This is the eighth of eight fantasy novels comprising the translation of the seminal 'Coiling Dragon Saga' [盘龙] by famous Chinese author Wo Chi Xi Hong Shi [我吃西红柿], originally hosted on wuxiaworld. This authorized translation created by Ren Woxing and published by Wuxiaworld Limited.
Thank goodness this series has ended. I dont think I could have read anymore of this tedious tale. First of all, let me say that the idea/story line was actually good. What was quite frankly a sin was how the translation was conducted. Plus, the author was too intent on Repeatedly boring me with his "idiot's guide" to Linley's martial prowess and strength! Pages upon pages of reminders, bordering on sermons on the differences between the power levels... ect, ect, ect was mind numbing verging on "teeth gnashing" irritation. To be honest, I am not sure who I am more upset with,.. the original author or the translator's poor grasp of good prose... :-(( I persisted because I wanted to know if the MC would exceed his limitations (spoiler, he did) but the ending was much too abrupt! Dear Reviewer, since you have read to the end of my review, I thank u. I am sorry for the rant but bad works need airing just as much as good writings. It is a sad thing to see a potentially good story being ruined in this way.
How thrilling to find a wonderfully written series of 8 books... Each with 600-900 pages! OH! The joy! Finally, I can read for hours in a single world... And it only took 2 weeks to read them... I suppose I have to reintroduce myself to my friends and family.
Oh well.... Wo Chi Xi Hong Shi has written other books. Maybe I'll grab my blanket and a soda and take another journey.... My wife can wait, right?
Novela china donde uno se adentra en la cultura y creencias chinas del entrenamiento para subir a niveles superiores. Buena saga que mantiene entretenido con un equilibrio entre momentos de entrenamiento, lucha e historia.
After Linley's adventures in the Planar War where he already became a 4 way soul mutate even more powerful than a Paragon, I was really curious where the author was going with this story and how much more powerful Linley would become. He didn't disappoint me at all! I wasn't a huge fan of the last end of the story, but everything up to that point was great.
**Warning: Spoilers Ahead**
The first part of the book is centered an Overgod mission. Once every many many years, the Overgod of Life drops a mission and whoever completes it gets to request something of her. Turns out Linley already picked up one of the three items needed for the mission, the tattered crown, during the Planar Wars, and he kills someone who has the second item, the nine soul pearls, so he's already 2/3 of the way to completing the mission through pure luck. He and a bunch of other Sovereign Emissaries compete for the last item, the red caltrop diamond, which was hidden in a random material plane.
Linley is able to get the diamond after showing his powers, but he makes a harrowing escape through chaotic space with Beirut and Bluefire's help. They're chased by the Chief Sovereign of Light, who desperately wants the diamond for himself.
Once they're back to Yulan Continent, Linley pieces all 3 items together and asks the Overgod of Life for Grand Doehring's scattered soul to be reformed and his life brought back. Unfortunately the Overgod isn't able to complete his request, so Linley asks for an Overgod weapon instead. Beirut and Bluefire are absolutely thrilled now that Linley is getting more and more powerful and finally explain everything to him.
Beirut reveals the truth of what happened to the Divine Beast clan. It was indeed the Chief Sovereign of Light, Augusta, who killed them, and Beirut happened to be training nearby when he saw the battle so he swooped in at the last moment and stole the corpses of the four Divine Beasts. He merged with the Sovereign level wind spark and has been looking for a candidates to give the other three Sovereign Sparks to. Bluefire was his first candidate for fire, and he decided to give Linley the earth and water Sovereign sparks. Because he deeply angered Augusta, he's not able to freely wander around, and his goal is to train up some strong Sovereigns who can kill Augusta and give him his freedom to wander the higher planes.
Next thing you know, Linley becomes a lesser Sovereign of earth and water, and he kills off another wind Sovereign to get their Sovereign spark as well. He's now a peer of Beirut and Bluefire, who throughout the whole series had been built up as some of the strongest existences in the world, so that was absolutely wild to me. He's also able to swallow his pride and work out a deal with Augusta to free his mom's soul, who has become a high level 12 winged Angel in the Divine Light realm. A thousand years pass and Linley is slowly training as usual to increase his understanding of the profound mysteries and fuse more mysterious together so that he can defeat Augusta.
However, he eventually realizes that Augusta played a trick on him and that his mom's soul was never really freed, and he immediately rushes to the Divine Light plane to confront him. After this point, after fusing 3 Sovereign sparks, Linley's power is greater than Augusta's and he's able to beat him up and kill him.
Unfortunately, Linley has no time to celebrate, as right afterwards the Chief Sovereign of Fate, Oroff, arrives. In a huge twist that I completely didn't see coming, it's revealed that Oroff and Augusta are actually the same person with two different souls, a unique characteristic of the Bula species!! Once Augusta dies and his Overgod artifacts are claimed by Oroff, things aren't looking good for Linley since Oroff has the holy trifecta of Overgod level weapon, Overgod level defensive armor, and Overgod level soul protecting artifact.
In his desperation, Linley kills a nearby fire Sovereign and binds his spark, and in the process of fusing the 4 elements together in his body, becomes a true god who breaks out of his Cosmos and meets the person who created his Cosmos and 4 others like it. To this OP Linley, killing Oroff is an afterthought, and he's able to easily crush his Overgod weapon. After returning to his own Cosmos, he reunites with his friends and family who have been super anxious because they believed Linley to be dead.
And that's where the book ends, with Linley surpassing even the strongest Sovereign and reaching the peak of his powers!
I haven't read a series like this in a long time, where the main character is constantly leveling up to new heights and engaging in battles against all sorts of strong opponents, and it really gets the blood pumping. I can't believe I finished this whole series in just 16 days, a little over two weeks! That's how much I enjoyed it.
A highly divisive series that forced me to get over many of my peeves, but one that was worth it all! I simply loved this!
Let me start off on why many readers would be instantly put off when starting this…
This is a translated novel, and so comes with a heavy baggage of peeves that struck me quite hard when I started this series. Though the translation captures the content well, it does not flow smoothly in English. The dialogue is stilted and often the emotions behind the dialogue wasn’t translated. So at times, I was unsure on whether the dialogue was spoken in anger or respect or sarcasm. In many occasions, it felt very abrupt both at the start and at the end of the dialogue making it hard to establish a confluence between the dialogue, the context and the prose. I believe the cause is that the translation is more literal rather than qualitative.
Then we have the modern westernization that permeates the prose which does not gel well with the Chinese themed setting. You get characters named Brad and Dillon fighting over the town of Wushan, the mix of Chinese customs with modern swear words (“you can all f*ck off” and people calling each other “bros”) creating a very dissonant world building that neither captures the majesty of ancient China nor the modernity of current civilization. It’s made for a very uncoordinated and awkward read, that I personally found it hard to get over with.
Here’s why I highly recommend you turn your peeve filter off and get past the above:
It’s Progression Fantasy at it’s finest! If you love a overpowered MC who starts off as underdog and smashes his way to the peak in a very Goku (Dragonball Z) kind of way, this should me a must read. The progression is literally non-stop and to capture a phrase from the book itself, when you climb a mountain all you see are higher mountains. I simply have not read a book that has so many vertical and horizontal levels of progressions as this. Every time, I see a peak climbed, a level attained and expect the book the taper off, it threw me into a loop and kept my expectations completely smashed as the progression continued full steam!
The book is quite epic in scope, in cast and in progression. The worldbuilding just keeps expanding and more and more powerful casts kept appearing all through 8 books till the last great finale, which let me completely pleased. Considering the sweeping scope, it was near impossible to maintain a flow of character development for supporting cast and it does show in the series, but overall a admirable job in keeping them together. The main cast is more or less constant through the books making it a easy read to follow through the progression.
The timeline progression takes some getting used to. The progression happens over millions of years or so. For example, You can get instances of MC meditating for a couple of centuries before making a breakthrough. It really forced me to reassess my preconceptions on timeline progression as most of the characters are near immortal. A very unique concept that I loved (after taking some time to get used to it)
The magic system and power progression is solid. The transition in power up is smooth and the power progression blends in smoothly with the character progression. There is a structure to the plot progress that we see happen cyclically, but the world and setting change keeps things fresh all through. New world, new monsters, new people, new magics, yet the underlying consistency is maintained making it one progression novel rather than a set of staggered books.
The MC has a lot of plot armor all through. He gets the right breaks, gets lucky at the right instances, people turn up giving him what he needs at the right occasions etc. For many, this would be a turn down, but I loved it because it was a happy fun read. There enough plot tension to keep you turning the pages, but we soon realize this would be a Happily Ever After book rather than one that drags you through moral grey traumatizing events.
To conclude, it’s a flawed book, but one which bought out the simply joy of power progression in me. Has shades Dragonball Z and Hunter x Hunter running through which I thoroughly loved.
I hope you pick this up, get past the flaws and enjoy yourself!
This book was great, though I kind of didn't like the place where the ending left the story.
In this final book we get to see situations from a place of absolute power, for example he now doesn't go to the planar wars but sends his envoys to it.
The only thing I think could be improved is the ending, as it leaves the story with so much potential, but the story will not go on.
Still, I'm happy about being able to read this whole saga.
Finally it is over! The constant repetitions and showing of of the gary stu protagonist were REALLY aggravating. It is sad that the series wasted so much potential..
The latest "upgrades" were really forced and i didn´t really care about the mother´s plot. I found myself skimming over more and more dull parts of the book and caring less and less about the characters...
Overall the series was good and I enjoyed it. The characters were continuing to develop their skills through the entire series. The author kept me engaged with the story and had me emotionally connected to the characters as the story unfolds. Overall the pacing was good and the action scenes are well written.
I am just overwhelmed with this book and the entire series. To read such a long series, it took me only 26 days. Imagine how good the plot is and how strong the characters are.
I still couldn't accept that I have completed the series. I feel like I need more and more tales of Linley Baruch.
Amazing! I can’t explain how much I loved this book. It’s the best Wuxia novel I’ve ever read. The first half of the first book was a bit slow but then it just kept building and building steadily and wonderfully. The story arch was very elegant and not repetitive at all. I wish it didn’t end but the ending was so satisfying. Sigh
Incredibly epic. Sometimes the language/translation was laughable, but the story was excellent. It was interesting gaining insight into a different way of looking at the universe.
This book starts slow but picks up so fast and gives a great conclusion to this epic saga. Definitely recommended. This saga will keep you glued to the screen for a long time, and at the end you will not regret it.
If you must read a cultivation novel series read this one. I’m going to go back and review the other books but after finishing this last one I have to say this is perhaps one of the most amazing series I have read in a long time.
Great series will definitely recommend to others. Great characters, worldbuilding and magic system. The only faults are some spelling mistakes and the first couple of books can be annoying to get used to the type of writing but if you persevere it gets very good.
Great series I highly recommend it if you like cultivation stories. It didn't drag on like so many of them and for the most part all of the important questions were answered
I’ve quite enjoyed reading this series. It kept moving forward - the MC evolved. I will definitely be buying the Audible version of this series when it comes out.
This book series is one of the most enjoyable of this type that I’ve ever read and to add to that it is actually complete! Often I end up waiting for the next book. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but you will not regret reading this series!
in hindsight, this probably doesn’t hold a candle to other xianxia i’ve read, but it was the best introduction to the genre that i could’ve wished for. it holds a special place in my heart not for its excellence, but for its accessibility.
A lot of twists and turns, some plots were predictable, and others weren't - as they should be. If you like “I shall seal the heavens”, I think you might enjoy this.
Couldn't stop reading this story. Each and every book made me want more. Wow incredible writing. This series is a must read for all fantasy readers. 5 stars