Review Detail of Grievar in Swallowed Star

“Swallowed Star” is a rather interesting yet failed take on the “post-apocalypse” genre by I Eat Tomatoes. While gripping at first, with the poor yet hardworking protagonist Luo Feng, the plot quickly becomes stale as it devolves into little more than a power trip fantasy. Simply put, Luo Feng’s power creep is ludicrous. At many times during the story, a monster or, rather, any opponent Luo Feng fights is usually described as “awe-inspiring” or so powerful that simply looking at them would cause one to be gripped by fear and insanity. Does this matter, however? Not when Luo Feng can utterly crush him under his feet 2-3 chapters later! Even with his standard hero “cheat power,” Luo Feng’s experiences with adversity are ridiculous as they bear very little to no consequence for him. Warriors and veterans that have become so strong that they are classified as humanity’s strongest? Gigantic monsters that could kill veterans with decades of experience as easily as breathing? Maybe even God himself? No problem for Luo Feng! One year of “hard work” and training for him = decades for other people. Hardest skill that almost no one has mastered let alone even become familiar with? Becoming a master of advanced martial arts with less than a year of training? Just a little elbow grease and can-do attitude will do! Now, while you can argue that this is all due to his “cheat,” (and even the novel espouses this) please keep in mind that this “power” is not one-of-a-kind. Incredibly rare, yes, with his “power” being amongst the strongest of his kind, the novel’s premise of “humanity struggling against the monsters” is shattered when you see just how quickly he levels up. Now taking into account the fact that his power is rare and that he’s among the strongest with this power, if there was even one or two other people with his level of power out of a population of 5 billion people, according the novel, (not counting the dozens or hundreds of others with the same power, albeit slightly weaker) then humanity would be at the top of the food chain again within a year or two with how ridiculously fast their growth is. Aside from this, side characters are frequently bland and 2-dimensional whose entire purpose is to show how much better Luo Feng is compared to them. Yes, while it IS nice that Luo Feng isn’t insufferably arrogant towards his enemies and, yes, while this novel’s small-time antagonists break the standard Wuxia trope of “I’m just so much better than the protag and I’m going to annoy him until he kills me,” it immediately becomes apparent that IET doesn’t care about developing anyone else besides the protag outside of using them as platforms for which Luo Feng’s glorious light can/will shine thorough. Ultimately, while I found this novel to be unique in its willingness to break SOME standard Wuxia tropes, it fails in its ability to impart any real sense of ******* in any of its scenes. Luo Feng simply becomes too powerful too quickly and he is Never in any real danger (hell, he even fights a veteran hunter later that is so powerful that he’s known as a “war god” and gets away with nothing more than a few bruises). While some of you may argue that that’s just because of his cheat power and that I’m nitpicking, please keep in mind that this very same type of character appears in countless other novels. The “got super strong, super fast because of luck/secret power/rich family/blessed by true heavens” kind of character that is usually an antagonist in most novels. These kinds of characters always seem to lose because strength and speed does NOT equal experience. “Oh but those guys are usually all arrogant,” sure, but not ALL of them are conceited or arrogant and ultimately end up losing anyways. Remember, Luo Feng’s power is NOT unique, and it’s ridiculous to think that all these veterans and monsters that have fought in countless battles for decades upon decades wouldn’t have SOME form of survival instinct or caution when it comes to the sneak attacks and unexpected strikes that are Luo Feng’s forte. If not, why wouldn’t they just round up all the people with this “cheat” and have them ambush every strong monster king/emperor/god that exists? (Yes, there are endless monsters but even among them there are very few “super monsters” that die in one hit to the protag anyways)