their world, and realizes that he could not defeat their hidden foes alone.
So he reaches out to various sects to form alliances and a coalition, while trying to strengthen his family, his friends, and his sect.
Book 2 of this new Xianxia Fantasy series by Spaizzzer, the bestselling author of Tree of Aeons. The series features cultivation, base-building, alchemy, and usual regressor awesomeness, all paired with a unique premise of finding enlightenment in family life instead of alchemy and solitary cultivation.
As with the last book, there is a lot to enjoy in this story. However, unfortunately, this is a bit of a step down for this reader.
This is still a character-focused story, which is a big pro for me, but as I predicted with the last book, the lack of real progression in any of those character arcs severely undercuts that strength. There are very few characters who feel like their story has moved forward at all over the last two books. With maybe the lone exception being Celeste, no one else seems to be progressing at all from what we saw from them in the first novel.
To be clear, I am not talking about how different they are from their pre-regression selves (we never actually met those people), but rather about who they are when they are introduced to us in the first novel and set on their new paths. It's brought many of their stories to a screeching halt, which undercuts the key benefit of a character-led story; a desire to follow the characters we are invested in as they progress along their character arcs.
The second issue of this book is the explosion in tertiary characters. The first novel focused very much on the protagonist's sect, his family, and maybe their extended families. This novel takes a big step out into a much wider world, and everything is thrown at the reader fast, never lingering quite long enough to make a memorable impression before moving on. The result is a series of new characters and situations that are important to the plot, but haven't quite been developed enough to be memorable or engaging.
I still enjoyed this book on the whole, and I plan to pick up the next book in the series to see where this story goes, but I would be lying if I said I left this book with as much optimism for what is to come as I had after finishing book one.
Instead of the super power builds that start fun and then goes stupid, our main character has already done that in the past. His story builds well and I have enjoyed the supporting friends and family while trying to stem off the end of the world future disaster.
Loved it, would have liked to see more about cultivation or sect growth but the writer kinda painted MC into a corner there. Book two dropped all kinds of wisdom very interesting. Listened to at 1.75x speed. Interesting but not amazing without the needed progression tho loved the character development.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
I enjoy the pace of these, I enjoy the characters, and I like that he's trying to be a bit nicer instead of speed-running, like so many of these. I thought it was a great follow-up, honestly.