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Senior Member
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Martial God
Original Title : 武神
Author : Cang Tian Bai He
Status : 1369 Chapters (Complete)
Webnovel : piaotian.com
Translation : NU
Review
nanda322
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This is honestly like those old wuxia novels. Quite good story building without the usual stupidity you would find in average xianxias. There are no stupid internal conflicts with family members trying to kill each other just because someone is better than someone else. Or people looking down on others excessively.
MC isn't thrust into a revenge plot from the start. It's a bit slow in terms of story line but it's a stable development. MC isn't unreasonably smart or brave, his behaviour and thought process is very true to his age. Only thing might be hiding his cultivation from his family which is kinda a necessity for the novel to progress.
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Trent
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The synopsis makes the novel seem generic. But while the bones of it are, the MC's journey is quite uniquely written. At first, I would have given the story 2 or 3 stars, but it grows to deserve 5 and more. My advice: try to power through the stereotypical xuanhuan portions, then slow down near the end of the first volume, when the novel really starts to shine and each moment becomes one worth savoring.
So, the beginning's cringe-worthy, but the story gets better over time. At first, the cultivation system is so dull that it's annoying, but it becomes interesting in the Xiantian realm. The battles are fantastic, showing the MC's current comprehension and aspirations, and the interactions, in and out of battle, really make the novel stand out among its kind.
The story has more believable elements than most. Though cultivation level is extremely important, people recognize that it's not the only measure of power, and not the end-all for a group to prosper. Family members actually care for one another, though they're taught to place the clan above the individual, and their relationships with people outside their clan tend to be more complex than considering everyone else to be trash. Few characters are flat.
The MC is quite typical for a while, but he gains depth, and he becomes more interesting over time. When the story begins, the MC is twelve years old and has already cultivated for several years (so he's neither too young to take seriously nor the regular 15 or 16-year-old boy who's accomplished nothing despite his age and will suddenly start catching up to and surpassing his peers). His "fortuitous encounter" doesn't turn him into an unconvincing genius, except in the matters of cultivation. His cultivation, in turn, improves his composure but not all the other aspects of his maturity, though it strongly affects his worldview. He's somewhat childish, and it's great to see a growing cultivator actually acting according to his age. For all that the MC's an uber-cultivator, he lacks experience outside of cultivation, which leads to weaknesses when interacting with others: he's quite socially awkward, manipulable, and non-empathetic, which are sensible character faults for a teenager who's spent most his life in isolation, and not even his cultivation level and insight can fully shield him from the mundane. His decisions aren't simplistically right or wrong, but are the result of his experience and personality.
This novel's an excellent compromise between novels like WoC and TtNH, and ones like MGA and WDQK. It isn't as complex or slow-paced as the former, nor as mindless and uninspired as the latter. It's a splendid cultivation story.
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2017-09-12, 19:00
