Review Detail of SKBW in Cultivating Civilization
Review detail
I came to this novel with high expectations after reading the synopsis. It was a little bit of a letdown and this is why. "Follow him on his path as he tries to balance his past life's morals with this life's realities." This is a line from the synopsis at the time of this review. This line made me think "Ok, a cultivation novel without such a generic outlook on human interaction." I got a few chapters in and found out that the MC is the reincarnation of a war vet. This really made me excited. What let down my expectations is the fact that this novel is exactly the same as every other cultivation novel out on the market and even on this website. The main character either kills all his enemy or runs till he can kill all his enemies. There's always this generic "pull up the roots" type of mentality in these types of novels and while that phrase hasn't been said yet, the overall feel and context is there. Apart from the fact that there's barely any originality in the base subplot of the novel, I'm really happy with the overall writing quality that has been shown as of chapter 69. The character, while unagreeable by my standards, is at least three dimensional. There is "character" in the character if that makes sense. As for the other characters in the story, they feel rather unimportant and are easily forgotten. While reading up to chapter 69 I found myself forgetting which character is which, their names and relations to the MC. I think this was expounded by the fact that there's a large number of introductions to new characters rather quickly during this period of time. If I wanted to point out one aspect of the novel that I really thoroughly enjoyed it would probably be the MC interactions with what I can tentatively call the FMC. While introduced late in the story, she makes a big change in the overall feel of the story as a whole. I feel like the romance between them is rather forced, it isn't forced in a way that I would consider unappealing. There's always some mysticism in writing a good romance and getting the subtle interactions just right to bring about the effect that you want. It's definitely not the best interaction, but it is reasonably high on the scale, and most certainly better than some of the stuff I've seen. Though towards the chapter 69 mark, I felt like the interactions with MC and the FMC were rather strange. There was a certain "love is in the air" vibe going on during the build-up, and then all of a sudden it wasn't there anymore. It appears and then disappears randomly, it's nonexistent unless both characters are having an interaction in the story and that's a little off-putting. As a whole, I think this novel is rather well written compared to some of the originals on this website. It's clear that a lot of time and effort was put into it and it shows. I especially like the fact that the mc isn't "extraordinarily handsome" and that the FMC doesn't have paragraphs upon paragraphs describing her as some unearthly beauty in some weird chinese mystical syntax with meaning that is completely lost in translation.
Cultivating Civilization
Kulha
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I'm glad that you gave me an in-depth review, but I don't agree with you that Jack's just your standard murder-hobo that's so common in other cultivation novels. I think that he did everything possible to make his people stay alive, but I don't see where he did anything over the top. Jack does run from the enemies he can't face, but does that mean that he will go back to murder them all? The people from the Slaughtering Sword School killed his family and he didn't swear an oath of revenge on it. He thinks that the people that were guilty were already killed and that's it. Not in one chapter did I show that he has the "pull them out by the roots" mentality. You might disagree with his actions, but Jack thinks that he did everything he could to make things work according to his morals. He's fighting against the general attitude that cultivators have towards everyone else, not against the cultivators themselves. He even tries to teach his people to think more like a modern person. I agree that there are a lot of characters, but that's kind of unavoidable if you want to have a larger cast of characters in a story like this and still keep the focus on the MC. I don't like it when novels remove the focus from the MC and have multiple chapters from the perspective from side characters. Regarding Jack's interactions with Mai Yining, he used his previous experience to charm her so he could get more information out of her and then later to help him escape. Apart from not wanting any harm to come to her, he didn't have any romantic feelings for her. You might have missed the parts of the story where he fakes almost all of his interactions with her? She did develop some feelings, but what can they do when they're on two different sides of a conflict? How am I supposed to have her in the story after they run away from the Sect? She will return in the future, but for now she's doing her own things. In conclusion, I'm glad that you read my novel and am sad that you quit. While I don't agree with your reasoning, I don't mean anything bad with my counter-arguments. I hope you find a novel that will make you happy in the future.
Reading this reply makes me lose all hope in regards to the future of this novel. The only saving grace for this novel, in my opinion, was the delicate romance that was in it, everything else was utter garbage. And you come here and reply saying that the interactions were fake. Are you an idiot? I'm not mad that the romance is fake. OK maybe I'm a little mad, but that doesn't skew my 20/20 vision. I thoroughly enjoyed the romance. It was the single most enjoyable part of the novel for me. There is some merit in the fact that you managed to make me "fall" for this little fake romance plot of yours. But, at the end of the day, you still lost "my" trust, the "readers" trust, with this little ploy of yours. What happens when you decide the MC actually needs a real love interest yet NONE of the readers feel emotionally connected to them in the story because of previous plot devices that made them "jaded". Your romance was good, it was good because you clearly spent little effort with it, and that's what made it believable, it was so good that, because of the fact you made it fake, it will now ruin every other romance that is possible in the future of your story. Because you won't be able to do any better. You might read this and take it as a challenge, and I encourage you to do so, I won't have to read it, so knock yourself out. Of course, everything above this sentence is a rather moot point because there's a clear plot hole in your reply to me. There were zero indications in the story that she was on a different "side" of anything until the MC literally saw her on the other side. There was probably slight foreshadowing, but nothing written into the story giving the indication of which "side" she was on. Of course, all of us being experienced readers, we can probably guess that there would be some kind of false drama pretext to separate the Romeo and Juliet characters in a very cliche fashion, but this guess comes from experience reading novels, not from the actual context of this novel, so it has no bearing in your argument.
Kulha:I'm glad that you gave me an in-depth review, but I don't agree with you that Jack's just your standard murder-hobo that's so common in other cultivation novels. I think that he did everything possible to make his people stay alive, but I don't see where he did anything over the top. Jack does run from the enemies he can't face, but does that mean that he will go back to murder them all? The people from the Slaughtering Sword School killed his family and he didn't swear an oath of revenge on it. He thinks that the people that were guilty were already killed and that's it. Not in one chapter did I show that he has the "pull them out by the roots" mentality. You might disagree with his actions, but Jack thinks that he did everything he could to make things work according to his morals. He's fighting against the general attitude that cultivators have towards everyone else, not against the cultivators themselves. He even tries to teach his people to think more like a modern person. I agree that there are a lot of characters, but that's kind of unavoidable if you want to have a larger cast of characters in a story like this and still keep the focus on the MC. I don't like it when novels remove the focus from the MC and have multiple chapters from the perspective from side characters. Regarding Jack's interactions with Mai Yining, he used his previous experience to charm her so he could get more information out of her and then later to help him escape. Apart from not wanting any harm to come to her, he didn't have any romantic feelings for her. You might have missed the parts of the story where he fakes almost all of his interactions with her? She did develop some feelings, but what can they do when they're on two different sides of a conflict? How am I supposed to have her in the story after they run away from the Sect? She will return in the future, but for now she's doing her own things. In conclusion, I'm glad that you read my novel and am sad that you quit. While I don't agree with your reasoning, I don't mean anything bad with my counter-arguments. I hope you find a novel that will make you happy in the future.
It's nice to see that you thought so much of the romance. Not so nice to see that you thought that everything else was utter garbage though. Nevertheless, there were a lot of hints in the story that Jack was playing her. One of the largest ones would be the one when he showed that he despises the way cultivators treat people they see as lower than them, and she did exactly that. I have not heard from any other reader that they had the same feelings as you did about it. The romances that Jack will have in the future might be fake or they might be real, but the only thing that is sure is that Jack will never give his heart over to a person that doesn't see the world in the way he does. I'm not trying to use cliches for the sake of making things easier, I am taking them and deconstructing them in a way that people see how ridiculous they are in other cultivation novels. Also, there were a bunch of hints that the Mountain to which she belonged to would betray the Sect after the enemies attacked.
SKBW:Reading this reply makes me lose all hope in regards to the future of this novel. The only saving grace for this novel, in my opinion, was the delicate romance that was in it, everything else was utter garbage. And you come here and reply saying that the interactions were fake. Are you an idiot? I'm not mad that the romance is fake. OK maybe I'm a little mad, but that doesn't skew my 20/20 vision. I thoroughly enjoyed the romance. It was the single most enjoyable part of the novel for me. There is some merit in the fact that you managed to make me "fall" for this little fake romance plot of yours. But, at the end of the day, you still lost "my" trust, the "readers" trust, with this little ploy of yours. What happens when you decide the MC actually needs a real love interest yet NONE of the readers feel emotionally connected to them in the story because of previous plot devices that made them "jaded". Your romance was good, it was good because you clearly spent little effort with it, and that's what made it believable, it was so good that, because of the fact you made it fake, it will now ruin every other romance that is possible in the future of your story. Because you won't be able to do any better. You might read this and take it as a challenge, and I encourage you to do so, I won't have to read it, so knock yourself out. Of course, everything above this sentence is a rather moot point because there's a clear plot hole in your reply to me. There were zero indications in the story that she was on a different "side" of anything until the MC literally saw her on the other side. There was probably slight foreshadowing, but nothing written into the story giving the indication of which "side" she was on. Of course, all of us being experienced readers, we can probably guess that there would be some kind of false drama pretext to separate the Romeo and Juliet characters in a very cliche fashion, but this guess comes from experience reading novels, not from the actual context of this novel, so it has no bearing in your argument.